Lasting Effects of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention: The Early Years

• NCJ Number: 161367
• Author(s): J C Howell
• Date Published: 1991
• Length: 31 pages
• Sale Source: National Institute of Justice/NCJRS
• Publication Type: Historical Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, San Francisco, November 20, 1991.

Annotation

This paper traces selected lasting effects of the Federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention from its early years (1975-82).

Abstract

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) was created by the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974. It was officially established in June 1975 in the U.S. Department of Justice. Throughout the early years of OJJDP, the OJJDP viewed its mission as consisting of three main objectives: delinquency prevention, juvenile justice system improvement, and the development of alternatives to the juvenile justice system. A major shift in the OJJDP's priorities would occur in the early 1980's, under the administration of Alfred Regnery (1983-1985) who presided over the swinging of the pendulum from the treatment and rehabilitation policies of the previous two decades to punishment and deterrence as central policies. This paper highlights selected OJJDP programs that produced lasting effects in advancing these three objectives that were funded during the early years of the OJJDP's existence (1975-1982). Results noted in the area of delinquency prevention include enhanced understanding of the development, maintenance, and desistence of delinquent careers into young adulthood; substantiation and expansion of knowledge about chronicity among juvenile delinquents; initiation of the development of new delinquency prevention theory and interventions; development of national information on youth gangs and collective youth crime; and development of programs for preventing school violence. Results in juvenile justice system improvement have been the development and nationwide implementation of restitution programming; identification of the common denominators of effective treatment and control programs for serious, chronic, and violent juvenile offenders; and development and proliferation of standards for the administration of juvenile justice. In the area of alternatives to the juvenile justice system results have involved the support and study of statewide juvenile corrections reforms and the deinstitutionalization of status offenders. In addition, OJJDP has made major contributions to improvement of national statistics on juvenile delinquency and juvenile justice, as well as program development and evaluation. 57 references