OJJDP Publication Featured on National Television Talk Show

Smart appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show to discuss her abduction and subsequent recovery. The publication was featured during the broadcast as a resource for other young people who are coping with a similar ordeal.

The publication is one of many resources available on OJJDP's new portal Web page, Child Abduction: Resources for Victims and Families. The Web page features You're Not Alone and two other publications: What About Me? Coping With the Abduction of a Brother or Sister and When Your Child Is Missing: A Family Survival Guide. When Your Child Is Missing is one of the resources most widely requested and used by families of missing and abducted children, and What About Me? helps siblings who were left behind to cope in the aftermath of the abduction.

OJJDP released You're Not Alone in May 2008 during the Department of Justice's annual Missing Children's Day ceremony. The publication is intended to help victims of child abduction begin to put their lives back together. The publication provides resources and firsthand information to help survivors cope in the aftermath of abduction and begin the healing process.

Smart was abducted from her home in Salt Lake City in June 2002 and rescued 9 months later. Her ordeal made national headlines at the time. Both Smart and the publication also were featured in the June 12, 2008, edition of People magazine.

You're Not Alone focuses on the journey from abduction to empowerment and what can be expected along the way. Smart and four other survivors—Tamara Brooks, Sam Fastow, Alicia Kozakiewicz, and Maggie Maloy—suggest how to seek out people who can help with the journey, ways to regain a sense of control and make healthy choices, and coping strategies for possible roadblocks during the process of recovery. The publication includes a personal letter from Smart and the other survivors with their thoughts to help others through their journey.

Smart talked with Winfrey about some of the coping strategies that helped her resume a normal life, including playing music, talking with her parents, and practicing her Mormon faith. She stressed a refusal to be held back by the incident and ordeal.

I would tell people to make sure that they are open with their family, open with their children. . . . To not let it hold you back, to not let it pull you down. . . . Everybody has dreams and hopes before an experience, and don't give up on your dreams and hopes after.

Speaking about the publication at the Missing Children's Day ceremony, OJJDP Administrator J. Robert Flores praised Smart and the other authors for their sacrifice and unselfishness in sharing their experiences with other survivors.

I look forward to the day when we no longer have to search for missing children. But until that day comes, I believe the document [You're Not Alone], and those that preceded it, will help children and families move forward on their personal journeys from abduction to empowerment.

(For more information on this year's Missing Children's Day, see the story DOJ Observes Missing Children's Day 2008 in the May/June issue of News @ a Glance.)

You're Not Alone: The Journey From Abduction to Empowerment may be viewed and downloaded at no cost. The publication may also be ordered from the National Criminal Justice Reference Service Web site. Search "NCJ 221965."

To learn more about Elizabeth Smart's interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show, visit the show's Web site.

OJJDP Hosts 10th Annual EUDL Conference

OJJDP Administrator J. Robert Flores

OJJDP's Enforcing Underage Drinking Laws (EUDL) program 10th Annual National Leadership Conference was held in Nashville, TN, August 21–23. "A Notable History: Forging the Future" was attended by more than 2,000 law enforcement personnel, State EUDL coordinators, executives, government officials, military officials, judges, court personnel, and staff of community-based organizations.

The conference offered information sessions led by national experts and case studies documenting effective strategies for preventing underage drinking. The conference youth track offered opportunities for young people to learn more about effective prevention strategies, hear motivational speakers, engage in team-building activities, and develop action plans for their communities. More than 350 young people attended the conference.

In his address, OJJDP Administrator J. Robert Flores praised the successes and accomplishments of the EUDL program and encouraged those in attendance to continue forging ahead.

The challenges of underage drinking are indeed serious, but through the EUDL network, we have a legacy of accomplishment, and I encourage our partners to share their achievements because success breeds success.

