The Office of Juvenile has announced all of its fiscal 2009 grants, all of which are available by connecting to this pdf document. The OJJDP awards appear on pages 233 through 295.
Here’s the skinny on what got doled out. We’ll go from biggest to smallest, grouping some pots of money into general priority areas:
Grants to States
Includes: Title II Formula funds, Juvenile Accountability Block Grants, Title V Community Prevention Grants
Total: $110.7 million
Notes: Title V money, which should find its way to state advisory groups to seed JJ projects, totaled just under $1.7 million – FOR THE WHOLE COUNTRY. That works out to $33,486 for each state and $8,372 for territories. The reason it’s so low is that grants to help states enforce underage drinking laws now come out of Title V, as do all funds going to tribal youth programs. And with all due respect to recipients of those dollars and what they do with them, it would appear both pots of money moved into Title V because they otherwise would have faced extinction once their original authorizations expired.
Earmarks
Includes: Earmarks
Total: $75.2 million
Notes: Definitely a smaller dollar number than it has been in the past, but still the agency’s second-biggest grant making expenditure. There were some newcomers getting big bucks ($1.4 million for Jobs for Delaware Graduates), and some old standbys ($1 million for the Cal Ripken, Sr. Foundation, headed by former Boys & Girls Club rainmaker Steve Salem).
One interesting tidbit: JJ Today counts 269 earmarks that were funded, according to OJJDP’s release, but there were 288 appropriated earmarks by Congress. We asked OJJDP who did not get funded, and will update this once the agency responds.
Winners of Note: Childhelp, Inc. (Ariz., $1.2 million); Zero to Three (D.C., $750,000); Bolder Options (Minneapolis, $500,000); DARE New Jersey ($200,000); National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (Nevada, $1.8 million).
Mentoring
Includes: Strategic Enhancement to Mentoring, Second Chance mentoring initiative, Mentoring Initiatives for Foster Care Youth, Mentoring Research Program, National Youth Mentoring Training and Technical Assistance, National Mentoring Programs, Gang Prevention Youth Mentoring Program.
Total: $65.3 million
Notes: The biggest chunk of this was national mentoring ($44.5 million), which we have covered ad nauseum at this point. Educational Development Center gets $1.5 million to provide training and technical assistance to the national mentoring grantees; the Boston-based nonprofit also gets $600,000 from OJJDP to do training/TA for its tribal grantees.
Winners of Note: Center for Survivors of Torture and War Trauma (St. Louis, $500,000); Covenant House New Orleans ($124,449); San Diego Youth Services ($500,000); Berea College (Ky., $500,000).
Child Safety/Child Protection
Includes: Child Protection Division Grants, Promoting Child and Youth Safety, Court Appointed Special Advocates (membership services, accreditation, technical assistance and training), Children’s Advocacy Centers (membership/accreditation and subgrants to local centers), and technical assistance for child abuse professionals, prosecutors, judges and court staff.
Total: $56.1 million
Notes: The National Children’s Advocacy Center, which is in Huntsville, Ala., gets more consistent federal funding than any organization we can think of, and receives just over $2.5 million out of these funding streams. This is not surprising when you consider that the center was founded by former U.S. Rep. Bud Cramer (D-Ala.).
Oddly, the center is not the grantee responsible for doling out about $11 million in subgrants to some of the 700 children’s advocacy centers around the country. That job falls to the D.C.-based National Children’s Alliance, which also handles membership and accreditation for the centers.
Winners of Note: INOBTR (Mo., $1.5 million); National District Attorneys Association (Va., $1.7 million); Fox Valley Technical College ($11.1 million); National Court Appointed Special Advocate Association ($14.8 million)
Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children (CSEC)
Includes: Research on CSEC, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children Program, Improving Community Response to CSEC, Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force (ICAC) grants for continuation and expansion.
Total: $54.3 million
Notes: ICAC task forces have been successful in helping local law enforcement crack down on child porn and predators trying to lure in children online. In 2008 and 2009 combined, more than 6,000 arrests were made based on ICAC investigations. 2009 was a big year for ICACs: They took in $75 million after receiving between $12 million and $16 million each year since 2003. Now, $50 million of the $75 million this year was one-time-only Recovery Act money, but that still means a $10 million boost in regular appropriations during a fiscal year where Congress wasn’t feeling very “boosty.”
