By Alvin W. Cohn, D.Crim.
President, Administration of Justice Services, Inc.

Juvenile Court Statistics

The National Center for Juvenile Justice has published Juvenile Court Statistics 2005. The report, developed with funding from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), describes delinquency cases between 1985 and 2005 and petitioned status offense cases between 1995 and 2005 handled by U.S. courts with juvenile jurisdiction. “Juvenile Court Statistics 2005” is available online, via OJJDP’s Statistical Briefing Book, at http://ojjdp.ncjrs.gov/ojstatbb/publications/StatBBAbstract.asp?BibID=246588.

New Publication: Implementing the Family Support Approach for Community Supervision

Family Justice and APPA, with support from the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), are pleased to announce a new publication, Implementing the Family Support Approach for Community Supervision. This publication provides community corrections agencies and practitioners with an overview of the Family Support Approach for Community Supervision and describes primary tools and techniques that can be utilized throughout the supervision process to help individuals under supervision identify and leverage support from their social networks to help them achieve their supervision goals. Access this publication online at http://www.appa-net.org/eweb/docs/APPA/pubs/IFSACS.pdf.

Funding Prevention Makes Economic Sense, Researchers Say

Every dollar invested in substance-abuse prevention yields $10 in savings, according to researchers from Iowa State University, who recently presented their findings to the United Nations. Researchers Richard Spoth, director of the Partnerships in Prevention Science Institute at Iowa State, and colleague Max Guyll told attendees at the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime/World Health Organization meeting in December that studies of PPSI’s Iowa Strengthening Families Program (ISFP) and Life Skills Training Program (LST) demonstrated significant cost benefits. The research estimated how many cases of drug use each intervention prevented, and then compared the cost of each successful intervention to the cost savings to the community. Spoth and Guyll said that ISFP yielded a $9.60 return for each $1 invested in preventing alcohol disorders, while LST has a $9.98 return on investment in terms of preventing methamphetamine use.

Juvenile Residential Facilities

OJJDP has published Juvenile Residential Facility Census, 2004: Selected Findings. Prepared by the National Center for Juvenile Justice, this bulletin is part of OJJDP’s National Report series. The bulletin provides data on facilities in which juvenile offenders are held, such as their size, structure, type, ownership, security arrangements, and the range of services they provide for youth in their care. In 2004, this biannual census focused on educational and physical health services. See Juvenile Residential Facility Census, 2004: Selected Findings at http://ojjdp.ncjrs.gov/publications/PubAbstract.asp?pubi=244623.

FACJJ Issues 2008 Annual Report

The Federal Advisory Committee on Juvenile Justice (FACJJ) has issued its 2008 Annual Report to the President and Congress. Established under the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (JJDP) Act, the role of FACJJ is to advise the President and Congress on matters related to juvenile justice and delinquency prevention, to advise the Administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention on the work of OJJDP, and to evaluate the progress and accomplishments of juvenile justice activities and projects. The report addresses significant issues facing our nation’s juvenile justice system. Primary among its concerns, FACJJ urges reauthorization of the JJDP Act. See http://www.facjj.org/annualreports.html.

Prisoner Data

Prisoners in 2007 (NCJ 224280, 12 pp.) presents data on prisoners under jurisdiction of federal or state correctional authorities on December 31, 2007, collected from the National Prisoner Statistics series. (BJS) To order a copy online, see http://www.ncjrs.gov/App/shoppingcart/ShopCart.aspx?item=NCJ

Victimization Rates

Criminal Victimization, 2007 (NCJ 224390, 12 pp.) presents estimates of rates and levels of personal and property victimization for 2007 and describes the substantial fluctuations in the survey measures of the crime rates from 2005 through 2007. (BJS) To order see http://www.ncjrs.gov/App/shoppingcart/ShopCart.aspx?item=NCJ2243908repro=0

Prisoner Reentry Collaborations

Reentry Partnerships: A Guide for States & Faith-Based and Community Organizations (NCJ 224916, 66 pp.) provides recommendations on how state government officials and community-based service providers can help individuals released from prisons and jails each year to successfully rejoin their communities and families. (BJA)

