Federal commitment offers welcomed support to local initiatives to promote racial and ethnic fairness
May 28, 2009, LaWanda Johnson
Acting Administrator of the OJJDP, Jeff Slowikowski, addresses DMC Action Network
As local Models for Change demonstration sites show how juvenile justice systems can be more just for all youth, federal officials are now pledging their leadership in reducing disproportionate minority contact within the juvenile justice system. At a recent meeting of the Models for Change DMC Action Network, Acting Administrator of the Office of Juvenile Delinquency and Prevention (OJJDP), Jeff Slowikowski, told the gathering that the Administration plans to build on local accomplishments to provide the national leadership necessary to ensure fairer juvenile justice systems.
The DMC Action Network, which was launched in 2007, is a peer network of local jurisdictions through which participants share strategies, best practices and expertise to advance their efforts to reduce the disproportionate contact of youth of color within the juvenile justice system.
OJJDP, which is part of the U.S Department of Justice and provides coordination and resources to reduce delinquency and victimization, will champion substantial changes to the Juvenile Justice Delinquency and Prevention Act (JJPDA), federal legislation which provides funding, assistance and oversight to improve state juvenile justice systems. Slowikowski says OJJDP is committed to making the reduction of racial and ethnic disparities in the juvenile justice system a top priority of the department as Congress moves forward to amend the JJDPA. If reauthorized, the new JJDPA provisions would expand the scope and accountability mechanisms of federal requirements to enable states and local jurisdictions to reduce DMC and strengthen juvenile justice systems reform more broadly.
“This will be the most significant change to the JJDPA in at least the last twenty years -- since DMC was made a core requirement,” said Slowikowski, who became the Acting Administrator at OJJDP in January 2009. “This is not just a tweaking of language to correct something that someone thought was wrong. This is a serious revisiting of juvenile justice.”
This year’s DMC Action Network meeting highlighted the importance of ongoing efforts to reduce DMC that have influenced the amended provisions of the JJDPA. Promoting racial and ethnic fairness is a core goal of the overall initiative, and the network is designed to expand the work of state and local jurisdictions to achieve sustainable reductions in disparities in their juvenile justice systems. Mark Soler, executive director of the Center for Children’s Law and Policy (CCLP), which organizes and coordinates the DMC Action Network, said the atmosphere is “hopeful.”
“The amendments [to JJDPA] should be added to the federal statute so that there can be more effective efforts in the states and so that the states can get guidance on how to reduce DMC,” said Soler. “We can’t have a general, vague approach. We need an approach that is specific and focused on the decision points where the disparities occur.”
Congress first amended the JJDPA to direct that states pay attention to the overrepresentation of youth of color in the juvenile justice system in 1988. It required states to show “specific efforts to reduce the proportion of the youth detained or confined in secure detention facilities, secure correctional facilities, jails and lockups who are members of minority groups if such proportion exceeds the proportion such groups represent in the general population.” Four years later, the issue of disproportionate minority confinement was again elevated, this time to a core requirement, and states risked losing 25 percent of the formula grant funding if they did not adequately address the issue.
Still, a decade later, Congress saw a need to broaden the scope. "Disproportionate minority confinement," which referred to the youth detained or held in secure facilities, was changed to "disproportionate minority contact" with the various access points of the juvenile justice system, including arrest. Slowikowski admits this language change still was not enough to promote broad-scale changes in practice.
Growing disparities and escalating reform efforts
Research shows that in the United States, youth of color are disproportionately represented in both juvenile and criminal justice systems. Despite comprising 41 percent of the general population under age 17, youth of color represent 69 percent of the youth in secure detention facilities. African American youth frequently receive harsher treatment than white youth charged with the same category of offense, beginning when a decision is made to arrest a child. Overall, the youth arrest rate has remained near a 25-year low, yet disparities between white and African American youth arrest rates are at the highest point in a decade. The arrest rate for white youth fell 9 percent from 2001 to 2006, yet increased by 7 percent for African American youth during this same period. In 2006, African American youth, who make up one-sixth of the U.S. youth population, comprised 43 percent of youth in detention centers nationwide.
“It’s not just one thing that will solve this problem,” said Slowikowski. “It will take a lot of different ways of looking at DMC and a lot of different ways of approaching it that will ultimately get us to the progress that we have been looking for over the last twenty years.”
