Happy New Year to everyone! And as today officially marks JJ Today's second calendar year of existence, thanks to everyone who dropped in to read our stuff in 2008.

***The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) is fielding applications for three pots of money, all of which are due in about two months:

Family Drug Court Training and Technical Assistance: Winner will help state, local and tribal courts establish or build the capacity of family drug courts. OJJDP will select one winner for funds of up to $400,000 over two years; organizations can partner on an application as long as there is a clear primary applicant. This is not for juvenile drug courts; these are courts that handle substance-abusing adults (many of them young parents, of course) who are court-involved due to abuse/neglect of their children.

Deadline: Feb. 24.

National Mentoring Programs: Supports efforts to improve or expand mentoring services to at-risk populations. Applicants have to operate in at least one state in four of the six established regions (Atlantic, New England, North, South, Mountain, Pacific). Maximum award is $10 million over three years.

Deadline: Feb. 25

Gang Prevention Coordination Assistance Program: Funds sites to use any of these four strategies to address youth gang problems: community-wide prevention, targeted prevention for youths who are highly likely to join gangs, intervention for youthd in gangs, or law enforcement. Public agencies and community organizations can apply; 12 awards will be given for up to $200,000 each.

Deadline: March 4

To apply for any of these, you have to register at Grants.gov. But don't wait until the last minute, because it can take a few weeks for Grants.gov to process first-time registrants.

***Washington Post reporter Robert Pierre was prolific on the JJ front in December. He published this story about the Campaign for Youth Justice, which before Christmas took families of D.C. youth tried as adults to Devil's Lake, N.D., to a facility where all D.C. youth convicted as adults go until they are 18. Pierre also wrote this piece that takes a balanced look at the slippery slope of trying to reform a juvenile justice system while keeping the community on your side.

Two things about the holiday trip to North Dakota. First, CFYJ President Liz Ryan praised the staff at Lake Region Law Enforcement Center , who bent over backwards to make the trip work, driving hours to and from the Fargo airport in blinding snow and affording families more time over the weekend after flights to Fargo were delayed on Friday.

That said, Ryan says her meetings with U.S. Bureau of Prison (BOP) officials leave her convinced that they feel Devil's Lake is the right place for D.C. inmates. That will make it hard for CFYJ to sell them on a facility closer to Washington, even though BOP said they would hear Ryan out on the matter.

"If you asked them what their priority was, families would say they could go for a program not as good [as Devil's Lake] but much closer" to home, Ryan told JJ Today.

In 1998, Youth Today ran a story on the facility at Devil's Lake ("Sweating It Out in Uncle Sam's Big House"). Patricia Sledge, BOP's deputy assistant director at the time, told reporter Jack Kresnak that it intended to "house all federal juveniles within 250 miles of their homes by fiscal year 2008, unless the sentencing judge rules otherwise." What happened to that?

Secondly, it is ridiculous that the D.C. youths at Devil's Lake must leave that facility for  adult prisons when they reach 18, though all other juveniles housed by the Bureau of Prisons can stay out of adult prisons until age 21. BOP told Ryan instructions on transfers to adult lockups are dictated by U.S. attorneys.

***Great piece by Ted Rubin in the most recent  Juvenile Justice Update about the juvenile justice standards adopted by the Institute of Judicial Administration and the American Bar Association in 1980. Rubin, who helped draft the standards, compares the ideas behind them to the direction of the field today.

***This wasn't exactly released recently, but a piece on the use of psychotropic medications on youth appeared in the Fall 2008 issue of Reclaiming Children and Youth. It was brought to JJ Today's attention at a December meeting of the Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (Reclaiming's Executive Editor, Larry Brendtro, is a member of the council).

The main thrust: Certain psychotropics may address symptomatic behavior in juveniles, but they can also hurt the chances that the juveniles will bond or relate to youth workers or anyone else who wants to help them over the long haul.

It brings to mind a recommendation made by the American Psychological Association at a recent JJ panel: pass federal guidelines on the use of psychotropics in locked facilities.

While hopes are high in Washington that the federal level will soon make inspired investments in juvenile justice, the state dollars that help good programs that already exist survive are dwindling.

The Associated Press produced an excellent rundown of recent budget cuts to juvenile justice agencies in various states in an article that was released to newspapers this week. The story was picked up by numerous papers, and it includes a chart that lists specific things that states will forgo this year.

To no surprise of JJ Today readers, it's the non-incarceration programs that appear to bear the brunt of the worsening economy.

"I've been around when the pendulum has swung philosophically" and non-secure programs have had to plead their case, said O.B. Stander, CEO of the renowned Associated Marine Institute (AMI). "That is not the case here. They [states] just don't have money."

We divided the specified cuts listed by AP into staff, secure facilities and other (residential, alternative, diversion, group homes, wilderness, etc.). Of the 13 states AP identified:

-Seven closed programs and non-secure facilities.

-Four are making cutbacks in staff, are not filling open positions or are canceling planned increases in hires.

-Three closed secure facilities (New York is closing six barely-used ones; Nevada is simply closing two vacant cottages at a reformatory).

It is highly unlikely that this is the worst of it. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has already forecasted that 28 states will begin 2010 with budget shortfalls, so cuts in other states seem  imminent.

"We expect there will be more cutbacks" next year, Stander said.

AMI would know better than almost any organization. It operates residential, employment training and other JJ programs in eight states. Florida's budget woes (pass an income tax!) caused two of its camps to close last year; already, South Carolina's budget cuts have temporarily shut down one there. 

It's the last thing that Bill Byars, head of the South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice, wants to do. He was brought in six years ago with the state's JJ system knee-deep in a federal lawsuit.

"The governor gave me two directions," Byars told JJ Today. "Get out of the lawsuit, and quit warehousing kids."

He accomplished both. And with an intensive supervision program Byars started, in which case managers start helping youth and families prepare for a DJJ facility release months in advance, recidivism rates were driven down.

As the economy tanked, Byars cut that supervision program back to a five-county pilot project. Also cut were a gang intervention program and a community prevention partnership.

Now? You name it: Closing at least one AMI camp, elimination of job programs for young offenders and after-school programs in the detention facility, and almost certain closure of the state's five JJ group homes.

Byars has no illusions about the implications: Many of the youths he would have sent to those places will now have to go to the correctional facility, a sprawling complex behind a razor wire fence.

"The problem is, I can't put the kids behind the fence with AMI," Byars said. "But I can bring AMI kids inside the fence."

He doesn't blame the state for forcing the cuts on him, but he also doesn't plan on taking it without a fight. Unlike many states, South Carolina has a budget control board that issues the "slash your spending" decrees but also can grant the authority for an agency to run a deficit. 

Byars plans to ask for permission to do exactly that early next year. His best argument could be a compelling one for the state: Fear of a return to court with the feds.

"My concern is, as frontline programs go away, then historically you will have an upsurge in juvenile crime," Byars said. That could cause the type of overcrowding in lockup that got the state in trouble in the first place.

"My judgment is that I cannot make the cuts they have asked me to make and stay in compliance" with the court order that ended the federal lawsuit, Byars said.

Young black males are being murdered, and being arrested for murder, at a far higher rate than they were in 2002, according to a report released by two Northeastern University professors.

The report has focused attention on youth violence just before Congress begins a session that will have legislation on the subject front and center.

The number of homicides in which the victim was black and between 14 and 17 was 468 in 2007, up from 300 in 2002, the lowest figure this decade. Black teens in that age group were arrested for homicide 1,142 times in 2007, up from 798 in 2002.

The same trend applied to young black adult males (18 to 24), although the changes were less pronounced: more murdered, more arrested for murder.

The number of white 14- to 17-year-olds who were murdered rose by 60 (from 262 to 323) - an increase of 23 percent, compared with the 56 percent rise in black teen homicide victims - and 28 fewer white teens in that age group were arrested for a homicide in 2007 than were arrested in 2002.

"The Recent Surge in Homicides involving Young Black Males and Guns: Time to Reinvest in Prevention and Crime Control" was written by James Alan Fox and Marc Swatt, both criminal justice professors at Northeastern in Boston. They used Supplementary Homicide Reports that they have created as part of the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program.  For their comparisons, Fox and Swatt combined 2006 and 2007 numbers for 14- to 24-year-olds and measured the percent change in offenders against numbers for 2000 and 2001.