Administrator Flores noted some recent successes of the EUDL program:

• In December 2006, San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit banned alcohol advertisements from public transit. Local communities across the Nation are working to limit youth exposure to alcohol promotions.
• In 2007, the Kentucky State Department of Alcohol Beverage Control visited 2,450 alcohol-licensed establishments, resulting in 91 percent compliance, a significant increase from the 75 percent compliance rate in 1998.
• In Minnesota, 11 local communities have passed social host laws since 2007, and more plan to follow suit. Communities across the Nation are implementing social host laws to better address youth alcohol access issues in social settings.

Administrator Flores noted that many challenges lie ahead. The age of initiation of alcohol use in young people has dropped to as young as 12, and binge drinking rates range from 92 percent for 12- to 14-year-olds who drink to 96 percent for 18- to 20-year-olds who drink.

Several law enforcement awards were presented to both law enforcement agencies and specific law enforcement personnel for their efforts to enforce underage drinking laws. The following agencies were presented with the Law Enforcement Agency of the Year Award: the Kentucky Office of Alcoholic Beverage Control of Frankfurt, KY; the Chapel Hill Police Department of Chapel Hill, NC; the Minnesota Department of Public Safety, Alcohol and Gambling Enforcement Division of St. Paul, MN; and the Pima County Sheriff's Office/Southern Arizona DUI Task Force in Tucson, AZ.

Law Enforcement Officer of the Year awards were presented to the following individuals: Chief Michael Magnant of the Portsmouth Police Department of Portsmouth, NH; Detective Chip Mercier of the Cobb County Police Department of Marietta, GA; Sergeant Tony Marsh of the Mesa County Sheriff's Office of Grand Junction, CO; Chief Mark Hicks of the Mississippi Alcoholic Beverage Control, Bureau of Enforcement, of Madison, MS.

In honor of the EUDL conference, Nashville Mayor Karl Dean proclaimed August 22 "Stop Underage Drinking Day" at a conference networking event held at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville.

OJJDP's State Relations and Assistance Division also held its annual conference in Nashville on August 17–19 directly before the EUDL event, allowing many program coordinators to attend the EUDL preconference day event. There were opportunities to network with law enforcement and other personnel they might otherwise not meet to share success stories and strategies. This was also the first EUDL conference in which representatives from the U.S. territories—the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and the U.S. Virgin Islands—attended.

Department of Justice Announces $19 Million in EUDL Funds

On August 21, the Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs (OJP) issued a press release announcing block grants of more than $19 million to 50 States, 5 territories, and the District of Columbia to enforce State and local underage drinking laws. The awards were made through the Enforcing Underage Drinking Laws program, which supports activities in law enforcement, public education programs, and innovative methods for reaching youth. Through the EUDL initiative, each State, territory, and the District of Columbia received $350,000 in block grants.

"We need to do everything in our power to protect the Nation's best and brightest," said Jeffrey L. Sedgwick, Acting Assistant Attorney General for OJP." This funding will support law enforcement and community efforts to curb underage drinking and save lives."

OJJDP established the EUDL program, the only Federal initiative directed exclusively toward preventing underage drinking, in 1998. The program is a $25 million initiative consisting of block grants to each State and the District of Columbia and discretionary awards to selected States to fund the best and most promising activities and research at the local level.

The awards support a wide range of activities, including compliance checks of retail alcohol outlets to reduce sales to minors, crackdowns on false identification, programs to discourage older youth or adults from providing alcohol to minors, "party patrols" to prevent access to alcohol at large youth gatherings, and "cops in shops" to deter minors' attempts to purchase alcohol.

For more information on the EUDL program, visit the OJJDP Web site or the Underage Drinking Enforcement Training Center online.

OJJDP Releases Girls Study Group Bulletins

In response to the rising arrest rates of female juveniles in the 1990s, OJJDP convened the Girls Study Group (GSG) in 2004, a research project that aims to gain a better understanding of girls' delinquency and guide policy toward female juvenile offenders. Because the majority of delinquent offenders are boys, very little research exists on female juvenile delinquency.

