Black girls: Young serious-looking black woman in striped gray hoodie with sleeves pushed up.

Black Girls Must be Included in D.C.’s Juvenile Justice Reform Efforts

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Black girls are arrested at a rate 30 times that of both white girls and boys. They are also most often pushed into the deepest end of the system — comprising 97 percent of girls newly committed to the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services — even though they pose no threat to public safety. Black girls’ high rates of justice involvement in D.C. is consistent with national research that black girls are the fastest-growing segment of the juvenile justice system.

DMC: Blonde woman in black outfit at podium gestures.

OJJDP Administrator’s Words on Racial Disparities Shock Us

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Standing before a room packed with youth, juvenile justice advocates, system practitioners, law enforcement officials and judges last week, Caren Harp, Administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), made an announcement: OJJDP would be “simplifying” the implementation and compliance of the core protections of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA).

DMC: Two young men in sweatshirts, smiling, pose with smiling blonde woman in black suit and woman in white jacket, black pants with red braids.

OJJDP’s New Definition of DMC Raises Many Questions for Harp at Conference

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By the time she was posing for pictures on the stage of a Hyatt Regency Washington ballroom just blocks from the Capitol with two teenagers with oversized black hoodies that had the words “We Are Not Gang Members” emblazoned on them, the Trump appointee to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention had done a lot of explaining.

OJJDP Is Simplifying Title II Work to Focus on DMC Reduction, Not Process

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The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) is taking a new approach to Title II (the portion of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act authorizing states to innovate efforts to improve juvenile justice systems and ensure the fair treatment of youth) that will facilitate better communication and increase trust between OJJDP and the states. This will give OJJDP more time to focus on compliance and programming assistance, and it will allow states to redirect resources toward reducing disproportionate minority contact (DMC), while at the same time maintaining public safety, holding youth accountable for their conduct and empowering them to live crime-free.