A few other trends to note:

*All nine geographic regions of the country saw an increase in young black males arrested for murder according to Fox and Swatt's calculation. .

Only the East North Central and East South Central regions posted percent changes of less than 10 percent. Five of the nine regions saw percent changes of more than 20 percent.

That said, the trends do not hold true at the state level. Twenty-four states saw statistically significant increases in 14-24 year-old black homicide offenders, and 12 saw decreases.

*With cities, size matters. In the biggest U.S. cities (1 million people or more), there was actually an 8 percent drop in 14- to 24-year-old blacks arrested for a homicide. This shows up most notably in California and New York, where states saw a sizable increase in the number of young black men arrested for homicide while their largest cities (L.A. and New York) saw dramatic decreases. Smaller cities - those with populations between 250,000 and 500,000 - saw only a 5 percent increase in 14- to 24-year-old blacks arrested for homicide.

Every other locality grouping, including medium-sized cities (more than 500,000 but less than 1 million)  and small towns of 10,000, saw increases of greater than 20 percent.

The numbers are not news to most researchers or advocates. But presenting them in a racial context isn't something they are wont to do.

"I've seen the same pattern in juvenile arrest data, but I try to avoid feeding the media with reports written and labeled in a way that will generate potentially racist headlines," Jeffrey Butts, a senior fellow of the Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, said in an e-mail. "Race is a proxy for income and class. If our crime data sources included direct measures of income and class, people wouldn't be tempted to over-analyze the importance of race and ethnicity."

Fox rejects that notion. "There have been no racist headlines here," he says. "Just writing columns for journals doesn't make an impact on public policy. You gotta get the word out there."

He agrees with Butts, though, that "it's not an issue of race" as much as the "socioeconomic conditions that underlie racial conditions."

That Fox is the co-author of the report makes it all the more spicy. He did not endear himself to the cause of some JJ advocates in the 1990s, when his prediction of a "blood bath of teenage violence" helped instill fear of teen "super predators" in the hearts of lawmakers around the country. Fox later backed off the comment, and conceded that "some of it was part of getting people's attention." But that didn't stop get-tough legislators from using it to help ram through ill-conceived legislation.

A look through his work since those days would indicate that he is against the ideological nonsense that was enacted in the wake of the "blood bath" comment. He conducts research with Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, and last year lambasted the state of Massachusetts for its harsh murder laws for juveniles.

"It's time to rethink our rigid juvenile murder law and allow lesser penalties for perpetrators who, by virtue of emotional and cognitive immaturity, are less responsible,' Fox wrote in a column for the Boston Globe.

Fox has gotten people's attention again with this report: Stories and editorials have appeared in major papers around the country for the past two days (Fox knew what he was doing, releasing the study right after the Christmas lull when reporters needed an early-week story).

And again, he is making bold statements. Fox sees a "divergent tale of two communities - one prosperous and safe, the other poor and crime-ridden," as he says in the report's preface.

"It hardly takes a rocket scientist...to recognize that there are increasing numbers of wayward and poorly-supervised youngsters with guns in their hands and gangs in their plans," the report states.  

What does he hope will (and will not) happen as a result of this report? It's clear from his conclusions that he blames Congress and the federal government for three things: Taking their eye off of the ATF gun tracing program as the focus swung to homeland security after 9/11; reducing the amount spent on prevention and rehabilitation through the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention; and dwindling support of the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS).

Just a guess here, but Fox may again find himself in hot water with JJ advocates who would like to see Rep. Bobby Scott's (D-Va. ) PROMISE Act passed in the next session.

The title of this report alone favors the premise of another bill: Sen. Dianne Feinstein's (D-Calif.) Gang Abatement and Prevention Act, which proposes to balance prevention activities with funds for stricter law enforcement. And as JJ Today has reported, Scott has drawn a line in the sand between the two bills. Only one will likely find its way onto Barack Obama's desk.

The report's conclusion section appear to support Feinstein's desire for gang suppression as well. "We must, of course, look toward immediate solutions for controlling gang activity and easy access to illegal firearms - approaches that depend heavily on police personnel, intelligence and deployment," the report states.

This editorial from the New York Times, however, leans more toward Scott's bill.

Fox says he testified at a hearing convened by Sen. Joe Biden  (D. Del.) last year and was generally supportive of Feinstein's approach. But told about Scott's bill by JJ Today, he says he completely understands why the congressman is protecting it from a conference with the Gang Abatement and Prevention Act.

"I certainly agree that prevention gets short shrift" when it and law enforcement are financed in the same conversation.

The San Francisco-based Burns Institute (BI) has released the first installment of "Adoration of the Question," the first in a series of reports it plans to publish over the coming year to mark the 20th anniversary of the federal mandate to address disproportionate minority confinement (or contact, depending on who you ask). The title is a reference, authors say, to German philosopher Friedrich Hegel's belief that unendingly adoring the question overwhelms the search for answers.

Volume One is entitled "Reflections on the Failure to Reduce Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Juvenile Justice System."

BI Founder James Bell, who co-wrote the report with BI law and policy analyst Laura John Ridolfi, spells out the context of the report well in his preface. There is a lingering "spirit of hope, possibility and change," Bell says, that comes with the notion that Barack Obama's presidency marks the dawn of a post-racial era. On the other hand, the disproportionate likelihood that a black or brown youth will get locked up is one of the starkest reminders that, in some arenas, racism endures.

The volume is an excellent primer on DMC, which everyone should become familiar with because it will be a focus of juvenile justice work in this administration. Harvard Law Professor Charles Ogletree will be a major adviser to Obama on civil rights and he used almost the exact same phrasing as Bell when discussing the notion of a post-racial society. His organization at Harvard has also released a recent report on DMC.

Two themes come through loud and clear from Burns, which is the lead organization on DMC issues for the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative and also works with the Center for Children's Law and Policy on DMC for MacArthur's Models for Change.

First, BI has no use or regard for the body of work spawned from the JJDPA core requirement. Essentially, all states are required to do is "address" DMC. There is no demand that they actually improve anything.

"How many more annual DMC-related conferences will be held to restate what was discussed the year before?" ask the authors, Bell and Ridolfi. "How much money will be spent on hotel rooms and catering instead of programming that is intentional, targeted, data-driven, and has been proven to reduce disparities?"

Second is the frustration Burns has with people who are resigned to the idea that "addressing DMC requires the seemingly impossible task of solving the macro-level social issues that have negatively impacted poor communities and communities of color for centuries."

Not so, the authors say. You can use "data to critically investigate whether internal juvenile justice policies and practices are contributing to disproportionality."

Very true. But finding proof of where disparity lives does nothing in and of itself; the proof must be used to change procedure and decision-making.

That sets up an interesting question, as a Justice Department well-versed on DMC begins and the most precise DMC data ever recorded comes in from Burns and CCLP (Burns will have a data map available on the web in January). An enacted public policy is not attached to any one person or group. But what if the proof points to a racially biased decision-maker (or makers) in the system? Some might realize the error of their ways, but others will surely stiffen at the accusation of racism.

For example, one DMC researcher told JJ Today that she "found that on average [juvenile] minorities were...somehow receiving higher-level probation sanctions" for low-level crimes.

Problem solved? Not quite. All the researcher got for reporting her findings was "a lot of heat."      

So what can be done in that situation? Do interested parties sue? That is not easily done, JJ Today was told by one expert, for two reasons: There isn't a federal statute on which to hang a hypothetical DMC lawsuit, and it would be difficult to prove intent (as in, the judge hit minority youth with tougher probation terms instead of unknowingly doing so).

Forthcoming volumes of "Adoration of the Question" will describe the "tools, technologies, insights and strategies" that BI has used.

New York-based grant maker JEHT abruptly closed its doors today because its primary donor's money was lost by the now infamous financial manager Bernard Madoff. Madoff was arrested last week and charged with allegedly operating a scheme that bilked at least $20 billion from investors.

JEHT's main donors, real estate heiress Jeanne Levy-Church and her husband Kenneth Levy-Church, were among those whose money was managed by Madoff.

"We're being told that JEHT funds were with Madoff and that they are ending all funding commitments immediately," said Abby Anderson, executive director of the Connecticut Juvenile Justice Alliance, a JEHT grantee.