The GSG sponsored a series of studies that probed the following questions:

• Which girls become delinquent?
• What factors protect girls from delinquency?
• What factors put girls at risk for delinquency?
• What pathways lead to girls' delinquency?
• What programs are most effective in preventing girls' delinquency?
• How should the juvenile justice system respond to girls' delinquency?

One of the findings of the GSG is that girls are not more violent now than in previous years. Comparative analysis of official and self-report data revealed that the increase in girls' arrests is due largely to a change in how the juvenile justice system is responding to girls' behavior. Further analysis indicates that the increase in girls' arrests appears to be an unintended result of relatively new mandatory, or proarrest, policies put in place to protect victims of domestic violence. This outcome highlights the need to work with law enforcement to identify appropriate responses to conflict between girls and their family members, and for communities to support and provide families with access to family-strengthening and mediation programs that provide intervention rather than just simply arrest.

The GSG has also found that girls and boys experience many of the same delinquency factors and that, while some risk factors are more gender-sensitive, focusing on general risk and protective factors for all youth is appropriate. Although intervention and prevention programs should be based around factors unique to girls, such efforts depend on the individual girl's specific strengths and needs. Therefore, developing and using appropriate risk assessment tools for youth of both genders is crucial to ensuring the best response.

Perhaps the most important finding of the GSG is that there is a considerable lack of reliable, accurate, and comprehensive information about good prevention and intervention programming for girls. Therefore, a concerted effort is needed to address the lack of evidence-based programs for the juvenile justice field overall, as well as the lack of programming for girls specifically.

In the future, the GSG findings will provide OJJDP with the necessary foundation to move ahead on a comprehensive program of information dissemination, training, technical assistance, and programming regarding girls' delinquency prevention and intervention. These findings should also assist States and communities in developing their own efforts to address girls' delinquency.

Over the next several months, OJJDP will release a series of Bulletins to highlight the GSG, each one focusing on a specific facet of the study group's research activities and major findings. The Bulletin, Charting the Way to Delinquency Prevention for Girls, provides an overview of the research and the Bulletins that address each issue. This overview Bulletin describes how the GSG worked to understand and respond to girls' delinquency and summarizes the other Bulletins in the series. The other Bulletins include:

• Violence by Teenage Girls: Trends and Contexts—describes recent trends in girls' offending and examines the settings in which girls commit crimes. This Bulletin was released in May 2008 and is available online.
• Resilient Girls: Factors That Protect Against Delinquency—examines whether four factors—a caring adult, school connectedness, school success, and religiosity—can protect girls from delinquency.
• Suitability of Assessment Instruments for Delinquent Girls—determines whether current risk-assessment and treatment-focused instruments are appropriate for use with girls; also provides guidance to practitioners on how to select instruments for use.
• Causes and Correlates of Girls' Delinquency—examines the personal, family, peer, school, and community factors that can lead to delinquency among girls.
• Developmental Sequences of Girls' Delinquent Behavior—investigates the different patterns of delinquent behaviors in which girls become involved and provides insight into the life pathways that lead to girls' delinquent behavior.
• Girls' Delinquency Programs: An Evidence-Based Review—reviews girls' delinquency programs and determines whether they effectively intervene in delinquency trajectories.

Releases of the above Bulletins will be highlighted in future issues of News @ a Glance and JUVJUST. (For more information on the GSG Bulletin Charting the Way to Delinquency Prevention for Girls, see the New Publications section of this issue of OJJDP News @ a Glance.)

For more information on the GSG, please visit the OJJDP Web site or the GSG site.

Administrator Flores Urges HNBA Members To Participate in Mentoring Programs

OJJDP Administrator J. Robert Flores urged the members of the Hispanic National Bar Association (HNBA) to participate in mentoring programs that serve Hispanic youth, citing it as a necessary element in helping youth avoid joining gangs. Flores spoke at HNBA's 33rd Annual Conference, held September 3–6 in Hollywood, CA, a district within the City of Los Angeles.

