NCJ Number
188055
Journal
Police Chief Volume: 68 Issue: 3 Dated: March 2001 Pages: 47,50-51,52
Editor(s)
Charles E. Higginbotham
Date Published
March 2001
Length
4 pages
Annotation
This article discusses the recent partnership formed between the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention to facilitate community level assistance to juveniles by reviewing and understanding past juvenile justice policies.
Abstract
The employment of community-based, multi-agency strategies featuring prevention, early intervention, and graduated sanctions is seen as the frontier to successful solutions in juvenile justice. In this article, the continued implementation of these strategies brought the recent partnership of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) closer to its goal of creating an optimal balance between the need to protect juveniles from the harm that drives criminal behavior with the mandate to protect citizens from chronic or violent juvenile offenders. This article identified and considered past juvenile justice policy in order to better understand the pragmatic solutions sponsored by the IACP and OJJDP today. Juvenile justice practices have fluctuated over time with changing public sensitivity during different periods of juvenile justice reform. The article discusses four periods of reform: the Refuge Period (1824-1899); the Juvenile Court Period (1899-1960); the Juvenile Rights Period (1960-1980; and the Crime Control Period (1980 to the present). Today, rather than a one-dimensional response, OJJDP encourages an effective delivery of prevention services from a wide array of community agencies. The IACP and OJJDP jointly support coordinated community level multi-agency prevention and graduated sanctions strategies that strengthen the family and core social institutions (i.e. schools, churches), immediate intervention, a system of graduated sanctions that hold juveniles accountable, and the identification and control of serious, violent, and chronic juvenile offenders. With OJJDP funds, the IACP has created the following training products and technical assistance initiatives to assist community efforts around the core juvenile justice themes: (1) The Chief Executive Officer Forum; (2) Managing Juvenile Operations; (3) School Administrators for Effective Policing, Prosecution, and Probation Leading to Improved Children and Youth Services; (4) Serious Habitual Offender Comprehensive Action Program (SHOCAP); (5) Tribal Law Enforcement, Juvenile Crime, and Victimization Training and Technical Assistance; (6) Youth Gangs, Guns, and Drug Policy; (7) Youth Oriented Community Policing; and (8) Promising Practices to Minimize Juvenile Crime and Delinquency. This IACP-OJJDP partnership has resulted in the police profession becoming a large part of the developing frontier of juvenile justice.