JEHT was a moderate spender in juvenile justice, but its closure will have a significant impact because many of its investments piggy-backed on larger ventures by other foundations.

Major projects supported by JEHT include:

*Annie E. Casey Foundation's Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative: JEHT has helped support replication of JDAI, a widely renowned effort to reduce the reliance on detention by local juvenile justice systems around the country.

*Missouri model: JEHT provided funding for Santa Clara County, Calif., to hire the Missouri Youth Services Institute, a nonprofit run by Mark Steward, former director of the Missouri Department of Youth Services. MYSI is helping Santa Clara replicate Missouri's use of small, regional facilities and youth development programming to work with incarcerated juvenile offenders.

*Models for Change: JEHT provided grants to a number of organizations that are heavily involved in the MacArthur Foundation's juvenile justice venture, which aims to foster major system reform in four core states. Grantees supported by both foundations include the D.C.-based Center for Children's Law and Policy, Springfield, Ill.-based Juvenile Justice Initiative and Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center.

JEHT made $26.4 million in grants during fiscal 2006. Since it was founded in 2000, it has given away more than $62 million.

"They filled a big niche," says David Steinhart, director of the juvenile justice program at Commonweal, a JEHT grantee.

He credits JEHT for wading into policy and advocacy work that was often controversial and required careful consideration of the lobbying rules for foundations and nonprofits. "There are not many foundations that do it that way," Steinhart says.

The complete loss of JEHT's assets means that any payments owed to grantees, even for current-year grants, will not be made.

"Given the circumstances, the foundation is unable to issue any payments on unpaid grants, the unpaid portions of multi-year grants previously made, or give further consideration to any proposals that were in the pipeline," JEHT President Robert Krane wrote in a statement sent to grantees earlier today.

Most grantees contacted by Youth Today say they have not been told much yet and had only received Krane's statement and a public statement from the foundation.

"Obviously, it's not good news for us," Anderson says. "We'll be okay because our funding is fairly diverse. It will mean taking a good, hard look at the budget, though."

Click here for a list of JEHT's active juvenile justice grantees

***UPDATE: A smaller grant maker that is closely related to JEHT is also closing due to losses suffered under Madoff. The New York-based Rockit Fund funded programs, polling and lobbying on a number of civil liberties issues including juvenile justice. It was run by JEHT CEO Robert Crane, and Ken Levy-Church served on its board of directors.

***Last week, the Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice met for its final quarterly meeting of 2008. It was the last convening of the council under the gavel of OJJDP Administrator J. Robert Flores, who will not be in office at the next meeting in March.

You know what that means: Plaques all around! Flores doled out large, black ones (the type you hang on the wall) with custom gold engraving to staffers who assisted with council matters. The council reciprocated with a small, crystal plaque (the type you place on your desk) for Flores. Photos were taken.

Then it was time to stuff a few conservative-friendly members into vacant spots on the council: Roland Warren, president of the National Fatherhood Initiative; Byron Johnson, director of the Institute for Studies of Religion and the Program on Prosocial Behavior (both at Baylor University); and Harry Wilson, former head of the Family and Youth Services Bureau at the Administration for Children and Families, now a consultant for ICF International.

Many people in the JJ field take a dim view of Flores' tenure at OJJDP, feeling that he has presided over nothing short of a decimation of the agency's value. More than a few advocates and practitioners might have flinched hearing Flores say at the final meeting that there is a need to "make sure people are always clamoring, ‘What works? What works?' "

For what it's worth, the coordinating council is not as critical; and since its time with Flores is done, its members didn't need to pull punches.

"I thought he did a good job" with "dwindling resources," said Gordon Martin, a council member and a retired juvenile judge from Massachusetts. Another member praised Flores for raising the coordinating council "to new heights."

Finding partners for OJJDP ventures seems to be what Flores is most proud of. His overview of the past seven years touted partnerships with the Department of Labor on the "Shared Youth Vision" project, the Department of Housing and Urban Development on the federal mentoring council, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration on juvenile drug courts and drug intervention projects.

Two resources discussed at the meeting could be useful for the incoming administration. First is a Comprehensive Community Toolkit, designed to help federal staff assist communities involved in federally-funded projects. Seems tailor-made for, say, Rep. Bobby Scott's Youth PROMISE Act.

The other is the website of the Interagency Working Group on Youth, which was created by President Bush last February. The Federal Youth Coordination Act envisioned a similar council, but Congress has yet to fund the act. The website has great community mapping functions.  

***If you haven't heard of the White House Boys, you soon will. A group of former wards of the Florida Industrial School for Boys (now the Dozier School) use their blog to inform the public about the brutality inflicted on juveniles sent to the school, which is in Marianna, Fla., just south of the Alabama border.

Now, at the White House Boys request, Florida says it will investigate a cemetery with 32 unmarked graves on the school's premises. What that investigation will find is all but certain: bodies of boys who were beaten, tortured and killed by staff. It would be truly one of the saddest chapters in the history of juvenile justice.

***Juvenile justice is not the bread and butter of the Wall Street Journal, but it did a great story on the (potential) prosecution of the 8-year-old boy recently accused of shooting his father and another man in Arizona. The article steps back from this singular incident and presents the philosophy of prosecuting very young children. A great graphic shows that 16 states have threshold ages for prosecution, some of them as low as seven years old. Perhaps better than not having a threshold at all ... but jeez. 

***Here is one connection between the youth work field and the downfall of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich: The state senate passed a law raising the age of jurisdiction for juvenile courts from age 17 to 18 for misdemeanor charges. That bill awaits Blagojevich's signature.

Will he get around to it before he might be forced out of office? Right-sizing the JJ system is a major focus of reformers in the state.

***Professor Charles Ogletree, executive director of Harvard's Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, continues to be the main voice and ear on juvenile justice for President-Elect Barack Obama - along with Laurie Robinson, who is the transition team member assigned to review the Office of Justice Programs. (Check for his upcoming Q&A on JJ Today).

Ogletree spoke this week at the MacArthur Foundation's Models for Change conference in Alexandria, Va., and used the occasion to disseminate this report from the institute.  

JJ Today wishes a speedy recovery to Laurie Garduque, who is recovering from surgery for ovarian cancer (which was thankfully caught early). Garduque has led Models for Change since its inception.

***Fight Crime: Invest in Kids is looking for a new federal policy director to replace Miriam Rollin, who was promoted to chief operating officer. Experience with JJ is nice for the open post; knowledge of the way things work on Capitol Hill is pretty much a must, Rollin says.

***Last but not least, our condolences to the family of Bob Shepherd, former law professor at the University of Richmond and a past chair of the American Bar Association's Juvenile Justice Committee. He will be remembered for, among other things, his columns in ABA publications and Juvenile Justice Update, profound input on JJ policy and attention to implementation of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act.

"He had an enormous influence on the field," an emotional Bob Schwartz told JJ Today. "And he was just an extremely good person."

Last time JJ Today checked with Tippecanoe County, in October, the economy had recently hit the skids. Proponents of a new juvenile justice center nervously awaited a November meeting between the county and its bond rater in New York to discuss Tippecanoe's ability to finance the facility. Good news would mean a final green light to the project; bad news would put the whole thing in jeopardy.

Well, it appears that decades of fiscal prudence have paid off for the county, which by all accounts has been diligent and conservative about the use of bonds for public projects. The meeting reportedly went well, says Rebecca Humphrey, executive director of youth services for Tippecanoe, although she stopped short of saying a favorable bond rating was a done deal.

But the county has purchased the land and the financial ducks are in a row, so the focus now shifts from planning to building.

Once the finances are finalized (a bond rating could come as early as Friday), the next major step will be fielding bidders to work on the construction of the center. Some counties handle that process themselves, while others use construction managers (CMs) to oversee the projects.           

Tippecanoe went the latter route; it has an agreement with Kettelhut Construction, based in Lafayette, to manage the project. JJ Today spoke with Kettelhut President Steve Habben to get an idea of how a bid process for a JJ facility works.

How it Works

Kettelhut signed on to manage it in March for approximately $400,000. The standard fee, Habben says, is 2.5 percent to 3 percent of the projected construction costs. (The center's expected construction cost is around $14 million, which does not include the costs associated with financing, which brings it to about $17.3 million.)