Administrator Flores restated DOJ's and OJJDP's commitment to reducing gang activity through the comprehensive gang-reduction strategy, which emphasizes prevention, intervention, reentry programs, law enforcement, and crime suppression. Los Angeles has the largest gang population in the country, with more than 400 gangs and 39,000 members. DOJ has invested more than $15.5 million to support the city's comprehensive gang-reduction strategy.

In his address, Administrator Flores reminded the HNBA members of the necessity of participating in their communities to become involved with mentoring at-risk youth.

At-risk children need one-on-one support to avoid the dangers of the streets. The more support we offer them, the stronger they will become in their choices. We are making progress in reaching children who need our help the most, but this effort requires the support and contributions of a broader spectrum of the community. I hope you will help us with this most important endeavor.

OJJDP has provided $5 million to establish and expand the Los Angeles Gang Reduction Program, which has reduced gang-related crime by 44 percent in the initial targeted neighborhood. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa invested $168 million in 2007 to expand the initiative to another part of the city, using the gang-reduction program as the blueprint.

More than 1,000 participants attended the HNBA Conference. Conference sessions included discussions on various legal and social issues such as gangs.

Associate Attorney General O'Connor Praises Internet as Prosecution Tool at NCAC Conference

Associate Attorney General Kevin J. O'Connor

Associate Attorney General Kevin J. O'Connor praised the use of the Internet as a resource for prosecutors and investigators in his keynote address at the ninth National Conference on Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation Prevention in New Orleans. The conference, which was held August 26–28, is sponsored annually by the National Children's Advocacy Center (NCAC).

O'Connor highlighted the Department of Justice's longstanding partnership with NCAC, which provides direct services, training, and national leadership in the fight against child abuse and exploitation. Over the past 25 years, NCAC has provided training to more than 50,000 child abuse prevention professionals.

A major focus of O'Connor's speech was the impact of Internet technology on child sexual abuse. "In the past, when parents thought about threats to their children's safety, they feared what might happen on the walk home from school, or at the playground," said O'Connor. "But the reality has shifted; home is no longer the sanctuary that it used to be. By simply logging on to the Internet, children open themselves up to hidden threats."

Although the Internet makes it easier for predators to target children, it also is a valuable tool for identifying, apprehending, and prosecuting child predators, O'Connor said. The Internet creates historical records of conversations between predators and their victims, and with an electronic record of a conversation, law enforcement can prosecute cases without needing to involve the victim in testimony. The vast majority of these cases result in guilty pleas.

The need to intensely target child predators, particularly those who use the Internet to prey on children, led to the creation of the Department's Project Safe Childhood (PSC) Initiative. PSC's primary focus is the investigation and prosecution of online predators. PSC also funds and supports public service announcements and other outreach efforts to educate children, parents, and teachers about the potential dangers posed by the Internet.

PSC is a partnership made up of Federal agencies, advocacy organizations, and State and local law enforcement agencies, including OJJDP's Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force Program. ICAC Task Forces help State and local law enforcement agencies develop an effective response to cyber enticement and child pornography cases by providing assistance with investigations, training and technical assistance, victim services, and community education. There are 59 ICAC Task Forces located in all 50 States.

"Federal law enforcement authorities across the country are working closer than ever with their State and local counterparts to ensure that these cases are given the highest priority and that those convicted receive the strongest possible sentences," O'Connor said.

O'Connor cautioned that the need to be vigilant against predators continues after the predators leave prison. "Keeping offenders away from kids is a big part of why we work so hard to prosecute predators," O'Connor said. "But the fact remains that there will come a time when those sex offenders are released from prison and return to their communities."

In an effort to address this problem, Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey recently announced the final National Guidelines for implementing the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act provisions of the 2006 Adam Walsh Act.