NCMEC gets its usual $30 million-plus from OJJDP. It’s an award that irks some providers in the field for two reasons: it’s hard to nail down exactly what NCMEC accomplishes with all the money; whatever it is has more to do with youth victimization than it does with juvenile justice.
Winners of Note: Fund for the City of New York ($1.3 million); Kristi House (Fla., $500,000); Seattle Police Department ($431,941).
Tribal Youth
Includes: Tribal Juvenile Detention and Reentry Program, Tribal Juvenile Accountability Discretionary Grants Program, Tribal Youth Field Initiated Research and Evaluation Program, Tribal Youth Program grants, Tribal Youth Mentoring Program.
Total: $21.9 million
Notes: One of the funding streams where Big Brothers Big Sisters of America did manage to score at OJJDP – $1.9 million for tribal youth mentoring, the same amount as Boys & Girls Clubs of America. The training for new tribal grantees will be Nov. 3-5 in Washington, D.C.
Winners of Note: Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians ($1 million); Hualapai Tribe ($642,641); University of Montana ($500,000).
Underage Drinking
Includes: Enforcing Underage Drinking Laws Block Grants Program, Training and Technical Assistance, Initiative to Reduce Underage Drinking.
Total: $24.1 million
Notes: Youth Today Publisher Bill Treanor made a great point after flipping through this list: Why would all states be level-funded in this endeavor? California (about 15,000 miles of drive-able highway) gets $360,000. That same amount goes to the U.S. Virgin Islands Law Enforcement Planning Commission, which we will generously estimate handles 100 miles of highway.
The nose still knows, people.
Winners of Note: Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (Md., $2 million for training and TA); Missouri Department of Public Safety ($949,617 for initiative to reduce underage drinking).
Demonstration Programs and Research
Includes: Demonstration Programs Division Grants, Field Initiated Research and Evaluation Programs.
Total: $9.8 million
Notes: We have it from a person way more knowledgeable than JJ Today when it comes to the earmark/competition process that, if the $75 million in earmarks were freed up for competition, most of it would be available under these two streams.
The National Council on Crime and Delinquency snagged the biggest of the three field research grants ($500,000), and will use the money to assess the impact of Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI) on disproportionate minority contact and the detention of status offenders. This is worth noting, because Casey leadership would certainly like some financial buy-in from OJJDP on JDAI, and this grant could be OJJDP’s way of expressing interest in how much the reform movement has impacted two factors that many states still struggle with.
Winners of Note: National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (Nev., $600,000); Regents of The University of Colorado ($250,000); ICF Incorporated (Va., $500,000).
Drug Courts
Includes: Juvenile Drug Courts Program, Family Drug Courts Program, Family Drug Court Training and Technical Assistance.
Total: $8.8 million
Notes: The family drug courts deal with parents that face abuse and neglect charges and are substance abusers. The juvenile drug court winners also receive funding from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration as a result of some joint planning between the two agencies.
Juvenile Drug Court Winners: Superior Court of California County of Ventura ($425,000); Colorado Judicial Department ($424,835); Cherokee Nation (Okla., $425,000).
Reentry
Includes: Second Chance Act Youth Offender Reentry Initiative, Second Chance Juvenile Mentoring Initiative.
Total: $8.1 million.
Notes: If there was one priority that just looks entirely out of place within OJJDP spending, wouldn’t it have to be that grants to work with youth coming home from lockup gets the least amount of money? Reentry was the word of the day at a lot of post-election discussions on the future of OJJDP, and one of the nation’s largest charities (Goodwill International) has challenged all of its sites to do more work with ex-offenders of all ages. Wouldn’t be surprised if this piece of the pie gets larger in a few years.
Winners of Note: Baltimore City Health Department ($750,000); Oregon Youth Authority ($750,000); Cobb County Community Services Board (Ga., $428,990).