Habben says that in his experience, about half of counties go with a CM. The idea is that using a firm like Kettelhut saves hours of county employee time. A CM with expertise should be able to find enough cost-savings in the planning phases to neutralize the cost of hiring them in the first place.

Habben's advice: Counties are usually better off as their own general contractor unless there is an obvious choice for a CM. Kettelhut has been around for 75 years, it's based in the county. The firm has done construction on a number of public buildings and served as CM on another secure building (an addition to the county jail).

Before construction, the county receives Kettelhut's input and assistance on design and oversight of the bidding. Once ground breaks, "we are basically the eyes for the owner" to make sure contractors provide what they offered, Habben says.

The design of the facility, save a few tweaks along the way, is done; that will be the focus of our next update. Now, let the bidding begin.

There will be 10 primary contractors working on the juvenile justice center in the following categories:

-general construction (earth work, concrete, any doors or woodwork)

-asphalt paving

-masonry

-roofing

-glass/glazing

-mechanical

-fire protection

-electrical

-food service

-detention/security

About 160 construction companies picked up documents at a Nov. 20 meeting for potential bidders, and Habben estimates that there will be between four to five contractors that seriously compete in each category. (It's possible that one firm would bid on more than one.) Kettelhut will not bid on this center, which is the widely-held ethical standard when it comes to serving as a CM.

JJ Today was curious how the bidding system ferrets out absurdly low bids. Simple, Habben says. First, if a firm bids too low, then has to renegotiate, that firm has to fork over about 5 percent of what it originally bid as a penalty. If it's an honest mistake, most bid managers will just let a firm pull out.

It's rare that a bid gets rejected, according to Habben, because it would be hard for a contractor to even make a bid without some legitimacy. Most JJ facility construction projects, if not all, are bonded jobs, meaning the bidder would come to the table with a bonder ensuring that the work will be done. A bonder is on the hook if someone it backs goes bankrupt in the middle of the project or cannot finish it for some other reason. If it costs more than the bidded amount to finish the project, the bonder "just eats it," Habben says. "That has happened a lot lately. So you have to know what you're doing" just to get a bond.

Bidders must also submit extensive qualification information to Kettelhut, he explains. If Kettelhut or the county have had a bad experience with a firm, it might get rejected, or the records would have to include lots of claims filed against them.

"You have to be prepared that, if you reject contractor X, they have the legal right to sue," Habben explains. And construction is "a sue-happy world."

Bids on the center will all be submitted by Dec. 11, and the county councilmen and commissioners will immediately begin reviewing them. That will provide Kettelhut and county officials with their first look at what private industry thinks it will cost to profitably provide services on the project.

If the winning bids add up to a figure near the projected costs of the project, things should proceed nicely. If not - let's say bidders factor in a higher cost of materials than the county had expected - it may mean a trip back to the drawing board for the center.  

***UPDATE: There were 67 bids received on the project. Ruth Shedd, one of the county commissioners, says here that the costs could actually be lower than expected.

Note: The Journal & Courier, which has diligently followed the juvenile justice center plans, ran this great timeline on its website, which chronicles the ever-changing cost projections of the juvenile justice center from 2004 to present.

If reauthorization of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 is the gold medal for juvenile justice advocates, passage of Rep. Bobby Scott's proposed Youth PROMISE Act would definitely be the silver.

The act would put billions of dollars toward keeping youth away from the violence of street gangs, and not by placing them in jails. It would allow community councils in areas with lots of youth at risk from gangs and violence to create plans aimed at filling the voids in youths' lives that make them receptive to gangs and crime.

It's a big price tag in tough times, but Scott says most potential PROMISE Act areas could balance the cost of crime prevention against expected savings on incarceration and welfare, which he estimates can add up to nearly $100 million a year in small- to medium-sized cities.

"If you can reduce crime by 50 percent, and these places have the potential to do that, ... you ought not limit your imagination to programs that cost $200,000 to $300,000," Scott (D-Va.) told JJ Today on the phone, the day after he hosted a four-hour summit on the act in the Rayburn House Office Building.

In a lot of ways, the formula in Scott's legislation is reminiscent of the Department of Labor's Youth Offender Grant process: grants for planning, then grants for implementation, and establishment of a best practices/research entity to assist. The big difference is that PROMISE Act would enable a collaboration of groups to craft a plan and recommend grantees (Youth Offender uses local governments).

On the House side, the stars are aligned for Scott. Sources say the bill would be passed easily in the new Congress that convenes in January and make it to a House-Senate conference quickly if he Scott chose to push it through his own Judiciary subcommittee on crime, terrorism and homeland security. And asked what President-Elect Barack Obama thought about the bill, Scott said, "I'm positive he would sign it."

But there is an obstacle in the way of PROMISE Act's coronation, and that is the U.S. Senate. There is no perfectly symmetrical legislation in the works in the Senate yet, and if the PROMISE Act passed soon, it would be likely to end up in a conference with the Gang Abatement and Prevention Act, sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), which passed the Senate unanimously last year.

Feinstein's bill focuses predominantly on the suppression of gang activity through greater law enforcement involvement and broader definitions of gangs. Most juvenile justice advocates support PROMISE and oppose Gang Abatement (for a sense of those views, read this from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency and this from the National Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Coalition.  

Scott made it abundantly clear to JJ Today that there would be no compromise between his bill and Feinstein's. "The fact is, there is no research that would lead anyone to believe that increasing penalties from where they are now would do anything to reduce crime," Scott said. "People are so accustomed ... to expect counterproductive nonsense as part of crime bills. Why accept more juveniles tried as adults when that increases the crime rate?"

So a new bill on the Senate side, more closely connected to the PROMISE Act, would be necessary. Scott indicated that he has some senators in mind as sponsors. The summit this week was really a pep rally to stir up support for January visits to Capitol Hill by advocates of Scott's bill to senators from their states.

To be continued!

JJ Today reported over the summer about some serious implications of states coming into compliance with the Adam Walsh Act, which was signed by President George W. Bush in 2006. To sum up: Following the act's guidelines on sex-offender registries would mean including anywhere from a handful to thousands of youths on state and national registries for a very, very long time.

The Justice Policy Institute just released "Registering Harm," a thorough report on the problems with the Walsh Act. It presents a bold idea for states: Don't comply.

On its face, that sounds like crazy talk. The penalty for not complying with the Walsh Act by late July of 2009 is 10 percent of the state's Byrne Grant money, which are supposed to help local governments improve justice systems. Low-population states would lose very little ($51,386 for South Dakota), big states would lose more than $1 million (California would lose more than $2 million), and the average state would lose somewhere between $150,000 and $300,000.

Almost every state is facing a serious financial crisis right now. Who is going to pass up federal dough at a time like this?

But JPI developed a methodology to calculate what the Walsh Act would cost to implement for 2009, and the figures are exponentially higher than the 10 percent Byrne cuts. The chart of implementation costs versus Byrne money (page 18 of the report) may very well end up being a persuasive tool to sell state legislatures on forgoing 10 percent of Byrne grants.

That is, if the report gets into the right people's hands. "Registering Harm" was released with little fanfare and no press release from JPI, which is surprising, because one of the report's authors, Nastassia Walsh, spoke about Walsh Act compliance at the recent JJ panel discussion sponsored by the American Bar Association.

Could it be because states don't appear to be moving toward passing laws that would get them into compliance? Possibly, although that can backfire in a huge way. Utah decided to ram through Adam Walsh Act compliance legislation a year ago, and included a caveat about background checks on foster parents that proved disastrous to the state's child welfare system.

For the juvenile justice field, a quiet period followed by hastily crafted legislation as the July deadline nears might be worse than a public debate today.

Here are the states where this all matters the most: Alaska, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Nebraska, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming, along with Washington, D.C. None of those states places juveniles on sex-offender registries.

The Walsh Act will have an impact on others states too, though, because a number of states that do register juveniles have more liberal attitudes toward removing them from the lists than adults.

There are well-known criteria that often go into the decision to keep a juvenile in a detention center or commitment facility. Two of them are:

Did the youth commit a serious violent offense?

Has he established a propensity to re-offend when the system lets him stay in the community?

But publicized criticism of two high-profile JJ systems - those of Washington, D.C., and Multnomah County, Ore. - seem to suggest that systems should assess the mirror image of those criteria. A bit of background ...

