Chapter 4
Enhancing Public Safety and Law Enforcement

Just as it is important for communities to strive to prevent and intervene in juvenile delinquency, it is equally important for the juvenile justice system to protect the public and hold offenders accountable. Juvenile arrests for violent crime increased through the mid-1980s and early 1990s, peaked in 1994, and then maintained a steady decline through 2001 (the latest year for which arrest data are available). Although encouraged by recent trends, OJJDP remained committed during FY 2002 to helping law enforcement enhance its response to juvenile crime.

At the core of this commitment are several training and technical assistance initiatives. One of these initiatives helps schools, law enforcement, communities, and juvenile justice agencies implement School Resource Officer programs, which enhance school safety. Another helps state, local, and tribal law enforcement professionals address juvenile victimization, delinquency, and crime from a holistic perspective.

Combating underage drinking also continued to be an OJJDP priority. The Office's multipronged approach to this serious issue included block and discretionary grants, training and technical assistance, and a national evaluation. Together, these activities are helping communities increase law enforcement responsiveness to the illegal sale of alcohol to minors and educate adults and youth about the consequences of underage drinking.

Serious, violent juvenile offenders remain a concern to the nation and OJJDP. Recognizing the importance of reducing recidivism among these offenders, OJJDP is participating in a major OJP reentry initiative. Through this program, OJJDP is working to ensure that serious, violent juvenile offenders who have been released from correctional facilities can successfully reenter their communities and become productive, law-abiding citizens.

The programs described in this chapter represent the types of activities OJJDP believes have the greatest potential for enhancing public safety and strengthening law enforcement. OJJDP hopes that these and similar programs can help ensure that the juvenile justice system, while welcoming the continuing decline in juvenile crime, remains vigilant in sustaining the progress that has been made.

Comprehensive School Safety Leadership Initiative

OJJDP developed the Comprehensive School Safety Leadership Initiative in FY 2000 to help communities focus leadership and resources on issues related to creating and maintaining safe school environments. The initiative, which was developed in collaboration with OJJDP grantees Fox Valley Technical College of Appleton, WI, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, is supported by funds transferred from OJP's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.

The Comprehensive School Safety Leadership Initiative provides training and technical assistance to help schools, law enforcement personnel, communities, and juvenile justice agencies take a leadership role in implementing and sustaining effective School Resource Officer (SRO) programs. The activities are designed to build organizational capacity and competency at all levels, from the individual SRO through the chief executive, and to help create sound policy and procedures. The program consists of the following main education components:

• The Chief Executive Officer Safe School Forum, designed for superintendents, police chiefs, probation officers, social services administrators, and chief prosecutors, discusses critical roles and responsibilities, information sharing, and policy issues related to school safety and juvenile justice.
  
  
• The School Resource Officer Leadership Program focuses on standards of excellence and best practices and is designed for police officers designated as SROs, their supervisors, school district and university police officers, and other school staff.
  
  
• The Safe Schools Interagency Team Planning Program brings together chief executives of schools and community, social services, and juvenile justice organizations to discuss information sharing, cooperation, and coordination efforts.

The initiative includes a series of supplementary training activities designed to ensure that SROs have the skills they need to protect children and address school crime, victimization, and safety issues. The initiative also offers technical assistance to help teams and participants who have completed the above training sustain and support the programs they have developed.

The Comprehensive School Safety Leadership Initiative has provided training and technical assistance to thousands of SROs and law enforcement, school, and juvenile justice professionals in all 50 states. The initiative is having an impact. For example, many school districts and communities have developed new programs and policies following the Safe Schools Interagency Team Planning Program seminars. Galveston, TX, hosted a truancy summit to focus greater attention on the problem of chronic truancy. As a result, the school board, law enforcement, and various community agencies signed a memorandum of understanding to implement a comprehensive communitywide truancy reduction plan. A school district in South Carolina revised its school safety and crisis plans, developed an emergency response CD–ROM, and prepared a districtwide emergency management guide available in print and on CD–ROM.

Enforcing the Underage Drinking Laws Program

Congress has appropriated $25 million each year since 1998 to support the Enforcing the Underage Drinking Laws (EUDL) Program. The objectives of the program are to establish statewide task forces of state and local law enforcement and prosecutorial agencies, develop public advertising campaigns, and support innovative programs aimed at reducing underage drinking. Administered by OJJDP, the program awards block and discretionary grants to states and provides training and technical assistance. In addition, OJJDP is funding a national evaluation of the program.

The accomplishments of the EUDL Program have exceeded expectations. With the help of the funding and leadership provided by OJJDP, states have made measurable progress in reducing both the availability of alcoholic beverages to minors and the consumption of alcoholic beverages by minors.

