Penobscot Nation Teen Center

The Justice Department's grant-making components have created a streamlined approach for federally recognized Tribes, Tribal consortia, Alaska Native villages and corporations, as well as authorized tribal designees to apply for Fiscal Year (FY) 2011 funding opportunities. The Coordinated Tribal Assistance Solicitation (CTAS) serves as a single solicitation for existing tribal government-specific grant programs administered by the Office of Justice Programs (OJP), the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) and the Office on Violence Against Women (OVW). The CTAS solicitation is designed to assist tribes with addressing crime and public safety issues in a comprehensive manner. The CTAS grant-application process was inspired by and developed after consultation with tribal leaders, including sessions at the Justice Department's Tribal Nations Listening Session in 2009, and has been updated based on continued tribal consultations and listening sessions.

The goal of the proposed project is to apply the healing to wellness philosophy and approach to all cases that are referred to the Penobscot Tribal court. The population served is relatively small (2,381 total) but the level and type of adherence to traditional values and practices within that population is wide-ranging. The Court is occasionally called upon to hear cases involving members of other tribes in Maine whose culture may vary widely from the Penobscot. Currently, the Court exerts jurisdiction in all allowable juvenile and adult civil (including traffic) and criminal cases. The Court is developing a wide range of options and approaches to resolve cases and interpersonal conflicts. The Court has opted to incorporate many of the principles used in native-based systems, such as the healing to wellness approach. In many ways, the Penobscot Court incorporates the best approaches of both the native and non-native justice systems in order to best accommodate the population served. Another aspect of this project is to enhance the capacity of the Tribal Court and cooperating organizations to function as an integrated juvenile justice system. This part of the project has two objectives: 1) To strengthen the justice system by implementing new graduated sanctions and juvenile intake procedures; and 2) To prevent delinquency by focusing on ameliorating known risk factors and enhancing factors that contribute to resiliency, as well as to intervene in the lives of court-involved youth to prevent recidivism. CA/NCF