Reducing Drug Demand and Usage

Making the Drug Problem Smaller, 2001–2008 (NCJ 225184, 14 pp.) is an online publication that identifies ways to reduce drug demand and usage and increase prevention and education programs. This report includes topics such as raising awareness of drug risks, student drug testing, involving the community, and improving drug treatment strategies. (ONDCP)

Environmental Issues for Corrections

NIC has launched the Green Corrections blog to provide the corrections field with up-to-date information on developing and practicing environmentally friendly business practices. Green Corrections will increase environmental awareness in existing facilities and when planning and constructing new facilities, and will investigate green-collar job readiness programs and strategies. (NIC)

Juvenile Justice Issues

For the latest information on juvenile justice issues and resources, subscribe to OJJDP’s listserv JUVJUST and its online newsletter OJJDP News @ a Glance. (OJJDP)

Reentry Data

Probation and Parole in the United States, 2007—Statistical Tables (NCJ 224707, 10 pp.) provides state-level probation and parole supervision rates and entries and exits during the year. (BJS)

Updates Available on Justice Expenditures and Employment

Justice Expenditure and Employment Extracts includes national and state-by-state estimates of government expenditures and employment for the following justice categories: police protection, all judicial (including prosecution, courts, and public defense), and corrections. (BJS)

OJJDP has published Characteristics of Juvenile Suicide in Confinement. This bulletin draws on data from the first national survey of suicides of youth in confinement, which was sponsored by OJJDP, to review juvenile suicides that occurred in confinement between 1995 and 1999. It describes the demographic characteristics and social history of the victims and examines the characteristics of the facilities in which the suicides occurred. A more comprehensive account of the survey and its findings may be found in the online report Juvenile Suicide in Confinement: A National Survey. See Characteristics of Juvenile Suicide in Confinement (NCJ 214434), available at http://www.ojjdp.ncjrs.gov/publications/PubAbstract.asp?pubi=235973. Print copies may be ordered at http://www.ncjrs.gov/app/publications/alphaList.aspx. For quick access, search by document number. To access the online report, see http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/213691.pdf.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has published the report Lives Saved in 2007 by Restraint Use and Minimum Age Drinking Laws. According to the report, 21-year-old minimum age drinking age laws have prevented an estimated 4,441 drunken driving deaths in the last five years alone. The data provided in the report have been produced by NHTSA’s National Center for Statistics and Analysis since 1975. See http://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/DOT/NHTSA/NCSA/Content/RNotes/2008/81104df.

New Anti-Drug Ads Available

ONDCP has launched three new National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign ads: “Achievements” and “Shadow” (television ads) and “Stoner Simulation” (a radio ad). These radio and television ads are available as free public service announcements to support antidrug efforts in local communities. (ONDCP)

Stay Informed With NCJRS Through RSS

NCJRS now offers Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed, an easy way to keep up with news and information from NCJRS and its sponsoring agencies. Receive notices of NCJRS home page updates directly in your selected RSS reader or feed the content into your Web site. Notices will include announcements, publications, upcoming events, and more. (NCJRS)

Report Provides Insight Into Mental Health Courts

Mental Health Courts: A Primer for Policymakers and Practitioners (NCJ 224316, 34 pp.) provides a comprehensive overview and history of mental health courts. The report describes the goals and processes of mental health courts, explains how they differ from drug courts, provides research findings about their effectiveness, and includes resources for jurisdictions interested in starting a program. (BJA)

Toolkit Offers Guidance on Court Performance Measures

OJJDP’s five-volume “Toolkit for Court Performance Measures in Child Abuse and Neglect Cases” provides guidance on undertaking performance measurement, improving child and family outcomes, and advancing more efficient and effective dependency court operations. (OJJDP)

Resilient Girls—Factors That Protect Against Delinquency (NCJ 220124, 16 pp.) describes how four factors (the presence of a caring adult, school connectedness, school success, and religiosity) influence girls’ propensity for delinquent behavior. (OJJDP)

Report Examines Juvenile Court Data

Juvenile Court Statistics 2005 (NCJ 224619, 152 pp.) describes delinquency cases between 1985 and 2005 and petitioned status offense cases between 1995 and 2005 that were handled by U.S. courts with juvenile jurisdiction. (OJJDP)