Case One: Multnomah County, which includes the city of Portland, has long served as a model site for the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative. Some of the rural counties in the state are now implementing JDAI's approach to detention admissions, but the whole JDAI experience in Oregon has an enemy in Steve Doell, president of a group called Crime Victims United.

In May, CVU released a 104-page report criticizing the county's embrace of JDAI's approach. The thrust of the report, which reads like a very long opinionated paper, is that juveniles are released pretrial too often and are not supervised well when they are.

Presumably, CVU's concern that prompted the report is that these juveniles may commit crimes while they're out. And yet the report is dedicated to the memory of, and dedicates an entire chapter to, a Portland teen named Davonte Lightfoot, a teenager who was found murdered in 2006 after being placed on electronic monitoring.

Case Two: In Washington, JJ Today's hometown, it is no secret to residents that the city has some issues with violent teens. While most D.C. teens are good kids in a city that has little to offer them, some have developed nasty (and sometimes fatal) territorial beefs in some neighborhoods.

In 2005, the city brought in national juvenile justice expert Vincent Schiraldi to fix its Department of Youth and Rehabilitation Services. His agency is responsible for all adjudicated youth and any who are detained by a judge until their trials (about 700 youths this year); Court Social Services Division is responsible for youth on probation (about 2,500).

Schiraldi's approach, in a nutshell, has been this: Divert nonviolent offenders to alternative community programs, place youths whose primary needs are drug- or mental health-related in residential treatment facilities, and use its correctional facility, Oak Hill, only for the most serious and violent offenders sent to DYRS.

But after one week in early August, when 10 of the 35 people arrested in D.C. for violent crimes were juveniles, Washington Post columnist Colby King began what has become a weekly stream of opinion pieces criticizing the city's handling of juvenile offenders. DYRS and its commitment to keep more kids in the community were and are his biggest targets, although he has begun to look more pointedly at the court's performance.

King has certainly made reference to youths who were released and offended again. But his examples of system failure have very frequently included teens who were killed while under the city's supervision.

The details of both situations are interesting, but are not the point here. The common denominator between CVU and King is that both seem to suggest that juvenile justice systems ought to protect their youth from free society, even if it means locking them up, which turns everything about the use of secure confinement on its head. 

"Does that mean the best that the wealthiest country in world can do is keep kids locked up" to keep them safe? Schindler muses.

Moreover, is it a juvenile justice system's fault if a youth gets killed? The word "supervision" appears all over King's columns, and to many of us, it conjures the image of supervising children in the home, or at an after-school program. The expectation in that scenario, of course, is that a supervising adult pretty much knows what the youth or youths are doing at all times.

But on the street? Let's say a youth checks in, face to face, three times a day with a case manager. He says nothing about fearing for his life, doesn't fail to meet any conditions placed on him as far as the case manager can tell.

If that youth is murdered at 3 a.m., as one of DYRS' wards was last summer, did the system fail to supervise him?

"His bad decision should not result in him getting killed," Schindler says of the youth. "Where I grew up, if I'm out at 3 a.m., I'm not gonna get killed. Is that a failure of DYRS to supervise? At some level, people are individuals."

Bottom line, he says: "We should absolutely do what we can in terms of case planning and supervision, so that youth under our care are as safe and secure as possible ... [but] we are also subject to the reality that many of our young people live in communities that are too violent and challenged with other ills of society."

All that said, youths are definitely kept locked up for their own protection. For example, Eleanor Molina is in charge of a community custody program for the juvenile justice system in Bernalillo County, N.M. The youths sent to her have had a judge deem them OK for return to their families before trial.

But if she finds out a youth is in one gang, and is charged with a serious crime against a member of another gang? Molina told JJ Today there is a solid chance she is sending that kid back to the judge with a recommendation that he be detained.

In D.C., Schindler says, "We have kept kids locked up. ... That has absolutely happened."

The example Schindler remembers best is one youth who had rapidly made progress socially and academically at Oak Hill, and DYRS decided he was ready to be released. His grandmother, who at the time was on Oak Hill's advisory board, pleaded with the agency to keep him. "She told us, ‘Don't send him home. I think someone's looking for him that keeps coming by the house. I fear for my grandson's life if you release him,' " Schindler recalled.

The teen told staff members that grandma was just being a worrier, but DYRS held the youth until it could come up with a plan. Painful but necessary, Schindler says: "Here's a kid who did everything asked of him, and yet was still incarcerated."

He ended up in an independent living program in Baltimore.

In Portland, a judge and JJ personnel chose not to act on similar information in Davonte Lightfoot's case. He told juvenile services personnel that he feared for his life, and his mother asked that he be placed elsewhere after several probation violations, according to CVU's conversations with the mother. In January of 2007,  District Attorney Nathan Vasquez told the local newspaper that he had sought placement in a correctional facility for Lightfoot.

"Based on what I was seeing in his history, it was my belief that he was in danger of either shooting someone or being killed himself," Vasquez told a reporter from the Oregonian.

We would love to hear anyone's thoughts on the subject. Is locking a juvenile up for his own safety ever appropriate, and if so, under what circumstances? Leave a comment if you have an opinion.

We received several letters about a package on juvenile justice reform that appeared in our print edition ("A Tale of Two Reforms," November). The stories reported on the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI), and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's Models for Change initiative. There was also a sidebar on disproportionate minority contact (DMC), which the foundations require their partners to address.

Because we could not fit all of the responses in our December issue, we are running them here, through the links below.

First, a few thoughts on the sidebar - which, not surprisingly, ruffled a lot of feathers.

Where segregated bathrooms and fountains were symbolic of overt racism decades ago, the deep end of the justice system might well be the modern face of racial injustice. Thus, organizations that focus on this work - such as the W. Haywood Burns Institute and the Center for Children's Law and Poverty - command the utmost respect. It is not easy to develop accurate data on a controversial subject when nobody has done so before, nor to confront people in a juvenile justice system who, whether they know it or not, are making decisions that lead to racial disparity.

The leaders of those two organizations, James Bell and Mark Soler, are admirable men driven by their missions.

Nevertheless, some people involved with JDAI and Models for Change believe that the DMC work led by the Casey and MacArthur foundations has not yet been successful; some wonder whether it ever will be. That is worthy of being reported.

One of the letters we received seems to dismiss the views of some people quoted in the story as "angry quotes from the disgruntled." We should point out that two sources in that sidebar are involved in coordinating DMC work at their respective sites.

Youth Today will cover the issue of disproportionate minority contact again, with a more thorough examination of what has and has not happened in the past 20 years. We welcome your thoughts and recommendations about that coverage.

Here are links to the full letters of readers who responded to the package.

Judy Cox, Consultant, Annie E. Casey Foundation

Robert Schwartz, Executive Director, Juvenile Law Center

Mark Soler, Executive Director, Center for Children's Law and Policy

Ned Loughran, Council of Juvenile Correctional Administrators

Toni Carter, Ramsey County Board of Commissioners and Judge Gary Bastian, Ramsey County Juvenile Courts

Melvin Carter, Damon Drake and Joel Franklin, Full Thought

***The National Council in Crime and Delinquency (NCCD) released this report, which analyzes the federal gang bills introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). The report is relatively quick read, but here is the Cliff's Notes version of NCCD's take on the bills: duplicative, no evidence of a rising tide of gang violence, defines "gang" too broadly, too much punishment and not enough prevention. A much better alternative, the report says: Rep. Bobby Scott's Youth PROMISE Act.

***Meanwhile, in NCCD's home state of California, President Barry Krisberg says he thinks the counties are doing a good job adjusting to the new JJ world order, in which they must handle all but the most violent juvenile offenders at the county level. In exchange for doing that, counties get more state funds.

      But headlines in the state indicate otherwise. Last week's notes mentioned a juvenile hall that might not get built because of financial constraints. Now, this story in the California Aggie says one county's probation department is going to lose about 40 percent of its JJ budget because of state budget cuts. The cuts will be to programs that served as alternatives to the juvenile hall.

       Both situations point to the same thing: Counties were given a bigger responsibility a year before financial downturns forced drastic cuts in state money to counties. Can they handle more juveniles as funds to work with them dry up? Krisberg and others point out that counties couldn't possibly do a worse job than the dysfunctional state-run training schools.

