Tribal Juvenile Accountability Program

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) 2013 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 Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) provides awards under CTAS Purpose Area 8--Tribal Juvenile Accountability Discretionary Grants (TJADG) Program to federally recognized tribes to develop and implement programs that hold tribal youth accountable for delinquent behavior and strengthen tribal juvenile justice systems as authorized by 42 U.S.C. Section 3796ee-1. Under the TJADG program there are eighteen (18) distinct purpose areas. Applicants seeking a TJADG award must select one or more TJADG purpose areas as a goal and/or focus for the proposed project design.

The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs (CTWS) reservation is located within the 509J School District, a district covering most of neighboring Jefferson County. CTWS tribal youth attend three District schools which make-up 35% of all youth. The middle and high schools are located 15 miles away in Madras, a neighboring town with a much higher standard of living. Key problems for CTWS are: 1) school truancy (absenteeism), a significant factor contributing to school dropout and, 2) escalating juvenile crime on the Reservation. CTWS will hire a much needed Juvenile Officer (Truancy Officer) and an Assistant Juvenile Prosecutor and seek to develop and implement programs that increase accountability for delinquent Tribal youth and strengthen Tribal juvenile justice systems with the following objectives and goals: decrease school truancy by 58%; increase high school graduation rates by 40%; decrease incidence of juvenile crime by 25%; and decrease number of juvenile cases in Tribal Court by 25%. Data will collected that includes the number of truant students, number of referrals to social services, length of time it takes the Juvenile Officer to contact absent/or truant students, courses of action addressing problems, and graduation rates. Juvenile crime data includes number of arrest, type of crimes, hearings, number referred to Tribal Court, number of convictions, and number of diversion cases. This data will be analyzed by the tribe's external evaluator NPC Research, Inc., a professional research and evaluation firm in Portland, Oregon. CA/NCF