"We have an obligation to kids and parents to do everything we can to make sure sex offenders don't strike again," O'Connor said.

For more information about the NCAC conference, please check the Web site. Additional information about the ICAC Task Force Program and the PSC Initiative is available online.

See also "Conferences Focus Attention on Child Safety" in this News @ a Glance for information on the PSC National Conference and the National AMBER Alert Conference.

SMART System Improves Mapping Display

OJJDP recently introduced several enhancements to the Web-based Socioeconomic Mapping and Resource Topography (SMART) system that improve the visual display of information on the mapping page and allow the user greater flexibility in how the information is presented.

The SMART system is a free, Web-accessible application that communities can use to position local resources to help prevent crime and delinquency. Users can connect SMART maps of crime locations with maps of local intervention programs and community resources. The system contains crime data, census data, and locations of community resources, including YMCAs, Boys and Girls Clubs, and police stations. All information has been updated within the past 10 years.

Using data from several sources, the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) has created points and jurisdictional boundaries for law enforcement agencies that are incorporated into SMART. In addition, IACP is collecting and formatting specific precinct and division boundaries of large police agencies. SMART currently features precinct division boundaries of the 20 largest agencies in the country.

The improvements to the mapping page include the ability to display and print maps and reports as PDFs and to view SMART data as a scatter chart. SMART users can now customize a geographic area by selecting multiple areas of interest. A dropdown box called "Reference Area" on the Custom Area Selection map page allows the user to overlay a transparent map as a reference for creating a customized map. For example, a user can select a group of census tracts to correspond to a particular school, congressional, and police district. Or, a service provider can select census tracts that correspond to their particular service area within a city.

Several methods for establishing custom areas are available to better define a geographical area of interest. For instance, a radius selection tool has been added that tells the length of an area's radius in miles. The user may name and save their customized areas, a significant functional enhancement that provides them the ability to create their own area of analysis, a popular request of many SMART users.

OJJDP continues to improve the SMART system and expects to announce new enhancements over the next several months. For more information on SMART, please check the OJJDP Web site or the SMART Web site.

OJJDP Launches New Topical Web Pages

To better serve and inform the juvenile justice field, OJJDP is expanding and enhancing the offerings on the In Focus section of its Web site. The section features links to several topical portal pages that focus on issues of particular interest to the Office. In Focus features include the following:

• The Girls' Delinquency page describes the Office's efforts to address the rising arrest rates for juvenile females over the past two decades. The page offers brief explanations of resources provided by OJJDP, including OJJDP-supported research—featuring the Girls Study Group, training and technical assistance, programs, activities at the State level, and publications and other resources available to the field. Each section contains links to affiliated Web sites.

• The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children page describes training and technical assistance programs, collaborative demonstration programs, and research projects that OJJDP supports to address the commercial sexual exploitation of children and assist its victims. The page includes links to grantees' Web sites and other resources.

• The Department of Justice's Youth Gang Prevention Initiative portal page includes a history of DOJ's efforts to address youth gangs, descriptions of OJJDP 's anti-gang programs, and publications and other resources. There are links to the National Youth Gang Center and other program Web sites, publications, and additional resources.

OJJDP regularly updates each page and will continue to develop topical portal pages to reflect priority areas of the Office and emerging issues in the field.

Tribal Comments and Consultation Sought To Expand Pool of TYP Awardees

OJJDP is seeking comments from tribal leaders on proposed changes to the Tribal Youth Program (TYP) that would expand the eligibility to apply for TYP funds to include partnerships with faith-based and community organizations (FBO/COs). If approved by the tribal government, an FBO/CO will serve as the primary applicant and fiscal agent. To be eligible to apply, the FBO/CO must submit a signed tribal resolution setting forth an agreement by the tribe to allow the applicant organization to provide the service or operate the program for the benefit of a particular tribe.