The Interstate Compact for Juveniles

The job of state agencies and local jurisdictions that are responsible for the care and monitoring of juveniles is about to get a little easier, thanks to the recent passage of a law that coordinates the monitoring of juveniles across state lines. The Interstate Compact for Juveniles, which updates a 1955 law, is an agreement among states that establishes guidelines for the tracking and monitoring of juveniles who move across state borders. The Council of State Governments (CSG), in cooperation with OJJDP, is currently supervising the introduction of the new Compact. CSG wrote the Compact in 2001 and has been coordinating with states for its adoption since that time. The Compact required approval by 35 states, and was recently ratified when the State of Illinois approved the law.

Under the previous 53-year-old law, states established individual agreements with other states on a case-by-case basis, typically only with neighboring states. As society has become more mobile, the need for standing agreements with states across the country has increased. The Compact will provide for enhanced accountability, enforcement, visibility, and communication on juvenile cases. Thousands of juveniles, delinquents, and status offenders on probation or parole disappear from the system each year as they escape or run away from states where they were originally sentenced. The new Compact will ease the process of tracking and transferring cases.

New Publications

All OJJDP publications may be viewed and downloaded at the publications section of the OJJDP Web site. Print publications also may be ordered online at the National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) Web site.

Juvenile Arrests 2006
In 2006, juvenile arrest rates for violent crimes such as murder, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault increased 4 percent over 2005 rates, and juveniles accounted for 17 percent of all violent crime arrests in 2006. This annual Bulletin highlights statistics and trends for juvenile arrests in 2006 compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program, which gathers crime and arrest statistics from local law enforcement agencies across the country. Other highlights of the Bulletin’s findings include analysis of juvenile murder victims, total number of juveniles arrested in 2006, and a percentage analysis of juvenile involvement in violent crime by offense. To order a printed copy of Juvenile Arrests 2006, go to the NCJRS Web site and search “NCJ 221338.”

Girls Study Group: Charting the Way to Delinquency Prevention for Girls
This Bulletin provides an overview of the Girls Study Group (GSG), a research project convened by OJJDP to determine why arrest rates for girls increased more (or decreased less) than arrests of boys for most types of offenses. OJJDP will release a series of GSG Bulletins examining issues such as patterns of offending among adolescents and how they differ for girls and boys; risk and protective factors associated with delinquency, including gender differences; and the causes and correlates of girls’ delinquency. To order a printed copy of Charting the Way to Delinquency Prevention for Girls, go to the NCJRS Web site and search “NCJ 223434.” Another Bulletin in the series, Violence by Teenage Girls: Trends and Context, was released in May 2008 and is available online; the remaining Bulletins will be released in the coming months.

Introduction to the Survey of Youth in Residential Placement
The Survey of Youth in Residential Placement (SYRP) gathers information directly from youth in custody in the juvenile justice system through anonymous interviews. SYRP complements the two other components of OJJDP’s multitiered effort to collect information on the juvenile custody population, the Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement, and the Juvenile Residential Facility Census all providing detailed information on the juveniles’ characteristics, backgrounds, and expectations; their needs and the services they received; and their experiences of victimization while in placement. This Bulletin, the first in the series, reviews SYRP’s background, describes its design and methodology, discusses its strengths and limitations, and summarizes the questions it answers about the population of youth in custody.

Domestic Assaults by Juvenile Offenders
In one of every four assaults that youth commit, the victims are individuals with whom the offender has a domestic relationship, either through family ties or an intimate partnership. This Bulletin offers a detailed report on the characteristics of juvenile domestic assaults reported to law enforcement. It analyzes data from the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System to provide a profile of the relative occurrence of domestic assaults in 2004 involving juveniles and adults as perpetrators and victims.

