It could offer, either directly or through other agencies, a full range of services and opportunities-diagnosis, counseling, employment and training, family life education, creative arts, and opportunities for youth to participate in a range of community activities. Members of its staff might be located in schools, recreation centers and other agencies to keep track of youth having difficulties and to link them with appropriate resources. A center might include a cadre of outreach workers to make sure that high risk youth who are not known to any agency or who have fallen between the cracks in the service are linked up with needed community resources. Because of the important relationship between school experiences and delinquency, States and communities will be given incentives under the provisions of Part C to develop new mechanisms for "rescuing" truants and other students in trouble by channeling them back into the educational process rather than referring them to juvenile court. Schools could build on the model of the Student Service Center which consolidates the efforts and services of all the special service staff of the schools, and offers information and advice on a range of subjects-education problems, jobs, scholarships, housing family problems, legal problems, and so on. Its services are available to families as well as to students. States and communities which receive funds for the direction of mechanisms such as those described above will be asked to provide opportunities for youth and their parents to become involved in efforts to help them, for it is in the process of involvement that much desired change comes about. Experience has shown, for example, that youth can participate effectively in efforts to create shifts from delinquent to conventional norms within a peer group; that they themselves can help to stimulate community changes through their work in neighborhood organization projects; and that they can serve as helpers or therapists. One very promising approach to the problem of juvenile delinquency is the New Careers Program. Focusing on the group training and placement of disadvantaged and delinquent youth for careers in human services, it combines rehabilitation, vocational education, and meaningful supervised work experience leading to realistic career expectations. It relies heavily on action, group supports, the acceptance of responsibility and new approaches to career training and employment in non-professional community service roles. Pilot experiences have shown that the New Careers Approach can have multiple benefits: It provides an effective method for the rehabilitation of youthful offenders. It offers a combination of training, rehabilitation, education and realistic employment within one program which is both effective and economical for a population which has been resistent to traditional methods of therajg and rehabilitation training. It places therapy and rehabilitation within the context of the mainstream of the community and of meaningful work. It provides for the development of leadership cadres for selfhelp within the community itself. It increases group awareness, sense of responsibility and motivation for bringing about social change. It provides young people with a sense of satisfaction to be gained from doing useful work and receiving public recognition; and a confident sense that the skills and knowledge they have acquired will help them to achiere future success. It provides training for long term employment and careers in occupătional areas which will expand rapidly in the next decades. Experiences with these and other types of community-based nonresidential programs show that delinquents can be worked with in the community without undue danger to the community and that the majority of delinquent youth can be changed without having to subject either them or the State to the costy and negative consequences of incarceration. The provisions of Part C would make it possible for the States and local communities to develop or expand these New Careers Programs. The investment can have double payoff-it can reduce the costs of delinquency and youth unemployment-in terms of dollars as well, as human resources, and it can, over time. make a substantial dent in the manpower problem which weighs so heavily on overburdened correctional and youth serving agencies. To secure a grant under the provisions of both Parts B and C, each agency must show that care and thought have gone into the preparation of the application and that the applicant has made realistic plans to coordinate its activities with these of other agencies providing health, education, and welfare and other basic services in the community. In addition applicants must show that efforts are being made to continue the project or services with State and local funds after termination of the grant. Title II of the bill would support research in the causes of and solutions for the problems of delinquency. With this new authority it would be possible to develop long-term commitments to a research and evaluation system. We would plan to try out arrangements such as university-based institutions tied directly to community service agencies. We would encourage research as a significant part of State and local programs. We still know all to little about the causes and cure of delinquency. Research results, when obtained, must be fed back to the agencies and individuals who will put them to use. Under the 1961 legislation we have already established a systematic procedures for analysis, assessment and dissemination of project results. But we plan to do more. In short, the granting program which we propose will encourage the community and its institutions to retain troublesome youth and at the same time encourage the correctional system to integrate its clients and programs with those of the larger community. Up until now the currents have worked in the opposite direction-community institutions have pushed out and corrections have drawn in. Now we want to reverse that flow. OFFICE OF JUVENILE DELINQUENCY AND YOUTH DEVELOPMENT; SOME FACTS AND FIGURES Although all the results are not yet in, some promising results of projects supported by the Office of Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Development include the following: The Joint Youth Development Committee's (Chicago, Illinois) communitybased corrections program has helped hundreds of delinquent youth and their families