Continuation Programs
The new grants described above work in tandem with many existing OJJDP programs. For example, the Office continued to support a range of comprehensive prevention, intervention, and suppression activities targeting youth gangs during the past 2 years. These efforts include evaluating local projects and informing communities about the nature and extent of gang activities and effective and innovative programs through OJJDP's National Youth Gang Center located at the Institute for Intergovernmental Research in Tallahassee, FL. The new program that examines school-based gang prevention and intervention efforts and evaluates the Boys & Girls Clubs gang outreach efforts, along with the program that evaluates juvenile gun violence, complement existing law enforcement and prosecutor training programs by supporting and providing research-based information to grassroots community organizations addressing these issues. These programs also build on OJJDP's youth-focused community policing, mentoring, and conflict resolution initiatives and drug abuse prevention activities, such as those performed by the Congress of National Black Churches and the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, both of Washington, D.C.
In support of the need to break the cycle of violence, the new Safe Kids/Safe Streets Program complements OJJDP's continuing support of court appointed special advocates programs, children's advocacy centers, and prosecutor and judicial training in the dependency field.
The research and evaluation programs that OJJDP supported in 1996 and 1997 will help fill critical gaps in knowledge about the level and seriousness of juvenile crime and victimization, their causes and correlates, and effective programs that prevent delinquency and violence. At the same time, the Office geared its research toward efforts that monitor and evaluate the ways in which youth are treated by the juvenile and criminal justice systems and the trends in this response, particularly as they relate to juvenile violence and its impact.
The Office also continued to use its national perspective to disseminate information to a variety of audiences, including those who are directly responsible for planning and implementing policies and programs that have a positive impact on juvenile crime and violence.
The various contracts, grants, cooperative agreements, and interagency fund transfers that OJJDP supported in 1996 and 1997 form a continuum of activity designed to address youth violence, delinquency, and victimization. By working together, Federal, State, and local agencies; Native-American tribes; national organizations; private philanthropies; the corporate and business sectors; health, mental health, and social service agencies; schools; youth; families; and clergy can form the partnerships necessary to ensure public safety and keep the Nation's young people from becoming involved in juvenile crime and violence.
All the continuation programs funded by OJJDP in 1996 and 1997 are described in greater detail in the Comprehensive Program Plan for Fiscal Year 1996: OJJDP Program Objectives, available from JJC, and in the proposed 1998 Program Plan, published in the Federal Register on February 6, 1998, and available electronically from JJC on OJJDP's home page.
| Previous | Contents | Next |
| OJJDP Annual Report | August 1998 |