***The other state making a massive state-to-county transition is Texas, where a commission recently recommended merging the agency that runs state juvenile prisons (the Texas Youth Commission) with the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission. JJ Today wouldn't pretend to know the deal on this better then Grits for Breakfast, so his breakdowns on the proposed mergers are here, here and here.

***Another interesting Texas story comes from the Houston Chronicle, where Harris County's juvenile detention population has dwindled, thanks largely to a decline in juvenile arrests (with plenty of help from the folks at Annie E. Casey's Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative). As the population has gone down, the length of stay for youth who are detained has gone up.

The instinctive leap might be to think that centers who decreased population would decrease the length of stay, simply because most people would agree both of those are essentially good things: Not entering at all, not staying long if you do.

Not the case. We had a chance to look at data from lots of JDAI sites for our story on the initiative in the November Youth Today. Plenty of sites that lowered average daily population saw the average length of stay for juveniles rise.

One possible reason: If you're making the conscious decision to only detain serious cases, then those youths might have to be there for awhile. The lesser offenders, who might have brought down the average length of stay, are no longer in the center. 

Another possible cause we've heard is that, as detained populations decrease, some facilities use the available space for committed youths, who obviously are going to be there for awhile. If all the youths get counted as one big population, that will drive up length of stay.

In Harris County, the Chronicle reports, the reduction in population has a lot to do with the center reintroducing some treatment programs that were nixed as the center grew increasingly overcrowded.

***Girls are less violent than they were a decade ago, according to research funded by the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and conducted by the Girls Study Group at RTI International. The findings are presented in this PDF, and present data showing a decline in female arrests for violent crimes (except simple assault), even while girls accounted for a larger percentage of all juvenile arrests. Two items explain why that would happen:

* Criminalization and "charging up" of less serious or minor forms of  "violence," a net-widening that will escalate female arrests since their violent offending is generally less serious and less chronic.

* Re-labeling of minor offenses for "girl's protection," i.e., as grounds fordetention or placement in an appropriate program or facility.

***There's a new job opening at the Somerville, Mass.-based YouthBuild USA: Director of Graduate Leadership. The job is basically to cultivate a strong alumni based of YouthBuild graduates who would lead and serve future community activities. Act now, because the deadline to submit applications is allegedly Monday (although they just sent this to us a day ago).

The National Center on Crime and Delinquency has begun work on a major new project: The National Center for Girls and Young Women, which will be based in Jacksonville, Fla., and funded with a $500,000 start-up grant from the Jessie Ball duPont Fund.

The new venture will be run by Lawanda Ravoira, who will need no introduction to JJ professionals in the center's home state. She recently served as vice chairwoman of Florida's Blueprint Commission on Juvenile Justice, and served for 14 years as CEO of the PACE Center for Girls, which serves 4,500 at-risk Florida girls each year.

The center couldn't come at a better time. It is entirely possible that, should Congress reauthorize the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act next year, judges might not have the option of sending status offenders to any secure facility by 2012.

That would significantly affect what judges do with girls, who are committed to such facilities for status offenses with far greater frequency than are their male counterparts. Translation: it's time to develop and proliferate some services tailored to girls.

We e-mailed Ravoira for some of her thoughts on the state of girls in juvenile justice.

JJ Today: You hear and read a lot that girls are the "fastest-growing" population in juvenile justice; the phrase "girls represent the fastest growing segment of the juvenile justice population" gets 32 hits on Google. Do you believe that is still true today, or has the growth in the percentage of juveniles who are female subsided?

Ravoira: Girls are the fastest growing juvenile justice population. The national picture shows that crime rates are decreasing for both girls and boys, but the rate of decrease has been slower for girls. Nationally, since 1997, there has been an 18 percent decrease for boys who are incarcerated compared to only an 8 percent decrease for girls. However, there are 14 states where the female juvenile rate of incarceration has increased more than 30 percent since 1997.

JJ Today:  In announcing the center, NCCD President Barry Krisberg said that many girls' programs "were boys' programs painted pink." What are the fundamental differences in how you reach female offenders?

Ravoira: What must first be understood about girls is the pathways that lead girls and young women into the justice system. To successfully reach girls, we must address the victimization and past trauma that often results in a girl's involvement in the justice system. Girls can be especially vulnerable and misunderstood due to the effects of past trauma and emotional factors (e.g., depression, anger, self-destructive behaviors and mental health/clinical diagnosis) that contribute to delinquent behavior. Girls can present with extreme mood swings that include being withdrawn, aggressive or even assaultive. Some girls internalize their pain while others act out and display intense feelings and destructive behaviors that result in involvement in criminal activity.

JJ Today: Give us some examples of projects, research you guys want to take on at the National Center for Girls and Young Women. Do you see the center becoming the authoritative voice on females in juvenile justice, or simply serving a supportive role?

Ravoira: The center will be the leading voice for girls in the justice system and for those girls who are caught in the justice and the child welfare systems. Our work will be grounded in advocacy that promotes systemic change and that is driven by the needs of girls and young women.

JJ Today: Are there any programs, counties, states that really "get" how to take girls in the system and successfully keep them from coming back?

Ravoira: This is an excellent question. At this time we are looking to find the state or even a local jurisdiction that is investing in girls and young women.

JJ Today: You've operated out of Florida for a long time. Gov. Crist put the blue ribbon commission on juvenile justice together, which you were a part of. But he only put $4.6 million towards your recommendations, right? Were you disappointed with the follow-through there, and what are your thoughts so far on new [state] JJ leader Frank Peterman?

Ravoira: I am not only disappointed, I am compelled to continue to speak out and challenge our elected officials to be courageous and invest in all of Florida's children - and particularly address the gender inequity in the treatment of girls and young women. Secretary Peterman has reached out to the National Center for Girls and Young Women and we are currently developing a gender responsive training program for the department.

JJ Today: What are the most frequent tell-tale signs for you that a girl is seriously headed toward a chronically-violent future, as opposed to a girl who may have done something that is likely to be a one-time thing?

Ravoira: It is imperative that when looking at the needs of girls, that we recognize it is the trauma that drives girls behaviors, and too often our system focuses on the behavior and the trauma that is the core issue is forgotten. Or worse we re-traumatize girls when they come into the system. When a girl does not have a network of supports, it is more likely that she will spiral into a situation that leads to unsafe living conditions. Without the support network (or programs and services that can provide the supports that any girl needs), it is more likely that she will end up getting deeper into trouble as a result of a lifestyle that is based on survival (living on the streets, needing to make money for food, shelter; etc.).

JJ Today: It's well-known that judges tend to detain and commit girls for things they probably shouldn't: 14 percent of ALL females 20 and under who were detained/committed/diverted to a juvenile residential facility on census day in 2006 were status offenders, as opposed to 4 percent of all guys.

But many judges will tell you they do that out of fear for a girl's safety in many cases. If those options are phased out (as has been proposed in the Senate version of the JJDPA reauthorization), what do you think those judges will do (and what should they do) when status-offending girls come before them?

Ravoira: First, we must address the gender inequity that exists in the justice system specific to this attitude that we will protect girls by detaining them. The result is not protection at all - it is an issue of inequitable treatment. The decision to detain should be based on the level of the public safety threat. Girls who commit status offenses can be better served in the community - in gender responsive community based programs and services.

When girls come before a judge for status offenses, the judge should work with the public defender and other professionals to refer her to the appropriate community-based programs. When these programs are not available, we should not punish girls for the lack of services. And I would ask - given that the same situation does not happen to boys - what do they do when boys commit status offenses? The response is not to commit them to locked facilities.

JJ Today: Given the high percentage of female offenders who have experienced physical or emotional abuse, do you think mental health screening should pretty much be automatic with girls at intake ... or that counseling should automatically be part of the disposition?

Ravoira: It is imperative that girls be assessed automatically with a gender responsive and culturally specific assessment tool. The assessment tool should be done as soon as she enters the system and recommendations should be driven by the needs of the girls balanced with the public safety risk.

The first piece of President-elect Barack Obama's Department of Justice is presumably in place. Media reports say Obama plans to nominate Eric Holder, a partner at the Washington law firm Covington and Burling, to be his attorney general. And with a Democrat stranglehold on the Senate, he should be confirmed easily.

It is not the first go-round at Justice for Holder, who would be the nation's first black attorney general. He was confirmed as deputy attorney general in 1997 for then-Attorney General Janet Reno. Before that, he served as a U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, a federal judge for the D.C. superior court, and as a prosecutor investigating political corruption for DOJ.

