After 16 years of successful collaboration, even 3,000 miles of parched countryside weren’t enough to prevent a clash of egos by the co-directors of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice.
Out is Vinnie Schiraldi, the CJCJ’s hard-charging D.C.-based advocate who has become one of the most articulate and widely quoted (and real) promoters of progressive crime policies. In at CJCJ as executive director in San Francisco is Dan Macallair, no sloth at raising hell himself.
Together the duo built CJCJ into a $4 million operation with 65 staff, half in California, the rest in D.C., Baltimore and Philadelphia. For a decade the two managed one of the youth field’s most difficult organizational setups, delivering well-researched, shin-kicking policy advocacy – often aimed at the very public agencies that fund CJCJ’s direct-service work with delinquent youth and adult offenders.
But CJCJ, says Macallair, needed a growth-induced “restructuring.”
It got one all right.
The CJCJ board of seven (stocked with Macallair’s cronies) decreed at an April meeting in San Francisco that there would a single director – one Daniel Macallair. Schiraldi would become the East Coast director, while then-Executive Director Jodi Schwartz was designated operations director.
No dice, said Schiraldi and Schwartz. Soon after the rupture, Schwartz was gone from San Francisco and Schiraldi (along with his D.C.-based advocacy team that includes Jason Ziedenberg, Tim Roche and Deb Clark) were leaving, along with $1.5 million of CJCJ’s budget.
Now open for business as the Justice Policy Institute, Schiraldi’s shop will be less involved in direct service, focusing instead on influencing public policy. Contact: CJCJ 415-621-5661, www.cjcj.org; JPI (202) 737-7270.
