The Division of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention partners with Juvenile Crime Prevention Councils in each county to galvanize community leaders, locally and statewide, to reduce and prevent juvenile crime. JCPC board members are appointed by the county Board of Commissioners and meet monthly in each county. The meetings are open to the public, and all business is considered public information. DJJDP allocates approximately $28 million to these councils annually. Funding is used to subsidize local programs and services.
JCPC Resources and Information
JCPC Powers and Duties
- To ensure that appropriate intermediate dispositional options are available.
- To provide funds for treatment of juveniles.
- To increase public awareness of the causes of delinquency and strategies to reduce the problem.
- To assess needs of juveniles in the local community.
- To develop strategies for delinquency prevention through risk assessment.
- To assess resources to meet the identified needs.
- To develop or propose ways to meet those needs.
- To plan for a permanent funding stream for delinquency prevention programs.
- To evaluate program performance.
JCPC Responsibilities
- Review the needs of juveniles in the county who are at risk of delinquency or who have been adjudicated undisciplined or delinquent.
- Review the resources available to address those needs
- Prioritize community risk factors
- Determine the services needed to address those problems areas
- Develop a request for proposal for services in need
- Submit a written funding plan to the county commissioners for approval
- Evaluate program performance
- Increase public awareness of the causes of delinquency and strategies to reduce the problem
- Develop strategies to intervene, respond to and treat the needs of juveniles at risk of delinquency
- Provide funds for treatment, counseling or rehabilitation services.
The N.C. Juvenile Crime Prevention Planning Process begins with a collaborative assessment of community risks, answering the following questions pertaining to community risks, resources and needs:
- What are the factors in our county that have been proven to contribute to local juvenile crime or delinquency?
- What are the county resources currently in place to offset the specified risks?
- What are the county resources needed to prevent juvenile crime and to get juveniles the help they need?
Now referred to as the North Carolina Juvenile Crime Prevention Planning Process, this system incorporates elements of DRP's Communities that Care planning model and the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's Comprehensive Strategy for Serious, Violent and Chronic Juvenile Offenders.
The Comprehensive Strategy seeks to mobilize communities to create a multi-disciplinary continuum of care that includes prevention programs for children, early intervention in the lives of juvenile offenders, and graduated sanctions for repeat offenders. The new planning process also incorporates the essential elements outlined in the N.C. Juvenile Justice Reform Act.
Working with the Jordan Institute for Families, the Division of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention developed a research-based profile of risk factors for juvenile delinquency by age in five different domains: individual, family, peer group, school, and community. A county-by-county profile of statistical indicators, N.C. Community Risk Assessment Data, is available on the division's website.
JCPCs can make data-based decisions to determine the need for prevention programs and disposition options from the actual indicators of the risk factors in each county and from juvenile justice data maintained by DPS. The Community Programs section works to guide local communities in developing an appropriate continuum to serve local youth based on collected data.
Juvenile Crime Prevention Council members are appointed by each county’s Board of Commissioners and composed of community leaders in a variety of fields, including representatives from county government; the local school system; law enforcement; the judiciary; public health entities; mental health providers; human services agencies; businesses and nonprofits. Council-elected members serve as the chair and co-chair and preside over these monthly meetings (some councils meet bi-monthly) which are open to the public to attend. You can access the JCPC Chairperson Directory for the name and email address of a Chair to contact for meeting locations. The JCPC Statewide Meeting Calendar provides each county’s meeting date and time.
The programs contained in the Juvenile Justice Service Directory represent a wide spectrum of services across North Carolina, reaching youth in all 100 counties. Juvenile Crime Prevention Council members work to fund the following types of services and programs in their local communities:
Assessment Programs
Clinical Evaluation and Psychological Assessment Programs
Clinical Treatment Programs
Sex Offender Assessment and Counseling
Home-Based Family Counseling
Counseling Programs
Community Day Programs
Juvenile Structured Day
Residential Programs
Residential Services Programs
Restorative Programs
Mediation/Conflict Resolution
Restitution
Teen Court
Structured Activities Programs
Skill Building
Mentoring Programs (Mentoring)
To qualify for JCPC funding, a program must be able to provide a match, either in local funding or in-kind services. The degree to which JCPC programs are supported by county funding is at the discretion of the local county board of commissioners. Historical funding information for all 100 counties is available below.
Through a research partnership with Vanderbilt University's noted researcher Dr. Mark Lipsey and criminologist James C. (Buddy) Howell (former OJJDP research director), the Division of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention created a Standardized Program Evaluation Protocol (SPEP) to evaluate the effectiveness of the programs now funded through counties and JCPCs.
This instrument will be used by JCPCs and by staff in the juvenile justice system to assess essential characteristics of effective programming. Later phases of the project will determine intervention methods and provide training to determine cost-effective improvements to program operation. Dr. Lipsey and his colleagues constructed a database and meta-analysis of evaluation findings for intervention programs across the country that prevent or reduce delinquency. This analysis showed that programs effective in reducing recidivism in youth offenders exhibited the following characteristics:
- Provided certain services. Used juvenile justice systems that play a distinct role.
- Delivered a sufficient amount of service.
- Delivered services to the most appropriate juvenile sub-population.
Portions of this material are copyrighted by the Division of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention and the Center for Evaluation Research and Methodology, Vanderbilt University. Approval to use any of the material in this presentation for purposes other than JJ-related activity must be obtained from the author.