NCJ Number
190035
Date Published
2000
Length
202 pages
Annotation
Virginia's Three-Year Plan, 2000-2002, provides information about the services and functions provided under the Federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, including descriptions of the community and State resources involved in the delivery of services to juveniles and data on youth involved in the State's juvenile justice system.
Abstract
The first section of the plan provides an overview of the structure and function of Virginia's juvenile justice system, which is composed of three primary components: law enforcement, the courts, and rehabilitation services. The organization, functions, and responsibilities of each of these components are described in this section. The second section of the plan profiles the agencies involved in the community network of agencies. These encompass departments that deal with criminal justice services, mental health services, drug abuse services, education services, correctional education, health, and social services for juveniles. The third section supplies data pertinent to the State's juvenile population and population projections, arrests, intake, secure detention, and juvenile correctional centers. The fourth section presents the three-year plan, which focuses on the deinstitutionalization of juvenile status offenders; dealing with serious juvenile crime; the construction of new facilities; and community-based comprehensive planning, risk assessment, and funding of the continuum of graduated sanctions at the local level. Sex offenders are the fastest growing and most worrisome group of offenders within Virginia's juvenile justice system. Programming for sex offenders in confinement settings and in the continuum of community-based sanctions and services will be addressed in the plan. Further, the plan will address community-based approaches to minor and early offending by youth. A punitive approach that leads to crowded juvenile facilities will be replaced by a paradigm of balanced and restorative justice. The fifth section of the plan provides an overview of "specialty plans" that will address such issues as rural areas, gender equity, mental health and learning disability services, the deinstitutionalization of status offenders, the separation of juveniles from incarcerated adults, compliance monitoring, and reduction in the disproportionate representation of minority youth confined in secure facilities.