During FY 2002, OJJDP awarded block grants of $360,000 to every state and the District of Columbia. The funds are administered by a lead state agency—in most cases a criminal justice/law enforcement agency. Although EUDL funding supports a wide range of activities, most states focus on enforcement activities. These states report a strong emphasis on compliance checks of retail alcohol outlets to reduce sales to minors. Other enforcement activities include crackdowns on false identification, programs to reduce the provision of alcohol to minors by older youth or by adults, "party patrols" to prevent access to alcohol at large youth gatherings, "cops in shops" programs to deter attempts by minors to purchase alcohol, and youth-focused campaigns to enforce impaired driving laws. Many states also report implementing or strengthening laws and policies that can reduce underage drinking, such as establishing keg registration ordinances to deter the purchase of beer kegs for underage use.

EUDL funding also has helped states promote community awareness of underage drinking, encourage changes in norms regarding underage drinking, and develop organizational structures and relationships to support coordinated efforts.

Whereas EUDL block grants are intended to enhance state-level responses to underage drinking, EUDL discretionary grants are designed to address the problem through state-local partnerships. Since 1998, OJJDP has competitively awarded discretionary grants to a total of 26 states to implement the EUDL Program at the local level. These states, in turn, have provided subgrants to more than 200 local communities to implement a variety of programs in concert with state agencies. In FY 2002, OJJDP selected five states—Maine, Nebraska, Nevada, South Carolina, and Washington—to receive discretionary EUDL grants, which ranged from $366,246 to $400,000.

In general, local EUDL programs are making progress in several areas: increasing law enforcement capacity to enforce underage drinking laws, engaging and training youth to be leaders in combating underage drinking, increasing prevention and public awareness efforts, and tackling the challenging issues of alcohol consumption on college campuses.

Since 1998, OJJDP has supported intensive training and technical assistance services provided through the Underage Drinking Enforcement Training Center (UDETC), which is managed by the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE) of Calverton, MD. Selection of topics and activities for training and technical assistance has been guided by UDETC's needs assessments and by findings from the national evaluation of the EUDL Program.

UDETC had a number of accomplishments during FY 2002. The center's third Annual Leadership Conference, held September 19–22, 2002, in Dallas, TX, drew almost 900 participants, considerably more than the attendance (249) at the first conference in 1999.⁵ The 2002 conference included a series of workshops that focused on Indian country issues.

The center distributed nearly 95,000 documents, including the revised Drinking in America: Myths, Realities, and Prevention Policy, which was updated to reflect newly available data from the 1999 National Household Survey on Drug Use. The center also began work on a new publication, Indian Country Law Enforcement and the Challenges of Enforcing Under- age Drinking Laws. This document will be available in 2003.

UDETC trained more than 7,500 individuals through 122 training events held in 34 states and territories. In addition, the training curriculum was expanded to include youth, media advocacy, advanced law enforcement and policy trainings, and specialized training for American Indians.

The center coordinates a series of OJJDP audio teleconferences about underage drinking. During FY 2002, the series attracted 3,430 connections, many of which had more than one person listening. In addition to the regular audio teleconferences, the center offered four calls that specifically addressed issues confronting tribal communities. These calls attracted more than 200 connections. A similar series is being offered in 2003.

UDETC maintains a Web site (www.udetc.org), which recorded 638,065 visits during 2002—more than twice the number received in 2001. The Web site includes a section titled "Success Stories," which highlights examples of state activities. During FY 2002, the center developed 15 new success stories and added them to the site.

To help bring diverse perspectives and expertise to training and technical assistance activities, PIRE and OJJDP have enlisted a number of organizations as partners in UDETC. Major partners include American Indian Development Associates of Albuquerque, NM; Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) of Dallas, TX; the National Crime Prevention Council of Washington, DC; the National Judicial College of Reno, NV; the National Liquor Law Enforcement Association of Raleigh, NC; and the Police Executive Research Forum of Washington, DC.

OJJDP is funding a national evaluation of the EUDL Program, conducted by researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, NC. The study has two major goals: to determine how states and communities are using EUDL Program funds and to evaluate the impact of the program in a sample of communities. Preliminary findings from the evaluation are discussed in OJJDP Annual Report 2001. OJJDP expects final findings in 2005.

Law Enforcement Training and Technical Assistance Program

OJJDP's Law Enforcement Training and Technical Assistance Program offers training and specialized assistance to state, local, and tribal law enforcement professionals. The training is provided by the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) of Alexandria, VA. This program addresses juvenile victimization, delinquency, and crime from a holistic perspective. Curriculum development, training implementation, and technical assistance activities have been designed to strengthen existing multiagency teams and facilitate the creation of new partnerships.