A consultation session with tribal leaders to discuss this issue is scheduled for October 18 during the National Congress of American Indians in Phoenix, AZ. Written comments are due to OJJDP by October 31.

The goals of the FY 2009 TYP program are to 1) ensure that TYP funds are awarded and reach tribal communities; 2) expand resources to tribal communities by encouraging collaboration and effective partnerships; 3) assist tribal communities to build the capacity needed to apply, administer, and manage grant funds; and 4) comply with applicable laws requiring that faith-based and community organizations—to the extent that statutory eligibility provisions allow—receive the same opportunity to be considered for TYP funding as other applicants.

Comments on this matter should address:

• Description of proposed program or service.
• The type and amount of support provided to tribal and program providers by OJJDP.
• How the proposed service or program should be evaluated to inform tribes and OJJDP of its effectiveness.
• Whether the tribal community believes it is advisable to provide a limited number of awards under the pilot or to open the program to all eligible tribes (and/or their approved organization partners) and make awards using merit-based criteria in the selection process.
• Whether there should be a minimum population requirement.
• Whether partnerships should be expressly encouraged or otherwise be given heightened consideration in the application process.
• What level of involvement the tribes would wish to have in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of an applicant's program.

For more information on TYP, please visit the OJJDP Web site. The letter requesting comments, and information on the National Congress of American Indians are available online.

OJJDP To Present on Juvenile Justice-Related Topics at ASC Annual Conference

This year's annual conference of the American Society of Criminology will be held November 12–15 in St. Louis, MO, and will offer many juvenile justice-related sessions for the approximately 2,500 expected conference attendees. Sessions featuring OJJDP-sponsored research include "Hispanics in the Juvenile Justice System," "New Juvenile Corrections Data From OJJDP," "Communitywide Gang Problems," and "Interpersonal Dynamics of Girls' Delinquency." Other conference sessions will focus on a variety of juvenile justice-related topics, including family issues, school-related issues, and risk factors for delinquency.

ASC is an international organization concerned with criminology, embracing scholarly, scientific, and professional knowledge concerning the prevention, control, and treatment of crime and delinquency. Founded in 1941, ASC has held annual conferences since 1950.

For more information, please visit the American Society of Criminology's Web site.

Conferences Focus Attention on Child Safety

Project Safe Childhood National Conference

The third annual 2008 Project Safe Childhood (PSC) National Conference was held in Columbus, OH, September 23–26. The conference provided Federal, State, and local law enforcement investigators, forensic experts, and prosecutors an opportunity to participate in workshops and lectures to further their knowledge while providing them with the tools necessary to combat online exploitation of children. Attendees included members of all PSC and Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task forces. The training sessions focused on how to increase collaboration and cooperation among law enforcement agencies and Federal prosecutors on child pornography cases, forensics methods, and the legal and technical aspects of child exploitation cases, among other topics. PSC and ICAC previously held separate conferences; this year's joint conference allowed the two groups to conduct joint training and sharing of best practices while continuing to build relationships across agencies and jurisdictions. Approximately 1,300 participants attended.

National AMBER Alert Conference

The 2008 National AMBER Alert Conference will take place October 14–16 in Garden Grove (Orange County), CA. This conference is by invitation only. The agenda for the conference includes special tracks for law enforcement, media/broadcasters, AMBER Alert Coordinators, tribal communities, and Child Abduction Response Teams. Additionally, the conference will feature a family-victims roundtable, an AMBER in Indian Country Cluster Meeting, a special session with AMBER Alert Coordinators from Mexico and Canada, and a 1-day workshop for Child Abduction Response Teams. Speakers will include Erin Runnion, a mother from Orange County whose daughter, Samantha, was abducted and murdered, and who now operates a nonprofit organization advocating for missing children; Mark Simpson, original investigator in the Amber Hagerman case; Charles Bierbauer, former CNN news anchor; Sheriff Sandra Hutchens of Orange County; Bob Hoever from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children; David Diggs from CTIA, the international association for the wireless telecommunications industry; and Ron Laney, Associate Administrator of OJJDP's Child Protection Division.

