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John Kelly
John Kelly
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 Weekly Notes-Jan. 2

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.

 

Topics: Juvenile Justice
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 AMI, Other Alternatives to Lockup Hit Hard by State Budget Cuts

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.

 

Topics: Funding | Juvenile Justice
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