States in the Action Network are committed to turning this tide, and have a track record of measurable success. Each participating state has made a commitment to use data to identify decision points where disparities arise, and to adopt specific interventions to address DMC. Action Network states have already succeeded in reducing DMC in some way, and the network is striving to strengthen and expand this work.
The Action Network provides a variety of benefits to participating states. The network offers a venue to exchange information and promising approaches, and share lessons learned from peers. DMC stakeholders have been able to identify targeted areas and address DMC in their jurisdictions like never before through the training, technical assistance, and the tools made available to them. These include DMC Performance Measures data and the W. Hayward Burns Institute (BI) Level One data instrument, which provides a snapshot of key decision-making points and assists jurisdictions in identifying which data should be collected and tracked on an ongoing basis. The Burns Institute is a leading national organization in the field of racial and ethnic disparity reductions.
“These [Models for Change] sites have been very intentional and deliberate in their approach to DMC reduction. You really have to work with people to change their decision-making,” says James Bell, executive director of the Burns Institute and creator of the Level One data template. “You have to guide [systems] because the issues are too hard to get at without guidance. If you can address DMC, you are making your systems better all around.”
Slowikowski said the work that Models for Change states are doing around DMC is setting the standard for the nation. He lauded the initiative for the “significant amount of training” the states have received around using data to drive decision making and instituting improved practices. He admits the challenge will come when trying to make “a great program into great policy.”
“Do we develop training and technical assistance to help other communities do the same?” Slowikowski pondered. “We take the model and what works and we share it. Models for Change is a good example of what works. They have good research behind what they are doing, so we will look at that type of research,” said Slowikowski. “I think it gives us a very good indication of what works around the DMC issue. And reauthorization is moving in that direction.”
Soler agreed, adding that OJJDP can provide leadership by serving as a clearing house for best practices in DMC reduction, helping to monitor the effectiveness of these types of activities around the country, and letting people know what jurisdictions are engaging in new promising practices.
“The next permanent administrator of OJJDP can take a real leadership role by talking about how important this is, by championing the new components of DMC reduction activities, and by providing training and technical assistance through OJJDP for people in the states and counties around the country,” said Soler. “They have the capacity to provide training and technical assistance on a very broad scale. What we need to do through the DMC Action Network is to let people know about the progress that we have made; OJJDP can then help get that information out.”
“We want to continue to hear from the field,” said Slowikowski, who says he intends to organize a series of listening sessions, including one in June on DMC. “There are different ways to be creative about how to address DMC, and we really want to encourage that type of thinking.”
“There are some significant changes that we hope will help protect the kids, particularly those who are in the system,” said Slowikowski.
Four Models for Change DMC success stories
Kansas policymaker leads the way by requiring the use of evidence based practices
One of the DMC states is Kansas, where collaborative efforts between the Director of the Sedgwick County Department of Corrections, Mark Masterson, and Representative Melody McCray-Miller (D-KS) of Wichita have led to measurable success. As a member of the Kansas House of Representatives, McCray-Miller led the fight to reform Kansas' juvenile justice system after she saw racial disparities in juvenile corrections of up to 42 percent.
“That was alarming to me,” said McCray-Miller. “I believed that if it was happening in Sedgwick, it was happening in other areas. So, I focused on putting together a piece of legislation to reduce DMC in the state.” In 2005, McCray-Miller led the efforts to pass SB47, which threatens the loss of funding from Kansas’ juvenile justice system for entities which are required to reduce racial, geographic and other biases by providing evidence-based best practices.
“What JJDPA does at a federal level, I applied at a state level,” said McCray-Miller. “I hard-wired the mandate for any entity applying for state funds to show their method for reducing racial bias. It has raised the level of awareness across the state.” Following the success of these efforts, Kansas became part of the DMC Action Network in 2005.
According to McCray-Miller, participation in the Network has brought significant benefits to Kansas.
“Being able to utilize the resources, the technical assistance, the ability to coalesce as a working group to know what everyone else is doing has improved our perspective and our momentum to continue this struggle to reduce or alleviate the disparities,” said McCray-Miller.
Jefferson Parish, Louisiana uses data to identify unnecessary entries to juvenile justice system
In Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, stakeholders identified several target offenses that consistently contributed to the disproportionate representation of youth of color in its juvenile detention population. Collection and analysis of BI Level One data during the first year of the Parish’s Network participation --from October 1, 2007-September 30, 2008--revealed that youth, primarily youth of color, were admitted frequently to detention on misdemeanor offenses such as disturbing the peace, contempt, misdemeanor battery, and misdemeanor theft.
