Quick one today, we’re hard at work on some Youth Today stories (including one about Goodwill that should be of great interest to juvenile justice readers).
***OJJDP has released highlights from the 2007 National Youth Gang Survey today, a report that has marked the trends in gang activity around the country since 1995. The gist is that the number of jurisdictions reporting gang activity continues to climb. Only a quarter of jurisdictions reported problems in 2001; it is now over a third of jurisdictions, the highest since 1998. The number continues to rise because of more rural jurisdictions reporting gang activity.
Is it us, or has OJJDP released a ton of stuff since Acting Administrator Jeff Slowikowski took over?
***OJJDP is looking for peer reviewers to help review proposals for its discretionary money. We covered this earlier in the week, but it doesn’t look like much of the money is actually up for competition.
E-mail OJJDP.discretionary@usdoj.gov if you are interested. If you’re chosen, e-mail jkelly@youthtoday.org later this year and tell us what it was like!
***The CEO of The First Tee, a group at the center of the controversy over OJJDP grant-making for fiscal 2007, has been named to the board of directors at a major faith-based children’s hospital in Florida.
***There was a good story by Karen de Sa of the Mercury News about Santa Clara county’s misdemeanor arrest rate for juveniles. Its rate is 3,978 per 100,000, more than 1,000 higher than the state average, while the arrest rate for felonies is almost exactly the state average. A good read for anyone in an area where law enforcement and JJ officials look to cite youth early as a preventative measure.
***Beth Osprich, the superintendent of an Ohio youth correctional facility got demoted and took a salary cut for handcuffing herself twice to youths in an effort to control their behavior. AP Reporter Andrew Welsh-Huggins did a good job balancing both sides of this argument: the veteran youth worker who knows her kids, and an agency that has to guard against actions with potentially bad outcomes.
