OJJDP FY 09 Tribal Youth Program

Part of the Indian Country Law Enforcement Initiative, a joint initiative of DOJ and the U.S. Department of the Interior to improve law enforcement and the administration of criminal and juvenile justice in Indian country, OJJDP's Tribal Youth Program (TYP) supports and enhances tribal efforts to prevent and control delinquency and strengthen the juvenile justice system for American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) youth. This program is authorized by the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974, as amended and the Department of Justice Appropriations Act, 2009, Pub. L. 111-8.

Ho Chunk Nation is a Federally Recognized Tribe in Wisconsin with 6,917 members. Currently, services are provided by Child and Family Services to youth ages 9 to 17 and their families that are at risk of delinquency issues. Over the last year the Child and Family Services administration has been evaluating the juvenile justice program for improvement of the quality of services delivered. The proposed TYP grant would provide the opportunity for more effective services for Ho Chunk Nation youth and their families. The project seeks to improve the current juvenile justice program through enhancing the structure, a streamlined intake process, improved advocacy for the youth in the County systems, and direction for expanding the Ho-Chunk Nation's own juvenile justice system. The program's goal is to provide quality services to 150 youth over the time frame of the project.

The long-range goals of the project are to establish a Juvenile Code and a juvenile justice detention center. The juvenile justice detention center would house Ho-Chunk juvenile youth and other tribal youth. The short term goals of this project are 1) to increase the effectiveness of the existing juvenile justice program by increasing the capacity of the current service delivery system and 2) to increase the number of referrals by establishing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with specifically identified counties and the Ho-Chunk Nation Child & Family Services ' juvenile justice program. The tribe will establish a systematic data collection procedure and monitoring tools that will enable the program staff to track and record data for performance evaluation. CA/NCF