Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/ojjdp/page/8/)
In the Good News Department it seems the Obama administration has come to the conclusion that cutting juvenile justice programs and making them competitive isn’t such a good idea after all. A few days ago, the administration announced it had altered it original proposal maintaining and adding certain crucial programs.
See the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention press release for more details.
The Second of a Three-Part Series by the Judge on the Subject of Trying Juveniles as Adults. I took the bench and asked if the parties were ready to proceed. “Yes, your Honor,” they all announced in unison. I looked up and saw a young man, 16 years old, trying hard to hold back his tears. His parents sitting to his left, his attorney to his right — his hands quivering.
In a 2008 study, the National Gang Center reported a 15 percent increase in cities, towns and rural areas that have experienced gang activity since 2002. For a breakdown of all the numbers, check out the video below.
Does the juvenile justice system really work? Reading comments from readers on news stories about youth in trouble, you'd think the juvenile justice sysem was a system designed to mollycoddle dangerous kids, turning them into super-predators. Nothing could be further from the truth. Among other reasons, we know this because of "Pathways to Desistance," a research study led by Edward P. Mulvey, Director of the Law and Psychiatry Program at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. (Dr. Mulvey and Carol Schubert contributed a post to us on their findings in April 2010.)
The "Pathways to Desistance" research study is a unique study of what works in the juvenile justice system.
The Obama administration’s FY 2012 budget proposes to significantly cut funding for the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) and make the remaining funds available to individual states through a competitive process. This proposal would eliminate OJJCP’s existing grants program, the only dedicated federal source to the states for juvenile justice system improvements. The National Coalition for Juvenile Justice and its partners has responded to this proposal with a letter to the president.
Internet Crimes Against Children Deconfliction System Program Grant offers assistance to organizations looking for financial help to thwart internet crimes against kids. The Internet Crimes Against Children Deconfliction Systems (ICAC) may be able to get help from OJJJDP through its grant program. This grant will award as much as $500,000 to help construct, maintain and house an Internet Crimes Against Children Data System (IDS). The grant's purpose is to assist law enforcement investigations with child exploitations, avoid conflict on data, and enhance the ability to share information among local, state and federal ICAC task forces. This grant is available to help enhance the ability of OJJDP to collect and aggregate information on child exploitation.
The U.S. House funding bill passed Friday would cut juvenile justice programs by $191 million. Some $91 million of that is in earmarked programs, but it doesn’t tell the Office of Justice Programs where to trim the remaining $100 million. "It’s weird that they left that out,” said Joe Vignati, the National Juvenile Justice Specialist on the Executive Board of the Coalition for Juvenile Justice. “If—and this is a big if — this becomes law, everybody will be clamoring and saying, ‘Cut this! Cut this!’”
HR 1, the Full Year Continuing Appropriations Act, now moves to the Senate where the bill is expected to change significantly.
The OJJDP released a report titled "Juveniles Who Commit Sex Offenses Against Minors." The following infographic is a breakdown of some of the statistics from the report. What can you glean from this data? Is this a problem that needs more attention? How should these crimes be handled?
More kids are joining gangs than ever before and reports of gang violence are on the rise. For the first time, gang activity has been reported in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, says a report by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Suburban areas saw the largest increase in gang activity at 22 percent followed closely by rural communities. Part of the problem, according to the report, is the lack of gang awareness among community leaders, parents, and school. The report, “Gang Prevention: An Overview of Research and Programs,” says that many kids join gangs for protection, respect, and money, among other reasons. Gang members exhibit common risk factors that include antisocial behavior, alcohol and drug abuse, and mental health problems. Almost all gang members were involved in previous delinquent acts. The report also describes prevention and intervention strategies for kids at various levels of gang participation. Kids at risk for joining gangs should be taught refusal skills while those already in gangs should join intervention programs.
Angelo Speziale may be the most infamous graduate of Scared Straight! As a scrawny 16-year-old, he appeared in the original Scared Straight! documentary filmed at New Jersey’s Rahway State Prison in 1978. Now he’s back--serving 25-to-life in Rahway for the 1982 rape and murder of a teenage girl who lived next door to him. Proponents of “Scared Straight” claim the program literally scares kids away from a life of crime. In a follow-up show called Scared Straight: 20 Years Later, Speziale echoed this, claiming the experience changed him. Apparently not enough. He was arrested for shoplifting in 2005 and a DNA sample linked him to the 30-year-old cold case murder for which he was convicted in 2010. A New Jersey law enforcement source confirms Angelo Speziale is the same person who appeared in both documentaries.