Here's what we know about Holder's views and experience on juvenile justice. Much of it comes from a transcript of his 1997 confirmation hearing that we obtained from the Senate Judiciary Committee library. (Pages 56-79 contain all statements on JJ, unless we missed something.)

* In the get-tough era of school shootings (which happened while overall juvenile crime and juvenile homicide arrest rates dropped) was a voice for prevention. Holder and Reno issued a joint statement in 1998 making the case for more focus on the front of end of the youth violence quandary.

"Police chiefs, prosecutors, and parents are all in agreement that targeted, effective crime prevention programs are the best way to combat youth violence," the statement said. "Together, we have built more beds to house our prisoners and hired more police to patrol our streets, but everyone involved in law enforcement agrees that we are never going to be able to arrest and jail our way out of the juvenile crime problem."

* He gets the need for aftercare, one of the issues most discussed at an American Bar Association's juvenile justice panel earlier this month. And better yet, he gets that it costs money to improve it.

"We have to commit ourselves ... as a society to spending the money in order to come up with programs because...the majority of [juveniles] will eventually be returned to the streets," Holder said at his confirmation hearing. We need to, to the extent that we can, prepare them for that reentry. It involves a commitment on a society's part, though, to devote the resources to doing that."

This survey, done by the Center for Children's Law and Policy for the MacArthur Foundation's Models for Change Initiative in 2007, suggests the commitment is there. Then again, the economy has changed a little since then.

* He believes strongly in the value of initial drug screens for any juvenile offender who is arrested. That probably emanates from his experience as a superior court judge in Washington. D.C. tested all juveniles, he told the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the percentage of youths testing positive went from 10 percent in 1988 to "50 to 60" percent in the mid-1990s.

"I think it is the sources of a whole lot of other juvenile crime problems that we have," Holder told the committee. "We as adults on a local level have to be involved in activities and give messages to young people ... that drug[s] are not acceptable, it is not a good thing."

* Holder personally lives up to that standard. He is a long-time member of Concerned Black Men, a D.C.-based organization that mentors troubled youth in the city and has received more than $5 million in federal funds since 2000, including some grant money from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

Anybody else got some info, thoughts on Mr. Holder? Comment below!

Gotta love it when a federal agency announces grant availability with a deadline that is only a month later.

The Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration (ETA) is taking applications for a pot of $17.3 million that will fund three ventures, all related to effectively assisting offenders returning to the community from correctional facilities or detention centers:

* Local planning grants - to local governments, funds must be matched dollar for dollar. Most likely, 10 winners at $300,000 each.

* State or local offender implementation grants - can be used by governments for partnerships. Three winners, $3.1 million each.

* One grant for an intermediary - to a group that can demonstrate experience conducting demonstration sites in multiple cities. One $5 million grant.

The notice for the funding makes it clear what ETA believes will work in this mission: employment strategies, case management, educational strategies, mentoring, restorative justice and community violence prevention.

Get to it, though. The deadline for applications is December 18.

Here are links to winners of Youth Offender Grants competitions in 2007 and 2005.

JJ Today will start using Friday to update readers on media coverage and other interesting juvenile justice news from the week. Here are a few things that caught our eye of late:

*** Interesting after-care idea from the State of Ohio, which will contract with a local nonprofit to assign a person, akin to a foster care caseworker, to youths committed to the Department of Youth Services (DYS). The goal is have a rep from the organization - Urban Minority Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Outreach Programs, which has 12 programs operating in 11 Ohio towns and cities - make contract with a family 30 days before a child is released from DYS.

DYS Director Tom Stickrath says it's the first project of its kind; that would take a lot of legwork to verify. But consider what can be done for a returning offender in 30 days: plans for a return to school, reconnecting to SCHIP or Medicaid, signing up for anything the court orders after incarceration. A youth worker could make an enormous difference for a youth by doing that job well

The best part is that Ohio will fund almost the whole thing with $1 million in federal TANF money passed through the Governor's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. (Guess that office has come a long way.) So the precedent is there: You can use federal dollars to do this. 

Meanwhile, the closure of one Ohio JJ facility foretells a massive transformation in the way its largest county handles offenders.

*** We have a feeling this won't be the last time this kind of story comes to our attention in the near future: The South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) is making employees take unpaid leave by June 30 because of cuts in both its state and federal funding.

DJJ Director Bill Byars is well respected by state advocates and is one of the longest-tenured directors in the nation (which is sad, because he's only been there since 2003). DJJ's gamble is that the forced leave will save it from cutting 35 jobs.

*** Lots of people are following the horrendous shooting in Arizona of a father by his 8-year-old son. The case is as fascinating as it is tragic: Early reports are that the boy carefully planned the shooting of his father and his father's friend, despite reports that the boy and his dad were very close and that no abuse had occurred. Slate ran a short piece on police interrogation of really young children.

FYI: If you come across this story from American Chronicle report, which says an anonymous group of prosecutors from other states are urging Arizona to seek the death penalty for the 8-year-old, don't freak out: It's fiction.

The writer, lawyer Geoffrey Mousseau, told us his piece of satire is meant to point out the absurdity of three things: journalists using anonymous sources (guilty!), undying faith in the value of punishment, and the fact that we need a ban on the juvenile death penalty to keep people from wanting to execute children.

*** The debate over a new juvenile hall for two California counties epitomizes the struggle that some in the state are having under the new world order presented by Senate Bill 81. Enacted in 2007, the bill cut off the ability of counties to place most juveniles in the state's much-maligned training schools. The change came with money for services and construction on the local level, but that was before the economy tanked and the state ran into an enormous budget deficit.

*** Here's a great idea that could easily be duplicated anywhere. With the holidays approaching, a group of juvenile justice agencies and advocates are doing a gift-giving event to benefit incarcerated youth in Washington, D.C. The goal is to get gift packages together for about 210 youth, says Eric Solomon of Campaign for Youth Justice, one of the event's sponsors.

Being locked up away from family during the holiday season is exactly the sort of thing that can worsen depression for a juvenile offender, particularly those who do not get regular visitors.

*** Welcome to the extremely tiny field of juvenile justice blogging, Reclaiming Futures Every Day. The primary focus will be covering its namesake, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation venture to improve the handling of youth with substance abuse problems who enter the juvenile justice system. But it will also report on other news in the juvenile justice field, especially substance abuse matters. The foundation already linked readers to this guide on substance abuse programs that we would never have found.

Ben Chambers, who ran the Reclaiming Futures project in Portland, Ore., is the main scribe for the blog. One thing we liked right off the bat was his commitment to not simply cheerlead for the initiative. "We plan to share success stories and challenges from Reclaiming Futures sites across the country," Chambers wrote in one of his first entries.

It's been a long two years for the Texas Youth Commission. Pick a bad thing that happens in JJ and it has happened: physical and sexual abuse of youth, staff with criminal records, bad  contracts, and large lawsuits. Add in the three conservators and two executive directors TYC has employed in the last two years, and running TYC is about attractive as the top job in D.C. child welfare or head of ground operations in Iraq.

***
UPDATE, Nov. 12: Things just got even more interesting at TYC. A commission assigned to review the agency has recommended that TYC and the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission (which distributes money to counties to handle the 95 percent of juveniles who do not end up at TYC) merge into one juvenile justice entity. The report can be found here; joint statement against the proposal from Townsend and TJPC Commissioner Vicki Spriggs here; initial report on Grits for Breakfast here.
***

And yet somehow, the state lured a highly credentialed candidate. Cherie Townsend, who has experience running large county JJ operations, and spent much of her early career at TYC. Townsend has the respect of reform-minded folks; a mention of her new post at this year's JDAI Conference in Indianapolis prompted a long ovation; she wasn't even there!

Of course, for anything related to Texas JJ, you would be remiss not to surf the contributions on the incredible Grits for Breakfast blog, written by Scott Henson in Austin. His readers include people inside the agency and other justice leadership in the state, so the observations in his comments section (mostly anonymous) are often as thoughtful as Henson's own analysis.

A sampling of opinion on Townsend (and her new task) thus far:

*"She may know the ends and outs, and be very dedicated to making this a new and improved agency, but the fact of the matter is, she does not have people surrounding her that have the knowledge, skills, or abilities to make TYC what it needs to be. She needs to go back and look at some of those professionals that have left or were forced to leave in the past two years and see if any of them are worth bringing back."