New Publications

Now Available

Sexually Assaulted Children: National Estimates and Characteristics (NISMART-2 Bulletin)

The Bulletin provides information on the estimated number and characteristics of children who were sexually assaulted in the United States in 1999, according to the Second National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrownaway Children (NISMART-2) interviews with victims and their families. The estimates are derived from two components of NISMART-2: the National Household Survey of Adult Caretakers and the National Household Survey of Youth. These surveys were conducted during 1999 and reflect a 12-month period.

To order a printed copy, go to the National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS) Web site. Search "NCJ 214383."

Caretaker Satisfaction With Law Enforcement Response to Missing Children (NISMART-2 Bulletin)

The Bulletin examines satisfaction with law enforcement from the perspective of all primary caretakers who contacted police when one or more of their children experienced a qualifying episode in the NISMART-2 National Household Survey of Adult Caretakers. Qualifying episodes include children with police contact who were abducted, ran away, or were thrown away, and children who were missing involuntarily or for benign reasons.

To order a printed copy, go to NCJRS Web site. Search "NCJ 217909."

Coming Soon

Girls Study Group: Charting the Way to Delinquency Prevention for Girls

This Bulletin provides an overview of the Girls Study Group (GSG), a research project convened by OJJDP to determine why arrest rates for girls increased more (or decreased less) than arrests of boys for most types of offenses. OJJDP will release a series of Bulletins examining issues such as patterns of offending among adolescents and how they differ for girls and boys; risk and protective factors associated with delinquency, including gender differences; and the causes and correlates of girls’ delinquency. One title, Violence by Teenage Girls: Trends and Context, was released in May and is available here; the remaining Bulletins will be released in the near future. For more information on the GSG, please see the article "OJJDP Releases Girls Study Group Bulletins," in the Special Features of this newsletter.

New Online

Evaluating Children's Advocacy Centers' Response to Child Sexual Abuse

This Bulletin describes the findings of a study by researchers at the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center that evaluated the effectiveness of the Children's Advocacy Center (CAC) model in four prominent CACs and nearby comparison communities. Findings demonstrated the important role these centers can play in advancing child abuse investigations; the study also suggested ways in which the model could be improved in the future. The first CAC was established in 1986 to create a sensitive environment for child abuse interviews, provide victims and their families with medical and child protection services, and coordinate abuse investigations. The model has gained in popularity over the past 20 years. As of 2006, the National Children's Alliance had certified more than 600 centers.

Other Resources

America's Children in Brief: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2008

Each year since 1997, the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics has published a report on the well-being of children and families, and OJJDP contributes to its content each year. The indicators and background measures in this report represent large segments of the population and are measured regularly so that they can be updated and show trends over time. The indicators are organized into seven sections, each focusing on a domain relevant to children's lives: Family and Social Environment, Economic Circumstances, Health Care, Physical Environment and Safety, Behavior, Education, and Health. The Forum fosters coordination and integration among 22 Federal agencies that produce or use statistical data on children and families.

News From the Coordinating Council on
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention

The Coordinating Council on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (Council) last met on Friday, September 12, 2008, from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in Washington, DC. The agenda included a presentation and discussion on HHS research on boys and a report on the effort to improve substance abuse treatment for system-involved youth. The meeting minutes will be available through the Council's Web site later this fall.

For more information on the Council, please go to the Web site.

News From the Advisory Committee
on Juvenile Justice

The Federal Advisory Committee on Juvenile Justice (FACJJ) will hold its fall meeting October 19–21, 2008, in San Diego, CA. FACJJ meetings are public, and anyone may register to attend and observe. For additional information, including information on future and past meetings and annual reports from fiscal year 2004 to 2007, visit FACJJ's Meetings Web page.

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