***Day 988 of the Obama administration and still no nominee to serve as administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. It’s pretty safe to say at this point there will be no nominee during this presidential term. There might be an administrator, if the House passes legislation already approved by the Senate that would strip the Senate confirmation requirement from the OJJDP job. But nominating someone at this point would probably mean confirmation wouldn’t come up until the spring or summer, and then the person might only have six months on the job. Who is taking that gig?
***Next week is a big one for OJJDP, because Juvenile Woodstock kicks off in National Harbor, Md. The baked goods might cost OJJDP $16, but don’t worry … it won’t be for the same reason that they were that pricy at the first Woodstock.
The agency’s national conference officially starts Wednesday (click here for an agenda), but some interesting action will take place beforehand during the pre-conference events. Up on Tuesday: the first meeting of the newly-reconfigured Federal Advisory Commission on Juvenile Justice (FACJJ).
The old FACJJ, made up entirely of delegates from the State Advisory Groups (SAG) got the kibosh back in December, and Acting Administrator Jeff Slowkowski indicated that it would be replaced with a group that included some SAG members, who would represent a group of states, and some members that had expertise on particular issues of interest to OJJDP.
OJJDP announced a list of new FACJJ members last month, and it includes 12 “primary” members and 12 “alternate” members, presumably to increase the likelihood that at least one informed person from each region can attend the meetings.
Following is a list of primaries and alternates by state groups:
California, Florida, Texas, Puerto Rico
Tony Jones, Fla.: Chief of Police, Gainesville Police Department.
Maria Estela Quintanilla, Texas: Retired teacher, District Crime Stoppers Coordinator for the Laredo Independent School District.
Illinois, New Jersey, New York
John B. Roe IV, Ill.: Ogle County State’s Attorney, member of the Illinois Juvenile Justice Commission.
George Timberlake, Ill: Former chief circuit court judge, head of Illinois Juvenile Justice Commission.
Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia
Robert Listenbee, Penn.: Chief of the Juvenile Unit, Defender Association of Philadelphia.
Kenya Shantel Lee, Md.: Founder of Parents with Power, member of Gov. Martin O’Malley’s Children’s Justice Act Committee and Juvenile Grant Planning and Review Council.
Alaska, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington
Dean Williams, Alaska: Superintendent, McLaughlin Youth Center in Anchorage.
William Feyerherm, Ore.: Vice Provost for Research and Dean of Graduate Studies at Portland State University.
Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada
Robin Lubitz, Ariz.: Director of the Juvenile Justice Services Division of the Arizona Supreme Court.
Susan Colling, Colo.: Juvenile Programs Coordinator for the Colorado Judicial Department.
Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, Utah
Symone Sanders, Neb.: Manager, TD Sanders & More (event planning company).
Pat Berckman, Utah: Associate Director of the Salt Lake County Department of Human Services.
Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina
ViEve Martin Kohrs, La.: Disproportionate Minority Contact Chair, Calcasieu Parish Office of Juvenile Services.
Linda Whittington, Miss.: State Rep. (D) for District 34.
Kansas, Kentucky, Iowa, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, West Virginia
Reginald Robinson, Kan.: Director for the Center for Law and Government, Washburn University, and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Justice Programs.
Pili Robinson, Mo.: Director of Consulting Services for the Missouri Youth Services Institute, former facility manager for the Missouri Division of Youth Services.
Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Wisconsin
Jim Moeser, Wis.: Deputy Director of the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families.
Richard Broderick, Ohio: Superintendent for Northeastern Local Schools, member of the Governor’s Council on Juvenile Justice.
Maine, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, Wyoming
Dalene Anne Dutton, Maine: Executive Director, Five Town Communities That Care; Member, Maine Juvenile Justice Advisory Group.
Joseph Diament, N.H.: Director of Transitional House and Community Corrections for the state Department of Corrections.
Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Rhode Island, Virgin Islands
Christine Perra Rapillo, Conn.: Director of Juvenile Delinquency Defense, Office of the Chief Public Defender.
Timothy McBride, Del.: Student and President, American University Student Government.
American Samoa, Guam, Northern Marianas
Claudio Martin Kotomori Norita, N.M.: Former Department of Public Safety commissioner, current member of the Northern Marianas Commonwealth Legislature.
Aileen Jo Artero, Guam: Chair, Department of Youth Affairs.
Youth Members
Haley Rae Reimbold, N.Y.: Founder, Underground Café in Utica, N.Y.
Martha Doyle, Ore.: Trial Assistant for Alan W. Karpinski, youth member of the Oregon Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee.
Tribal Members
Raquel Montoya-Lewis, Wash.: Associate Professor, Fairhaven College in Bellingham.
Liz Mueller, Wash.: Vice Chair of the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe.
All of these members will serve a two-year term ending on Sept. 30, 2013.
Interestingly, OJJDP decided to go somewhat away from the standard “regional” approach where states that share borders send one delegate. A number of the groups are geographically clustered, but a handful appear to be based on population.
California, Texas and Florida, by far the biggest three systems, are in one group along with Puerto Rico. Illinois is in with New Jersey and New York, and Massachusetts and Virginia similar-sized bookends of a group with Maryland and Pennsylvania.
Two other groupings seem to break the small states up into rural (Maine, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, Wyoming ) and less rural (Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Rhode Island, Virgin Islands).
We have no idea why the Virgin Islands is paired with those states instead of the other territories. We’ll try to get some insight into how OJJDP came up with these next week.
***Outside Washington, the Campaign for Youth Justice anointed October National Youth Justice Awareness Month in an effort to raise awareness about adolescents who are tried in the adult criminal justice system.
