Patricia Campie is the new director at the Pittsburgh-based National Center for Juvenile Justice (NCJJ), a division of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ), which is the major provider of data and research in the field.
NCJJ oversees the National Juvenile Court Data Archive for OJJDP, and also produces publications for Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI) and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Models for Change.
Campie replaces first and only director, Hunter Hurst III, who retired this year after 35 years. Many expected Director of Systems Research Howard Snyder to replace Hurst, (and since Hurst lurked behind the scenes toward the end of his tenure, a lot of people thought he already had). Both he and longtime NCJJ Senior Research Associate Melissa Sickmund put in for the director’s job, but the council ultimately decided to look outside of Pittsburgh (one source says Snyder was offered the job, but passed; he now works with the Bureau of Justice Statistics).
Campie has been executive director of Tucson, Ariz.-based LeCroy & Milligan Associates, a consulting firm that specializes in evaluating human service programs, since October 2007. She has a justice policy background, trained at the University of Arizona’s Rombach Institute on Crime, Delinquency and Corrections.
But it may well be another skill that sealed the deal for Campie: a reputation for bringing in money. LeCroy & Milligan’s website calls her an “experienced grant-writer” who helped “secure more than $15 [million] in funding for state agencies and community-based organizations” during her work in the public sector. That included a stint as director of Tuscon-based Pima Prevention Partnership, which operates a charter high school and teen court.
That couldn’t have hurt her chances with NCJFCJ, which must find ways to sustain its income while figuring out how to pay its $300,000 fine to the Department of Justice.
Another veteran employee, Senior Research Associate Patricia Torbet, has run the NCJJ office in an interim position since May.
