EATONTOWN
- The New Jersey Juvenile Justice Commission
(JJC) will host the New Jersey Juvenile
Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI)
All-Sites Conference on April 7
and 8 at the Sheraton Eatontown,
6 Industrial Way East, Eatontown. More than
400 people are registered to attend. On
April 7, beginning at 9 a.m., presentations
will be made by Attorney General Paula T.
Dow; JJC Executive Director Veleria
N. Lawson and Harry Cassidy, Assistant Director,
Family Division, Administrative Office of
the Courts. Bart Lubow, Director of Programs
for High-risk Youth at the Annie E. Casey
Foundation, will provide the keynote
address at 11:40 a.m. On Friday, April 8,
at 9 a.m., the JDAI Champion Awards
will be presented. Workshops and affinity
group meetings are closed to the press.
The
theme of this year’s conference, “Collaborative
Decision-Making: the Heart of JDAI,”
stresses the collaboration across levels
of government, agencies, and counties that
is necessary to make JDAI successful. The
conference provides an opportunity for New
Jersey JDAI members to share information
on their successes, obtain information on
national experiences in implementing JDAI,
and learn more about the JDAI core strategies
and philosophy. The faculty is made up of
local and state leaders involved in the
implementation of JDAI, as well as national
experts. Members of each County Council
on Juvenile Justice System Improvement,
as well as State Council members, will be
in attendance. The conference is made possible
through a grant from the Annie E. Casey
Foundation.
“A
child’s placement in the juvenile
justice system should not depend on whether
he or she comes from a suburb or one of
our urban centers. It should not depend
on whether the youth is a girl or a boy.
And, it should not depend on whether a young
person is white or is a minority. Through
JDAI, NJ has established a fair and consistent
approach to juvenile justice, while maintaining
public safety and saving the State, and
participating counties, millions of dollars,”
said Attorney General Paula Dow. “It
is a government initiative that can truly
prove it is working.”
In
April 2004, New Jersey was selected as an
official replication site for the Annie
E. Casey Foundation’s Juvenile Detention
Alternatives Initiative and awarded an annual
grant of $200,000 by the foundation. The
nationally recognized program was developed
in response to national trends reflecting
a drastic increase in the use of secure
detention for juveniles despite decreases
in juvenile arrests, and the resulting overcrowding
of youth detention centers nationwide. JDAI
works to reduce the number of low-level
youth unnecessarily or inappropriately held
in secure detention, while maintaining public
safety and ensuring that youth appear for
scheduled court dates. JDAI also works to
redirect resources toward successful reform
strategies, including alternative community
programs, and to improve the conditions
of confinement in detention facilities for
those youth who require this secure level
of supervision.
Juvenile
detention is a temporary placement for youths
accused of delinquent acts while awaiting
the final outcome of their cases in court.
The purpose of detention is to house youths
who, by virtue of their alleged offenses
or documented prior histories, pose a serious
public safety or flight risk. A primary
goal of JDAI is to make sure that secure
detention is in fact used only for this
purpose and to ensure that effective alternatives
are available for low-level youth who can
be safely supervised in the community while
awaiting their court disposition. The initiative
provides a framework of strategies that
help reduce the inappropriate use of secure
juvenile detention, while maintaining public
safety and court appearance rates.
The
JJC is the lead agency for JDAI in New Jersey,
providing the management and staffing infrastructure
integral to New Jersey’s success as
a JDAI site. The New Jersey Judiciary is
a critical partner in this work, and with
the JJC, has provided the leadership needed
to achieve the success that has brought
New Jersey national recognition as the first
“model state” for juvenile detention
reform.
“New
Jersey has been very proud to serve as the
model for the statewide implementation of
JDAI since 2008, allowing four states to
send delegations to New Jersey to learn
from our successes. The latest data demonstrates
that the unnecessary use of detention for
low-level offenders has been reduced by
more than 50 percent,” said Veleria
N. Lawson, Executive Director, Juvenile
Justice Commission. “This conference
is meant to draw all key leaders working
on the JDAI in New Jersey together to share
accomplishments and discuss further improvements.
As more counties join the effort, the successes
will only become more dramatic.”
New
Jersey is currently implementing JDAI in
15 counties (Atlantic, Bergen, Burlington,
Camden, Cumberland, Essex, Gloucester, Hudson,
Mercer, Monmouth, Ocean, Passaic, Somerset,
Union, and Warren). Of the 15 counties,
11 of them currently operate secure juvenile
detention centers.
Since
JDAI’s inception, juvenile arrests
have continued to decline, thus demonstrating
that JDAI is an effective public safety
strategy. In 2009, the most recent year
for which Uniform Crime Report data are
available, juvenile arrests were down in
all active JDAI sites, as compared to each
site’s pre-JDAI year. In total, they
represent a reduction of more than 20%.
JDAI
sites have made significant reductions in
admissions for low-level offenders. When
comparing the year prior to JDAI implementation
to 2010 in the twelve active JDAI sites,
the average daily population decreased by
more than 51 percent. On any day, there
were 381 fewer youth in secure detention,
with youth of color accounting for slightly
more than 90 percent of this drop. Collectively,
across the sites more than 5,000 fewer youth
were admitted to detention, a decrease of
almost 54 percent. Over the past year alone,
JDAI sites have reduced the total number
of juveniles admitted to detention for technical
violations of probation by 13.5 percent.
Across
the eleven sites reporting detention alternative
outcome data, 96% of youth completed their
alternative disposition without a new delinquency
charge.
As
the result of JDAI in New Jersey, excess
space created by significant population
reductions has allowed several counties
to close their detention centers and merge
their populations with other counties. Warren,
Gloucester, Passaic, Sussex, and Monmouth
Counties closed their juvenile detention
centers by the end of 2010 and entered into
agreements with other counties to house
their juveniles. These agreements resulted
in millions of dollars of cost savings for
the sending counties and substantial revenue
increases for the receiving counties of
Camden, Essex, Morris, and Middlesex.
More
information on New Jersey’s JDAI efforts
can be found at www.njjjc.com/publications.htm
.
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