The campaign helped affiliated groups in 15 states and Washington, D.C. organize and promote events for the month, many of them centered on 5K runs, marches or film screenings. Click here for a list of all the events.
***OJJDP publicly announced all of its fiscal 2011 grant winners at once earlier this week. As we have covered in Youth Today, juvenile justice took the biggest hit of federal youth-related spending in 2011, and it stands to get cut even further in 2012.
Click here to read through the grants, either by state or by program. Some quick thoughts after sifting through these:
-OJJDP cut 17 percent from all of its 2011 funding streams to accommodate the cuts made in the continuing resolution that prevented the government shutdown. But when it came to Title II formula grants and Juvenile Accountability Block Grants (JABG), it held the minimum allocation states harmless from that cut because frankly, some of them might have stopped bothering with the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act compliance if their allocations got any lower.
That meant larger cuts to the other states. Two examples:
California
Title II and JABG, 2011: $9.03 m
Title II and JABG, 2010: $11.412 m
Change: -$2.4 million (21 percent)
Georgia
Title II and JABG, 2011: $2.434 m
Title II and JABG, 2010: $3.274 m
Change: -$840,000 (26 percent)
-Looks like three solicitations made earlier in the year were not funded as a result of the lower amount given to OJJDP as a result of the continuing resolution:
*Comprehensive Anti-Gang Strategies and Programs (3 years, $750,000).
*Evaluation of Second Chance Act Juvenile Mentoring Initiatives (5 years, $3 million).
*National Training and Technical Assistance Center for Truancy Prevention and Intervention (5 years, up to $2.4 million).
The first two JJ Today knew about in August; cancellation of the truancy center funds is news to us.
From OJJDP spokeswoman Starr Stepp: the agency “did not make awards under the National Training and Technical Assistance Center for Truancy Prevention and Intervention solicitation because it received no applications that sufficiently met the requirements of the solicitation.”
-Usual suspects win the national mentoring grants. Last year’s four winners were all funded again: Boys & Girls Clubs of America ($48.3 million), Big Brothers Big Sisters of America ($11.3 million), National 4-H Council ($5.3 million) and the National Association of Police Athletic Leagues ($3 million). Goodwill Industries International got $5 million; it didn’t win any grant in 2010 but got a $19 million Recovery Act grant to start a mentoring initiative in 2009.
-National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges received four grants for $5.45 million in 2011, compared with $7.57 million for seven grants in 2010. The council is still above the $4.854 million it took in federal grants for 2009, but this speaks to what NCJFCJ Executive Director Mary Kay Bickett told us a few months ago: the council needs to diversify its funding base to survive.
-Interested to see what Newark, Boston and Baltimore do with the second round of grants from the Community-Based Violence Prevention Program. Each gets about $2.2 million for a project; last year’s winners were New York, Oakland, Washington and Denver.
-Westat again wins the grant to conduct the most interesting juvenile research solicited by the Justice Department. Last year the company got $500,000 for a study on juveniles transferred to adult court. This year, it gets $400,000 from OJJDP for the National Juvenile Probation Census Project. As with the 2010 venture, the National Center for Juvenile Justice in Pittsburgh will be helping Westat conduct the research.
-The solicitations for 2011 made it look like there would be a $1 million grant made for a State Juvenile Justice Formula and Block Grants Training and Technical Assistance Program. Nobody was specifically given a grant under that name, but it looks as though Development Services Group will assume those responsibilities.
The Bethesda, Md.-based company received $400,000 in 2010 for a State Relations and Assistance Division/State Advisory Group Training and Technical Assistance Project. This year, DSG got another $400,000 for “State Relations and Assistance,” and $450,000 more for the same purpose.
-Funding for Family Drug Courts ticked up from $3 million for eight sites in 2010 to $5.5 million for 10 sites this year. If everyone is serious about the evidence-based thing, you have to think the investment here will continue to grow. Recent research all points to the fact that, while most strategies for working with juveniles are not predictive of more or less future offending, family-involved drug treatment strategies do have an impact.
***JJ Today had a chance to catch up with Bart Lubow, lord of all things juvenile at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, this week. The topic at hand was the release of Casey’s report making the case for less use of post-adjudication confinement, but we also asked for an update on the foundations flagship juvenile venture, the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI).
Lubow said four or five states are in the queue at the moment, and Missouri and Indiana are under way as state-level JDAI projects. Both states sent large delegations to New Jersey, Casey’s model state for JDAI reforms. New Jersey started with a cadre of five counties and, leaning on consistent leadership of the reform effort at the state level, has implemented JDAI standards statewide.
It was helpful to both states, Lubow said, but made him and other from JDAI realize that it needed to frame the New Jersey visit properly for states, so that they would not be overwhelmed by its high-functioning reform and think, “I cannot make this happen in my state.”
“They can’t all necessarily do what New Jersey did,” Lubow said. “We started to get them thinking: What might be the Indiana counterpart to this?”
As Casey begins to play a bigger role in reform of the adjudication process in 2012, look for the foundation to start figuring out how to create separation between itself and JDAI. It is likely that someday soon, Casey will seed some existing nonprofit to run point on JDAI with foundation support.
“We act somewhat like an intermediary” on JDAI, Lubow said. “At a certain point, any foundation needs to move along and be an incubator.”
In JJ Today’s humble opinion, it’s really a no-brainer on who should run that venture for a nonprofit: Lisa Macaluso. Macaluso, now with the Center for Children’s Law and Policy, was a major influence in the success of the New Jersey JDAI experiment.
