Illinois DMC Strategic Planning Project

The Disproportionate Minority Contact Community and Strategic Planning Project (DMC CASP) furthers DOJ's mission by providing competitive funding to states to develop effective strategies to facilitate state and local initiatives to reduce DMC throughout the juvenile justice system. This award to the State of Illinois will address a long-standing issue which has prevented the state from adequately addressing its DMC issues. For some time, reliable data about racial and ethnic disparities in the state's juvenile justice system has been lacking because Illinois lacks a uniform, statewide data collection system to track youth through the various juvenile justice system decision points. This deficit has been a significant barrier to understanding and addressing DMC statewide and the state's recently completed DMC Assessment found that the current statewide data collection infrastructure is insufficient to identify, understand and measure progress toward reducing DMC. Illinois also continues to struggle with a broad awareness and acknowledgement among system practitioners of DMC as a systemic issue. This project will enable the Illinois Juvenile Justice Commission (IJJC) to focus on improving DMC data collection and building consensus and community readiness around DMC reduction through local planning and governance structures (juvenile councils). The IJJC will implement the DMC CASP curriculum to build consensus and capacity around better DMC data collection and development of local, data-driven DMC reduction strategies. This project is the first phase the IJJC's long-term DMC reduction plan, and will help form a model for improved DMC data collection, consensus building, and strategic DMC reduction planning throughout the state. CA/NCF