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Juvenile
Justice Advocacy:
Back From the Doldrums
By
Bill Treanor
Promoting
best practice in the juvenile justice field has a long, twisted
history, with enough triumph and tragedy to concoct a soap
opera titled, "Desperate Advocates."
Prior to the passage of the federal legislation in 1974 that
set up the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
(OJJDP), the nation's lockups for teens had all the charm
of Abu Ghraib prison. By 1973, a broad national bipartisan
consensus had emerged that a thorough root-and-branch reform
was needed. Lead by such groups as the National Council of
Jewish Women, the YMCA and the National Council on Crime and
Delinquency, the 1974 law made progressive reform the law
of the land. It virtually mandated the removal of status offenders
from lockups and the development of a range of community alternatives.
That spawned the proliferation of the youth-serving community
based organizations that now dot the country.
Advocacy efforts to implement the law got off to a strong
start during the Ford and Carter administrations. They peaked
with a multi-million dollar "special emphasis" initiative,
championed by OJJDP Administrator Ira Schwartz, which funded
dozens of state-level, progressive policy-makers and service-provider
coalitions to push for more funding and better services for
troubled teens.
In 1981, Schwartz and his advocacy orientation were given
the heave-ho by the new Reagan administration.
Over the next quarter century, the parochial interests of
most national groups drifted towards obtaining congressional
earmarks from OJJDP and elsewhere in the federal budget, while
national-level policy advocacy withered.
Schwartz, meanwhile, had founded a peripatetic university-based
shop, now known as the Center for Research on Youth and Social
Policy (CRYSP) at the University of Pennsylvania. In the youth
service field, good intentions are about as useful as guidance
from a Chinese fortune cookie. But Schwartz's interest in
reviving statewide juvenile justice advocacy found a like-minded
partner in Laurie Garduque, program director for research
at Chicago's John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Beginning in 1996 - with a total of $200,000 in grants to
Penn's CRYSP, Northwestern University's School of Law, Temple
University and the Youth Law Center - the foundation began
investing in three areas of juvenile justice reform: focusing
on better services in Chicago, researching evidence-based
best practices and resuscitating state efforts to encourage
what the always diplomatic Garduque calls "a more balanced
approach."
Through the Research Network on Adolescent Development and
Juvenile Justice, chaired by Laurence Steinberg at Temple
University (where Schwartz, coincidentally, is now provost),
the foundation has invested $11.2 million in research and
policy advocacy. The astute MacArthur effort offers a best
practice case study in philanthropic grant making on the virtues
of longevity and focus, without being over-prescriptive. Schwartz
argued for an effort by MacArthur that would be "not
just for advocates" but would draw on more established
groups, such as the Boy Scouts, Boys & Girls Clubs and
others with a less direct stake in juvenile justice reform.
With funding from MacArthur beginning in 1998, Schwartz turned
to Tom McKenna, who had recently retired as executive director
of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America (BBBSA). McKenna is
much admired for his personal dedication to the youth service
field as a whole, not just that of his own employer. He set
up shop at Penn and began to laboriously organize what would
eventually become the National Network of Statewide Juvenile
Justice Advocates. At first, the goal was to strengthen groups
in Delaware, Florida, Michigan and Arizona. The early results
in building and/or strengthening statewide collaborations
were mixed. Florida proved especially difficult and was dropped,
while Pennsylvania was added.
The initial effort was modeled on a state-level version of
the National Collaboration for Youth, part of what is now
the National Human Services Assembly, in which McKenna had
been active during his 14-year tenure at BBBSA.
McKenna's work was evaluated by Penn Professor Burt Cohen.
Discovering the obvious, Cohen wrote in his 2003 report that
he had "one surprise . . . there was much less representation
of traditional youth-serving agencies (e.g., YMCA, Salvation
Army) than had originally been anticipated." Other funders
take note that the evaluation also found "that starting
an advocacy collaboration clearly requires some targeted resources,
but not an inordinate amount."
Building on earlier national work by the Youth Law Center's
Building Blocks for Youth Project, run by Liz Ryan, McKenna
tied together some of the most forceful and dedicated state-based
advocates. Experienced groups such as the Connecticut Juvenile
Justice Alliance, run by Ferdinand Muniz, the Indiana Juvenile
Justice Task Force, run by Bill Glick, and the Juvenile Justice
Project of Louisiana, run by David Utter, immediately raised
the sophistication of the entire network.
As the organizing work by McKenna, in collaboration with Katz's
National Assembly, progressed, MacArthur's Garduque could
not have been more pleased. The task of "reframing issues
in juvenile justice" was making steady progress. "Of
course," she notes, "it helps that juvenile crime
has fallen." McKenna's network has grown from five states
to 28 states in seven years.
