YJCEC
This collaboration, facilitated by the Yonkers Police Department, is developing and implementing a coordinated Juvenile Justice Strategy and Action Plan to reduce violent juvenile crime in Yonkers, New York.
Contents
UPCOMING EVENTS
NEXT MEETING
Date: Monday, June 16, 2008
Time: 12:00
Location: Yonkers Riverfront Library, (across from Yonkers train station)
Notes: Lunch provided. The meeting date was moved from May 12th to May 5th to avoid a conflict with the Nonprofit Leadership Conference.
Directions
Free parking is available.
FUTURE 2008 MEETING DATES
* July 14 * August 11 * September 8 * October 20 * November 10 * December 8
Any changes in meeting dates will be posted on this page.
OTHER NOTICES
Our application for $200,000 in NYS DCJS funding to implement our YJCEC strategy has been approved and fully funded!
We anticipate that the funding will be available by May, 2008.
Register for OJJDP's Youth Gang Symposium On June 23-26, 2008, OJJDP will hold its Youth Gang Symposium in Atlanta, Georgia. Addressing the theme “Partnering to Prevent Youth Gang Violence: From Faith- and Community-Based Organizations to Law Enforcement," the symposium will offer innovative gang-related strategies and the latest information on youth gang activities. Register by April 30, 2008, to receive a discount rate. (OJJDP)
RESOURCES
National Youth Violence Prevention Week Announced In recognition of National Youth Violence Prevention Week (March 31 to April 4, 2008), NCJRS has created a Youth Violence Special Feature. This special feature contains publications and resources concerning gun violence, violence in schools, youth gang activity, and the prevention of youth violence. Links to research and statistics related to youth violence are also included. (NCJRS) Below is the address:
http://www.ncjrs.gov/yviolence
Yonkers Juvenile Justice Strategy and Action Plan
- Overview of Yonkers' Juvenile Justice Strategy and Action Plan, final draft as released 4/8/08, 9 pages
- Main body of Yonkers' Juvenile Justice Strategy and Action Plan, final draft as released 4/8/08, 62 pages
- Appendices for Yonkers' Juvenile Justice Strategy and Action Plan, final draft as released 4/8/08, 137 pages
Evidence-Based Targeting
This material explains "Evidence-Based Targeting," a new concept developed in Yonkers that offers communities across America the opportunity to dramatically enhance their juvenile crime prevention efforts by targeting limited prevention resources to higher-risk groups where those efforts can have an exponentially greater impact on reducing juvenile crime.
This one-page handout outlines the significance of "evidence-based targeting" and how it can benefit communities, service providers, and funders.
This seven-page handout gives a more detailed overview of "evidence-based targeting" and includes sample forms that illustrate how service providers and funders could use Yonkers data to calculate an "estimated baseline" for their delinquency prevention programs.
Here are two charts (in Word format) that illustrate Evidence-Based Targeting. Unlike earlier visual representations that presented the data in tabular form, these charts now display the Pyramid as a pyramid. The first shows the % of kids in each group who get arrested within 3 years. The second shows the # of arrests over 3 years per 100 kids in each group. The second chart shows an even greater disparity as you move up the pyramid because a higher proportion of higher-risk kids get arrested and they get arrested more often.
Here are the same two charts in PowerPoint format.
This PowerPoint presentation gives a brief overview of Evidence-Based Targeting and shows how it helps you concentrate your efforts where they can have the greatest potential impact by focusing on specific groups at highest risk for juvenile crime.
The Center for Court Innovation published an weblog article on February 8, 2008 about the presentation on Evidence-Based Targeting Karl Bertrand made recently to a statewide conference sponsored by the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services. The article appeared in a Center for Court Innovation blog called "Changing the Court: A chronicle of how a group of planners and practitioners are attempting to change the Bronx court system's approach to low-level criminal offending." It was written by Claibourne Henry, Youth Development Coordinator. One of the article's conclusions is: "By targeting the right population, programs can conserve time, funding and avoid combing through the hundreds and thousands of other individuals who fall into a general target population, but aren’t necessarily at high risk of being arrested."
back to top of page
Chronic Truancy Prevention
Evidence-Based Interventions
This Report to Congress, funded by the National Institute of Justice, is a comprehensive review of decades of research on the effectiveness of every major crime reduction strategy supported by the U.S. Department of Justice. This resource is invaluable for anyone trying to allocate scarce prevention resources to interventions with the strongest evidence of effectiveness.