 *"Ms. Townsend needs to clean out all the replants from other states that were supposed to be helpful to TYC but instead have done a good job of bringing it down more."

 *"Cherie is a leader, an innovative administrator, and a dedicated public servant. The State of Texas is indeed fortunate to have a person of her caliber take command of the Texas Youth Commission. My late father, who chaired the Texas Youth Commission during a much better time in the agency's history, would have praised Governor Perry for this appointment."

 *"Here we go again, another Arizona transplant."

 *"I believe I also read that Cherie also serves as a Director on the [American Correctional Association] Accreditation Board. Since TYC is going to again become involved with ACA, this will certainly help."

We wanted Townsend's own assessment of the job, so we sent her a few questions during her first month:

JJ Today: More than one person we've talked to described the TYC job as something they wouldn't wish on their worst enemy. Why did you decide to take it, what or who sold you on the job?

Townsend: The deciding factor in my accepting this position was the support that I found for reform of the juvenile justice system in Texas. This support comes from Governor Perry, legislative leadership, stakeholders, advocacy groups, employees and families. While there is a lot of work to be done, there is also the will to do it.

JJ Today: What would you say are the three most urgent things to address/change at TYC?

Townsend: There are a number of issues that I am currently addressing at TYC. The highest priority for me right now is to make certain that we are taking care of the basics and that youth and staff are safe. Secondly, we are developing a regional service delivery plan that addresses the elements of restorative justice and evidence-based program models for youth in the juvenile justice system. We will have to then align our resources with that plan. Finally, I'm focusing on communication, collaboration and credibility. These three things are really the cornerstones for changing our culture, improving internal and external systems coordination, and people having confidence that we are able to and will produce better outcomes with youth.   

JJ Today:  What do you feel has been your crowning achievement in juvenile justice work, what you're most proud of?

Townsend: I have had the opportunity to do a lot of exciting work in juvenile justice systems in three different states. I have been very fortunate to work with dedicated, experienced, and creative people and accomplish some very significant reforms. One of the most exciting opportunities I had was to work in Clark County, Nev., which is a JDAI replication site. We were able to close a detention unit, establish alternatives to detention, start a Girls' Initiative, and begin a community effort to reduce racial disparities in our system. Additionally, while I was at Maricopa County, Arizona, I had the opportunity to work with the courts, the county and the community to start an investment in early intervention and prevention efforts in targeted communities. The first year of the prevention initiative, the county budget staff estimated that our results generated $6 million in cost avoidance for juvenile justice system costs.

JJ Today:  What do you think your biggest learning curve will be, the facet of your new job that is most unfamiliar to you right now?

Townsend: The biggest learning curve that I have is catching up on twelve years of change in the juvenile justice system in Texas. It is important for me to learn about TYC, the skills and knowledge of TYC employees, and the resources available within this agency. But, I also have to learn about what is taking place in all the counties, with private providers and with advocacy organizations. This learning curve is made steeper by the start of the legislative session in January 2009.

JJ Today:  You are well-regarded among JDAI people for your work in Clark County. Given that detention has been shown to increase likelihood of incarceration, will you push for Texas to undertake a larger replication of the initiative, which is currently in Dallas and Houston?

Townsend: My primary focus will be on the transformation of TYC and its role in the juvenile justice system. I am confident that during the 2009 legislative session there will be opportunities to discuss juvenile detention reform in Texas and will make legislators aware of the benefits I see in a larger replication of JDAI.

JJ Today:  The Texas legislature will begin a "Sunset" review of TYC's value in the upcoming year, a process in Texas that often approves programs/agencies for continuation but sometimes recommends closure. Have officials given you a sense that, considering TYC's past problems, there is a chance you are signing on to a commission that won't exist in the near future?

Townsend: There continues to be substantial support for the reform and improvement of TYC operations and outcomes. While there is discussion and differences of opinion about how this can best occur, I am staying focused on the reform of TYC.

JJ Today:  There is a daily website that rigorously covers TYC, Grits for Breakfast. Do you read it, any thoughts on it?

Townsend: I do read the posts on Grits for Breakfast. It is an interesting site that looks at a wide range of criminal justice issues. However, I don't read the anonymous comments because they are often personal and do not contribute to a real dialogue on the issues. I also regularly read a number of other websites that focus on juvenile justice, positive youth development, organizational change, criminal justice, leadership and character.

"You just witnessed a whole lot of pent-up energy."

That was how former OJJDP Administrator Shay Bilchik began his short address Thursday to wrap up a town hall meeting among leaders in juvenile justice, a panel of their colleagues, and Charles Ogletree, who figures to be a prominent part of president-elect Barack Obama's Department of Justice.

Bilchik couldn't have put it better. Although the event sponsor, the American Bar Association, had said the event would go on with representatives from whoever won the presidential election just two days earlier, Obama was the clear pick among reform-minded JJ people after eight years of witnessing, as Coalition for Juvenile Justice's Tara Andrews put it, "the decimation of OJJDP as we know it."

About 150 advocates packed a Georgetown Law School lecture hall to make quick presentations to or ask questions of a five-member panel: Washington Post writer Chris Jenkins, Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick Lynch, Pennsylvania State Sen. Stewart Greenleaf (R), Georgetown Law Professor Kristin Henning and juvenile Judge Jay Blitzman of Lowell, Mass. Presenters had already submitted ideas in writing to the panel, which were put together in a book that was distributed to attendees (and is available here).

It was a good plan, but too ambitious: 22 presentations were slated for the two hours. It was clear halfway through the meeting that we were on pace for a 10 p.m. finish between presenters going long or the panel dwelling on a particular subject.

So organizers started placing absurd constraints on presenters. Ned Loughran, executive director of the Council of Juvenile Correctional Administrators, flew in from Massachusetts to attend, and said he was asked to keep his presentation to 15 seconds. Everyone saved each other by grouping into like issues (i.e., all the girl offender advocates made one pitch), which is probably what should have happened from the outset.

Henning and Lynch provided some valuable insight from the panel, but it was the Jay Blitzman Show from question one. He must have started 90 percent of the panel responses, which was forgivable when you factored in his breadth of knowledge on the issues and his genuine excitement about JJ under Obama.

"I'm pumped, I am very pumped," Blitzman admitted with a smile when we asked him about his exuberance.

The Message

A few themes emerged from the meeting:

* Show Obama the [Saved] Money. By the second presentation, Ogletree had already heard three pleas for more funding at OJJDP. "The first thing I will tell him," Ogletree promised of a future conversation with Obama, "is we need more money."

He later tempered that promise with advice: "Cost savings will be the key to selling your program." That is probably the most important thing that was said during the session, a clear indication that the administration is open to using expected cost-savings down the road to rationalize spending on domestic programs today.

* Ogletree for OJJDP? The feeling by most people JJ Today has spoken with is that "Tree" is destined for a higher position than OJJDP administrator. But one audience member wondered if he might really want to focus on this stuff after watching him deftly control the meeting on Thursday.

Ogletree is clearly aware of the issues and is a key adviser and former teacher of Obama (at Harvard). That kind of direct access to the White House would be a big change for OJJDP. (Nobody suspects that President Bush and J. Robert Flores have regular dinner chats.)

* The Disproportionate Minority Contact requirement needs toughening. "It says ‘Address DMC ... but what does that mean?'" Judge Blitzman said of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act's core requirement on DMC.

The current situation is "shameful," said Ashley Nellis, a research analyst for The Sentencing Project. "In some states, [DMC] is worse than ever. It's completely unacceptable."

A starting point, Nellis said, would be to fill the DMC coordinator job at OJJDP, which has been vacant since March.

* After-care is essential. If there has been a facet of JJ left most unattended of late, Kristin Henning said, it is what juvenile justice systems do with kids coming back in from lockup. Obama can help address this, she says, by restoring OJJDP's block grants. Tim Briceland-Betts, co-director of Government Affairs at the Child Welfare League of America, later pointed out that the grants have dropped from a peak of $250 million annually to about $50 million.

* Make facility training mandatory, and pay for it. The Council of Juvenile Correctional Administrators worked with OJJDP in the mid-1990s to develop the Performance-based Standards program (PbS) to a