McKenna and Garduque are keen to point out that other foundations
have played important roles - especially the Annie E. Casey
Foundation, where Bart Lebow directs juvenile justice work.
Also pitching in are two New York City foundations, the Open
Society Institute and the JEHT Foundation. Foundations with
a limited geographic focus have also helped, such as the Tow
Foundation in Connecticut and The California Wellness Foundation.
As the network grew, several key organizational development
issues needed resolution. Penn was from the start a temporary
Philadelphia home, and McKenna was a convening figure, not
a permanent staffer. Discussions of this nature can be agonizing
because of uncertainty about just who is going to pay for
a new home and staff. But with MacArthur funding all but certain,
two Washington, D.C.-based suitable suitors stepped forward.
One was Voices for America's Children (formerly the National
Association of Child Advocates), run by Tamara Copeland. The
other suitor was the Coalition for Juvenile Justice (CJJ).
The coalition is made up of chairs and other members of the
state Juvenile Justice Advisory groups set up under the Juvenile
Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act. Compared to Voices
(as the group is known), CJJ offered McKenna and company an
agency that was single-mindedly focused, for better or worse,
on juvenile justice. But it also has an executive director
in David Doi who is even more timid than Copeland.
The National Network of Statewide Juvenile Justice Advocates
gave the high sign to CJJ, wherein the network will maintain
a separate structure and hire a staff person.
In December, MacArthur came through with a $400,000 grant
over two years for CJJ and its new partner. Last year MacArthur
funded 27 groups to work on juvenile justice, a quarter of
them in Illinois. This year the foundation will spend $6.5
million on such efforts.
Since 1984, OJJDP has funded CJJ to provide training and technical
assistance and to make policy recommendations to the White
House and Congress. Those reports, while hardly influential,
were more than the Justice Department under anal-retentive
Attorney General John Ashcroft could abide.
Doi and CJJ faced a version of hanging judge syndrome in 2002,
when OJJDP administrators used the newly amended Anti-Lobbying
Act, and declared that no OJJDP grantee could also advise
and lobby the White House and Congress. OJJDP administrator
Robert Flores cut CJJ's funding from $669,375 in 2002 to $344,000
in 2003, and set up a duplicative (but equally independent-minded)
Federal Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee.
That cut of half its budget put CJJ into what could easily
have been a death spiral, eliminating the last even quasi-independent
group that keeps a close eye on national juvenile justice
policy and spending. But dismay about the performance of Flores
and antipathy toward deputy OJJDP Deputy Administrator Bill
Woodruff, combined with the Bush administration's relentless
budget cutbacks, sparked a rally by supporters to CJJ's cause.
In November 2003, the state advisory groups agreed to more
than double each state's dues to CJJ from $2,000 to $5,000.
Today, 41 states and territories (along with Washington, D.C.)
are CJJ dues payers, while the Annie E. Casey Foundation is
in its fourth year of a year-to-year $100,000 grant to CJJ.
Now those years of work by McKenna are bearing dividends for
CJJ.
Says Doi in a decidedly untimid fashion, "Our budgetary
health is very, very good." He cites the CJJ 2005 budget
projection of $970,000 as his exhibit A, up from this year's
$725,000.
"In 2002, 80 percent to 85 percent of our budget came
from the federal government," he says. "This year,
federal funding was 45 percent and we have more money. We're
doing well because of the support of our members and the broader
support of national JJ leaders like Mark Soler [Youth Law
Center], Patty Puritz [National Juvenile Defender Center,
part of the American Bar Association] and Shay Bilchik,"
president of the Child Welfare League of America.
Will the new partnership between CJJ and the National Network
of Statewide Juvenile Justice Advocates be just the tonic
the field needs? One veteran advocate involved with both groups
is Beth Arnovits, the executive director since 1979 of the
Michigan Council on Crime and Delinquency. She characterizes
the health of juvenile justice reform as "depressed."
For advocates, says Arnovits, "The problem continues
to be getting anyone who will fund" aggressive campaigns
in the states on behalf of teens in the juvenile justice system.
If there were more risk-taking philanthropies with staying
power - like MacArthur, Tow and the California Wellness Foundation
- the prognosis for ongoing reform would be excellent.
As for McKenna's wagon, now hitched to CJJ, the road ahead
is uncertain. For the sake of the over 104,413 juveniles in
residential placement (in 2001) and the over 2.26 million
arrested each year (in 2002), and for the paying-through-the-nose
taxpayer, success is vital.
Contact: CJJ (202) 467-0864, info@juvjustice.org; MacArthur
Foundation
(312) 726-8000, www.macfound.org.
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