Co-occurrence of Substance Use Behaviors in Youth
This Bulletin examines the prevalence and overlap of substance-related behaviors among youth, making comparisons based on age group, gender, and race/ethnicity. Findings reported in this Bulletin are drawn from the first two stages of the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, which gathered self-reports from a nationally representative sample of youth ages 12–17 in 1997 and 1998. The data are derived from questions survey participants answered regarding their alcohol and drug use during the previous 30 days, including the frequency of their consumption, the types of drugs used, and whether they had sold drugs. The central finding of the analysis is that, if individuals engage in one substancerelated behavior, they are much more likely to engage in other substance-related behaviors.

Co-occurrence of Substance-Related Behaviors
OJJDP has published Co-occurrence of Substance Use Behaviors in Youth. The bulletin draws on data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth to analyze the prevalence and overlap of substance-related behaviors among youth. The central finding of this analysis is that given one substance-related behavior, other substance-related behaviors become more likely. Co-occurrence of Substance Use Behaviors in Youth is available (online only) at http://www.ojjdp.ncjrs.gov/publications/PubAbstract.asp?pubi=241031.

Future of Children

The fall 2008 issue of The Future of Children, published by Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs and the Brookings Institute, draws on research initiated or funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) to address the theme “juvenile justice.” Topics addressed include:

• disproportionate minority contact
• female offenders
• mental disorders
• substance abuse.

An executive summary and related policy brief, Keeping Adolescents Out of Prison, are also available online. See the Juvenile Justice issue of The Future of Children and the related resources referenced above are available at http://www.futureofchildren.org/pubs-info2825/pubs-info_show.htm?doc_id=708717.

Justice Department Study Dispels Myths About Girls’ Delinquency

OJJDP released a research bulletin, Charting the Way to Delinquency Prevention for Girls, which reports that despite the rise in female juvenile crime, violence among female youth has not increased. Following a sharp increase in arrests among female juveniles in the 1990s, OJJDP convened the Girls Study Group (GSG) to gain a better understanding of girls’ delinquency and guide policy toward female juvenile offenders. While the majority of delinquent offenders are boys, little research exists on female juvenile delinquency. This first bulletin, part of a forthcoming series, summarizes findings from a comprehensive research project into girls’ delinquent behavior. Key findings of the OJJDP-sponsored Girls Study Group include the following:

1. Girls are not more violent now than in previous years. One of the factors discussed in the bulletin is the unintended impact of relatively new mandatory or pro-arrest policies put in place to protect victims of domestic violence.
2. Girls and boys experience many of the same delinquency factors and, while some risk factors are more gender-sensitive, focusing on general risk and protective factors for all youth is effective.
3. Developing and using appropriate riskassessment tools for youth of both genders is crucial to ensuring the best response.
4. A concerted effort is needed to address the lack of evidence-based programs for the juvenile justice field overall, as well as the lack of programming for girls specifically.

Over the next several months, a series of bulletins will be released highlighting the Girls Study Group findings, each one focusing on specific questions from the study group’s research. The questions answered by the bulletins will include:

1. What factors protect girls from delinquency?
2. What factors put girls at risk for delinquency?
3. What pathways lead to girls’ delinquency?
4. How should the juvenile justice system respond to girls’ delinquency?
5. Which girls become delinquent?

For more information on OJJDP’s programs for delinquent girls, see http://ojjdp.ncjrs.gov/programs/girlsdelinquency.html

Children’s Advocacy Centers

Evaluating Children’s Advocacy Centers’ Response to Child Sexual Abuse (NCJ 218530, 12 pp.) describes the findings of a study by researchers at the University of New Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center that evaluated the effectiveness of the centers’ response to child sexual abuse. (OJJDP)

Sexually Assaulted Children

Sexually Assaulted Children: National Estimates and Characteristics (NCJ 214383, 12 pp.) provides information on the estimated number and characteristics of children who were sexually assaulted in the United States in 1999. The bulletin is the seventh in OJJDP’s National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrownaway Children (NISMART) series. (OJJDP)

Drug-Testing Newsletter

Strategies for Success: new pathways to drug abuse prevention (NCJ 223702, 11 pp.) provides up-to-date information on random student drug testing (RSDT), a promising approach to helping children avoid using dangerous drugs. This issue examines statistics on schools that use RSDT; provides facts about methamphetamine, ecstasy, and prescription drug abuse; and offers tips for schools that are considering starting their own RSDT program. (ONDCP)

 

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