in the past five years. A 30% decrease in youthful arrests in the project area has occurred; the nummber off referrals to the juvenile court is less than half that of the rest of the city. There has been a 50% reduction in the number of project area youth sent to correctional institutions and, among those returning from such institutions, the number of repeaters was cut nearly in half. A follow-up study of delinquent youth who were trained for, and are now working as aides in commmunity agencies by the Lane County Youth Project (Lane County, Oregon) revealed that while these youth have been involved in minor infractions of the law, there has been a significant decrease in the number of serious offenses committed by project youth as compared to no such change in a matched group of delinquents who were not in the program. Similarly, only 10% of the youth with records of school failure and delinquency who participated in a New Careers Training Project conducted by Howard University (Washington, D.C.) committed further offenses during a six month follow-up study period. Half of the school dropouts employed by Mobilization for Youth (New York City) as teacher-helpers in the primary school grades returned to school by the end of the first three months. Mobilization for Youth's Homework Helper Program employs high school students as paid tutors for younger elementary school children. A marked improvement in the school grades of all the children tutored has resulted. But even more significant, almost every one of the tutors showed a marked improvement in learning—as much as a three and one-half year gain in reading achievement--behavior and attitudes towards school. Out of 300 enrollees in Commmunity Progress, Inc.'s (New Haven, Conn.) special work crew program, nearly one-third had been arrested previously for offenses more serious than loitering. Of this group, almost all were able to get along in the work situation and to keep from further delinquency. Only 5% of the unwed mothers served by Community Action for Youth's (Cleveland, Ohio) Program for Young Mothers had additional illegitimate children. Over a six month period, activities of the 10 United Planning Organization (Washington, D.C.) youth-managed Neighborhood Youth Development Centers have resulted in the establishment of a school for dropouts, lunch-time tutoring for younger children, new playgrounds and joint parent-youth endeavors for school improvements The therapeutic group work program for glue-sniffing adolescents operated by the Denver Juvenile Court (Denver, Colorado) involved 60 youths during the initial grant period, and resulted in several significant gains: real improvement in terms of school attendance and academic achievement; a reduction in the number of Juvenile Court filings and in the number of commitments to the Juvenile Hall for many of the project participants; and, the development of valuable information and insights concerning the problem of glue-sniffing. Six months after their participation in the Outward Bound Program (Andover, Massachusetts) as an alternative to institutionalization, the rate of recidivism for boys who participated in the experience was half that of boys committed to the Massachusetts Division of Youth Service Training Schools. The guided group interaction techniques employed by the Collegefields Group Educational Center (Newark, New Jersey), in conjunction with a short-term educationally-based rehabilitation program, with a group of 25 fourteen- and fifteen year-old delinquents and pre-delinquents have proven to be a viable mechanism for reducing the incidence of delinquent behavior and altering the educational experience of the participants. As compared with the test-control groups, the Collegefield participants made significant gains in I.Q., favorable attitudes toward both teachers and self, reality-based vocational orientation and a greater number of anticipated years of further schooling. Significant changes have been effected in the fifty socially isolated and delinquent girls served by the Miami YWCA (Miami, Florida). Group work methods and exposure to a variety of new situations have resulted in improved changes in the participants' school performance, aspirations for career choices and the capacity to understand their roles in the community. Significant educational and social improvement has occurred among the participants in the motivationally-oriented experimental educational environment established at the National Training School for Boys being conducted by the Institute for Behavioral Research (Silver Spring, Maryland). It is anticipated that the entire institutional system will be converted to the project model when the new Federal training school opens in West Virginia. Budget history-Office of Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Development OJD/YD grants by category and amount: Fiscal years 1962 to April 1967 Special legislation provided for the Washington metropolitan area demonstration project under sec. 9 (1) and (b) of Public Law 88-368 as amended. OJD/YD special demonstration grants by functional category: Fiscal years 1965 OJD/YD training grants by functional area: Fiscal years 1962 to April 1967 Vocational counselors (employment and vocational counseling personnel). Welfare personnel. Summary of projects for fiscal years 1962–66 awarded under Public Law 87–274— The Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Offenses Control Act of 1961, as amended Summary of grants for fiscal years 1962-66 awarded under Public Law 87-274— No. Amount No. Amount No. Amount No. Amount No. Amount 1 No new planning grants were awarded in fiscal year 1964. The 8 grants awarded for planning were to 2 Special legislation provided for the Washington metropolitan area demonstration project under sec. 9 (a) 34 of the 5 training center grants were continuation grants of training centers established in 1963. OFFICE OF JUVENILE DELINQUENCY AND YOUTH Development—NUMBER OF The following represents a conservative estimate of the number of trainees Miscellaneous (including multiservice organizations, national organiza- 2,600 3, 300 9,000 200 550 5, 400 800 2,500 250 750 3, 415 Total 35,500 JUVENILE DELINQUENCY AND YOUTH OFFENSES CONTROL ACT OF 1961, PUBLIC LAW [Public Law 87-274, 87th Cong., S. 279, Sept. 22, 1961] AN ACT To provide Federal assistance for projects which will demonstrate or develop Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States |