“In the DMC Network, we stress data,” said Soler. “Data collection and analysis are critical to identifying interventions. When you do DMC reduction work, if you are not talking about data then you are not grounding the work in what’s happening in the real world.”
Site leaders in Jefferson Parish began focusing their DMC reduction efforts on preventing these youth from being referred to the system for such offenses in order to reduce the over-representation and unnecessary entry into the juvenile justice system by youth of color, particularly African American males.
In February 2008, Parish site leaders studied a sample of 367 cases to determine how many cases were referred as a result of juvenile arrests and other referral sources. The study found 33 percent were referred from the Jefferson Parish school system. As a result of that finding, site leaders conducted a second study of 325 school arrests over a five-month period. Data revealed that 57 percent were referred for disturbing the peace--64 percent of whom were African American youth. Data also revealed that three schools contributed the highest number of detention referrals for African Americans.
According to Soler, an analysis of such data is “the critical thing to do and should be done across the nation in order to identify real areas where work needs to be done.”
Jefferson Parish officials utilized these findings to target efforts on reducing referrals from schools for disturbing the peace offenses. They developed a school-based intervention to reduce the use of arrest as a response to student behavioral issues. The Jefferson Parish school system and Department of Juvenile Services entered into a formal agreement in September 2008 to implement Positive Behavior Support (PBS), which has proven effective in many states, to address disruptive school behavior. Between the first two quarters in Year 2 (October 1, 2008 through March 31, 2009), total referrals for disturbing the peace in the Parish decreased by 45 percent. Data also reveal that there were fewer arrests during normal school hours, with a reduction of 8 percent since October 2008.
Reducing the detention of youth of color in Berks County, Pennsylvania
Models for Change support also helped Berks County, Pennsylvania juvenile justice stakeholders and community leaders with their Racial and Ethnic Disparities Reduction Project to reduce the detention of youth of color in their county.
Since 2007, Berks has reduced its detention population by 45 percent, comparing the first quarter of 2009 with the first quarter of 2007, which has led to fewer Latino and African American youth being detained on any given day. By engaging in data collection and analysis, stakeholders were able to isolate key decision-making points that were leading to the disparities. By instituting the use of a Detention Assessment Instrument, a structured approach to detention decision making (and the first of its kind in Pennsylvania), stakeholders were able to ensure that initial detention decisions were objective, based upon the same criteria, and recorded in uniform ways.
Rock County, Wisconsin reduces Latino youth detention through use of alternatives
In the DMC network state of Wisconsin, Rock County is a leader in the use of data to drive decision-making in juvenile justice and DMC reduction. Its groundbreaking “Kid-Stat” process uses data to make management and resource decisions, helping stakeholders analyze and evaluate changes. Site staff members play a significant role in collaborating with the Center for Children’s Law and Policy, the Action Network’s coordinating agency, to demonstrate the full value of data when planning strategically for DMC reduction at system decision points and monitoring the impact of implemented strategies.
Stakeholders reduced admission of Latino youth by 36 percent and average daily population in detention by 28 percent by expanding the use of alternatives to detention for probation violators, as well as reducing detention use for low-level offenses such as truancy, running away, and disorderly conduct. The County also reduced its use of detention for these low level offenses for both African American and Hispanic youth, opting instead for community based interventions. In addition, the county reduced its transfer of African American youth to the adult criminal justice system by more than 75 percent.
Baltimore, Maryland: A national model for evening reporting centers
The work in Baltimore, Maryland has become a national model for evening reporting centers. The Pre-Adjudication Coordination & Transition (PACT) Center, which features intensive case management and re-entry planning, has seen unprecedented success.
In its first full year of operation, 100 percent of youth appeared for court, 95 percent did not re-offend while enrolled, 100 percent received an individualized service plan completed by the PACT Center staff by the time of their court appearance and 100 percent of youth enrolled in the program successfully completed it without a violation of the alternative program participation. The PACT Center had successfully served 178 referred youth by the end of 2008.
Click here for more information on the DMC Models for Change Action Network.
- Issues
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Racial-ethnic fairness/DMC
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Illinois
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DMC Action Network