This 19-page "Research in Brief" from the National Institute of Justice summarizes the major conclusions of a comprehensive review of decades of evidence for the effectiveness of every major crime prevention strategy.
This study includes a table listing benefits, costs, and benefits per dollar of cost for 61 common evidence-based model programs.
The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's Model Programs Guide (MPG) is designed to assist practitioners and communities in implementing evidence-based prevention and intervention programs that can make a difference in the lives of children and communities. The MPG database of evidence-based programs covers the entire continuum of youth services from prevention through sanctions to reentry. The MPG can be used to assist juvenile justice practitioners, administrators, and researchers to enhance accountability, ensure public safety, and reduce recidivism. The MPG is an easy-to-use tool that offers a database of scientifically-proven programs that address a range of issues, including substance abuse, mental health, and education programs.
The Helping America's Youth (HAY) website provides a Community Guide to Helping America's Youth. It provides strategies and tools to help communities form effective partnerships, assess community needs, and identify evidence-based programs. You can search the database of evidence-based programs by risk factor, protective factor, or keyword. All of the programs featured in the HAY database have demonstrated results in accordance with widely accepted scientific criteria for program effectiveness. The following federal agencies worked together to identify programs for the HAY Program Tool: the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Labor, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Office for National Drug Control Policy, and the Corporation for National and Community Service.
This is one of the evidence-based models that will be replicated in Yonkers by the YJCEC. The Strengthening Families Program (SFP) is a nationally and internationally recognized parenting and family strengthening program for high-risk families. SFP is an evidence-based family skills training program found to significantly reduce problem behaviors, delinquency, and alcohol and drug abuse in children and to improve social competencies and school performance. Child maltreatment also decreases as parents strengthen bonds with their children and learn more effective parenting skills. SFP was developed and found effective on a National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) research grant in the early 1980s. More than 15 subsequent independent replications have found similar positive results with families in many different ethnic groups. Both culturally adapted versions and the core version of SFP have been found effective with African-American, Hispanic, Asian, Pacific Islander, and First Nations families. The original SFP for high-risk families with children ages 6 to 11 years (SFP6-11) was joined in the early 1990’s by a shorter 7-session version for low-risk families with pre- and early teens (SFP10-14). SFP6-11 has now been joined by 14-session versions for high-risk families with both younger children (SFP3-5) and early teens (SFP12-16).
Six juvenile offender programs identified by Institute as evidence-based are profiled through program descriptions, quality assurance information, and cost-benefit figures. By Elizabeth Drake, Washington State Institute for Public Policy, June 2007.
back to top of page
Disproportionate Minority Contact
Other Criminal Justice Information and Resources
NEW YORK - For the first time in U.S. history, more than one of every 100 adults is in jail or prison, according to a new report documenting America’s rank as the world’s No. 1 incarcerator. It urges states to curtail corrections spending by placing fewer low-risk offenders behind bars. Prison spending ballooned from $11 billion to $49 billion in 2 decades. “Getting tough on criminals has gotten tough on taxpayers,” said the project’s director, Adam Gelb. “For some groups, the incarceration numbers are especially startling,” the report said. “While one in 30 men between the ages of 20 and 34 is behind bars, for black males in that age group the figure is one in nine.”
Join Together is a project of the Boston University School of Public Health. Since 1991, Join Together has supported community-based efforts to advance effective alcohol and drug policy, prevention, and treatment. Join Together leads initiatives to help communities respond to the harms caused by excessive alcohol and drug use and provides free internet services supporting their efforts. The link above takes you to a site where you can sign up to receive any of the following free internet resources: Daily News Edition, Weekly News Roundup, the monthly Treatment Practitioner's Research Bulletin, or the Funding News Weekly.
The NCJRS site has links to a wide variety of publications, research, and grant information. Major categories include Corrections, Courts, Crime, Crime Prevention, Drugs, Justice System, Juvenile Justice, Law Enforcement, and Victims.
back to top of page