Using methods that are consistent with effective police practices, the program addresses core issues related to youth violence. It gives leaders throughout the juvenile justice system—including law enforcement, prosecution, the courts, corrections, and probation—strategic information, materials, and training and technical assistance intended to solve managerial problems that hinder implementation of effective strategies for preventing youth crime. Issues addressed include school violence and safety; youth-oriented community policing; gang and drug involvement; serious, violent, and habitual juvenile offenders; multidisciplinary youth violence strategies; police management of youthful offenders; and juvenile justice partnerships with tribal law enforcement agencies.

During FY 2002, nearly 1,400 individuals attended 21 workshops conducted by IACP on 5 topics: Building Juvenile Justice Partnerships With Tribal Law Enforcement Agencies, Managing Juvenile Operations, Partnerships for Safe Schools, Serious Habitual Offender Comprehensive Action Program, and Youth Gangs. IACP revises training designs on the basis of feedback from law enforcement advisory groups and workshop participants.

Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative

The return of serious, high-risk offenders to communities has long been a factor in violent crime in the United States. More than 630,000 offenders are released from prison every year, and recidivism among these offenders has become a pervasive problem in many communities. A program that addresses this crisis was a major focus for OJP and OJJDP in FY 2002. Developed by OJP in conjunction with several other federal partners, the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative (Reentry Initiative) is a collaborative effort of multiple federal entities, including the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, Labor, and Veterans Affairs; the Social Security Administration; and the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

In January 2002, OJP released a solicitation seeking applications for funding to develop model reentry strategies that serve offenders housed in correctional institutions and support offenders' transition to and stabilization in the community. Subsequently, 68 programs in 49 states, the District of Columbia, and the Virgin Islands were selected to share more than $100 million in funding to develop such strategies. OJJDP manages 23 of the programs that target a juvenile population (ages 14–17).

The Reentry Initiative challenges each funded program to develop an effective service delivery plan that includes coordinated case management and monitoring and to establish a continuum of services that incorporates screening and assessment and individualized treatment and reentry plans. Programs support offenders throughout three phases of reentry:

• Institution-based programs are designed to prepare offenders to reenter society. Services in this phase include education, mental health and substance abuse treatment, job training and preparation, mentoring, and diagnostic and risk assessment.
  
  
• Community-based transition programs work with offenders before and immediately after release. Services include, as appropriate, education, monitoring, mentoring, life skills training, job skills development, ongoing assessment, and mental health and substance abuse treatment.
  
  
• Community-based long-term support programs are designed to connect individuals who have left the supervision of the justice system with a network of social services agencies and community-based organizations that provide ongoing support.

As part of the Reentry Initiative, OJJDP has played a significant role in the development of OJP's reentry Web site (www.ojp.usdoj.gov/reentry). The Web site provides an overview of the initiative, information about each of the 68 grantees, and additional resources on promising programs that address the reintegration of returning offenders into the community. It includes the following sections:

• Federal & National Resources, which links viewers to Web sites of OJP's partners in the Reentry Initiative, making it easy to find pertinent information. This section also contains information about grant-writing resources.
  
  
• Publications, which provides a bibliography of reentry-related publications (organized by topic area) and links to online documents.
  
  
• State Activities & Resources, which contains information about each of OJP's reentry grantees, accessible by state. The section lists state agency contacts, including state departments of corrections and education, and provides descriptions of and links to local reentry organizations and resources.
  
  
• Training & Technical Assistance, which guides grantees to sources of assistance in implementing their workplans.

The Web site also includes a "What's New" section and a calendar of upcoming reentry-related events.

OJJDP's National Training and Technical Assistance Center provides assistance to Reentry Initiative grantees.

New Publications

Most of OJJDP's publications are of interest to a wide range of audiences. However, some publications developed during FY 2002 contain information of special interest to law enforcement agencies. These include several publications related to missing and abused children, discussed in Chapter 2 and the statistical Bulletin described below.

Law Enforcement and Juvenile Crime. Every 4 years, OJJDP publishes a national report that contains a wealth of information about juvenile offenders and victims. The report was last published in September 1999. To provide access to the latest information in interim years, OJJDP developed a National Report Series of Bulletins. Law Enforcement and Juvenile Crime is part of this series. This 32-page Bulletin describes the extent and characteristics of juvenile arrests in 1999. It provides arrest rates for violent and property crimes, drug and weapon offenses, and violations of alcohol, curfew, and loitering laws. It also compares arrests and arrest trends for males and females and for various racial groups.

⁵The 2001 conference was cancelled because of the events of September 11.