What is the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI)?
Juvenile detention was designed to be the temporary placement of young people accused of a delinquent act, while awaiting the final outcome of their cases in court. The purpose of detention is to house young people who, by virtue of their alleged offenses or documented prior histories, pose a serious public safety or flight risk. JDAI provides a framework of strategies that help reduce the inappropriate use of secure juvenile detention, while maintaining public safety and court appearance rates. JDAI has earned the broad support of government at both the state and local level, exemplifying the best of interagency and intergovernmental collaboration. The Attorney General’s Office and the New Jersey Judiciary have been instrumental in working with the JJC to develop and support JDAI.
The goal of JDAI as a systems-change initiative is to create more effective and efficient processes surrounding the use of detention. A primary goal of JDAI is to make sure that secure detention is used for only serious and chronic youthful offenders, and that effective alternatives are available for other youth who can be safely supervised in the community while awaiting final court disposition. JDAI also works to redirect resources toward successful reform strategies and to improve conditions of confinement in detention facilities for those youth who require this most secure level of supervision.
Why is JDAI necessary and how did it start in New Jersey?
JDAI was developed by the Annie E. Casey Foundation in response to national trends reflecting a drastic increase in the use of secure detention for youth despite decreases in youth arrests, and the resulting overcrowding of youth detention centers nationwide. In New Jersey, between 1993 and 2002 juvenile arrests for “index” offenses (i.e., the most serious offenses) decreased by 44.8 percent and overall juvenile arrests decreased by 24.7 percent. However, during the same 10-year period, the average daily population in detention increased by 37.7 percent. These changes led to serious overcrowding in New Jersey’s county-operated detention facilities. In 1996, New Jersey’s detention facilities were operating at 166 percent of approved capacity.
In 2004, the JJC submitted an application to the Annie E. Casey Foundation for New Jersey to be among the first states to implement JDAI, a nationally recognized youth justice reform initiative that had previously been implemented at only the county level. The application was accepted, and New Jersey’s JDAI journey began.
What is the role of the JJC’s JDAI & System Reform Unit?
The Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI) & System Reform Unit, under the Juvenile Justice Commission’s (JJC) Office of Policy, Research, and Planning, works actively with County Councils on Juvenile Justice and System Improvement (CJJSI) to facilitate the implementation of JDAI. The JJC is the lead agency for JDAI in New Jersey, providing the management and staffing infrastructure integral to New Jersey’s success as a JDAI site. At the state level, the New Jersey Council on Juvenile Justice System Improvement (CJJSI), whose members are jointly appointed by the JJC Executive Director and the Administrative Director of the New Jersey Courts, oversees JDAI and considers statewide policy and practice reforms. At the local level, County Councils on Juvenile Justice System Improvement are directly responsible for implementing local reform strategies.
The JJC assigns a Research & Reform Specialist (Specialist) from the JDAI & System Reform Unit to support each County CJJSI as it works to implement JDAI and achieve youth justice reform goals. The Specialists provide guidance on JDAI core strategies and youth justice best-practices, work to develop local policy and practice that achieve system-reform goals, and monitor progress by documenting and tracking policies and practices implemented. Most importantly, the Specialists ensure all reform efforts are data-driven by establishing mechanisms to collect youth justice data, conducting comprehensive data analyses, presenting findings to the CJJSIs, and making recommendations based on those findings. The Specialists then evaluate whether strategies implemented achieve intended outcomes. Finally, the Specialists serve as liaisons between the JJC, the County CJJSI, the New Jersey CJJSI, other New Jersey JDAI sites, and national JDAI sites.
What has JDAI achieved?
Reliance on data to inform policy and program development is key among JDAI’s core strategies. Through the JDAI process, jurisdictions use data to examine the detention process to determine where opportunities for improvement exist, and to measure the impact of any reforms implemented. As one part of these data-driven efforts, each year, the JDAI & System Reform Unit prepares an Annual Data Report, which documents the impressive changes in local detention systems – changes that are consistent with the application of JDAI core strategies and with the goal of safely reducing the unnecessary detention of New Jersey’s kids.
Overall, when comparing the year prior to JDAI implementation in each site to the current data across sites, the average daily population of youth detention centers had decreased by more than 70 percent, resulting in more than 8,000 fewer youth admitted to detention annually. Youth of color have accounted for the vast majority of this drop. The success rates for youth placed on community-based detention alternatives are high, and youth crime has dropped by more than 70 percent since JDAI implementation, indicating that JDAI’s public safety goals are being met. These results are further detailed in the JDAI Annual Data Reports https://www.njoag.gov/about/divisions-and-offices/juvenile-justice-commission-home/jjc-library-reports-forms/
The results achieved through JDAI partnerships have brought New Jersey national recognition. While JDAI is operational in more than 300 local jurisdictions spanning 40 states and the District of Columbia, New Jersey is the only site to be designated a national model for statewide detention reform by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which spearheads the national reform effort. This designation was bestowed upon NJ in late 2008 as a result of the impressive outcomes New Jersey has achieved since JDAI inception. In its role as a model site, New Jersey is routinely called upon to conduct training and provide technical support to other states seeking to replicate New Jersey’s success.