State of New Jersey

Prevention and Early Intervention

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Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI)

2010 JDAI Annual Report pdf
2009 JDAI Annual Report pdf
2008 JDAI Annual Report pdf
State Steering Committee Membership pdf
August 2008 JDAI Sites Result Report pdf

Through its grant from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the New Jersey Juvenile Justice Commission is the lead agency responsible for the replication of the national Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI). The Initiative was created by the Annie E. Casey Foundation over ten years ago, and has as its overall goal to reduce the unnecessary and inappropriate use of detention while maintaining public safety and court appearance rates. In April 2004, New Jersey became an official replication site and is awarded $200,000 annually by the Foundation.

The Juvenile Justice Commission leads this Initiative in partnership with a State Steering Committee whose membership includes representation from the Attorney General's Office (including Police and Prosecutors), the Judiciary (including Administration, Judges and Probation), the Department of Children and Families, the Public Defenders Office, the Office of the Child Advocate, the Department of Education, County Administration Representatives, County Youth Services Commission Representatives, the New Jersey Juvenile Detention Association, the Governor's Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Committee and the Institute for Social Justice. In addition, each county operates its own local leadership through the JDAI County Steering Committees.

New Jersey's Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative was initially piloted in five counties: Atlantic, Camden, Essex, Hudson and Monmouth. The Juvenile Justice Commission has documented the overall impact of JDAI as a statewide initiative by reporting annual trends in key indicators of detention utilization, including admissions, length of stay, and average daily population, the overrepresentation of minority youth in detention, and detention alternative program utilization.

Currently, 12 counties are participating in JDAI in New Jersey including: Atlantic, Camden, Essex, Hudson, Monmouth, Bergen, Burlington, Mercer, Ocean, Union, Passaic and Somerset. The JDAI Annual Data Report presents information for the 11 New Jersey JDAI sites active throughout 2009.

Comparing the year prior to JDAI in each site to the current year, across all eleven sites average daily population has decreased by -42.9%.
On any given day, there were 288 fewer youth in secure detention, with youth of color accounting for 88.7% of this drop.
Across all eleven JDAI sites, more than four-thousand (4,091) fewer youth were admitted to detention in 2009, as compared to each site’s last year prior to JDAI, a decrease of -47.5%.
Over the past year alone, all JDAI sites reduced the total number of kids admitted to detention for a technical violation of probation, for a combined reduction of -21.0%.
In 2009, across the eight sites reporting detention alternative outcome data, the success rate averaged 79.0%.
Across these sites an average of just 3.7% of youth were discharged from a detention alternative program as the result of a new delinquency charge.
Finally, the number of girls in detention on any given day has decreased by -60.0% across the eleven sites.

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