HISTORY

Congressional leaders, federal agencies, and private foundations have recognized the need for a national effort focusing on improving court practice in juvenile delinquency cases. In response to this need, the Improving Juvenile and Family Court Handling of Juvenile Delinquency Cases: Guidelines for Improving Court Practice Project was started in 2002 by the NCJFCJ with funding from OJJDP.

The initial focus of the project was a national initiative to develop, refine, publish, and disseminate a set of comprehensive guidelines for improved court and systems handling of juvenile delinquency cases. After three years of work by over 100 experts in juvenile justice and allied fields, the Juvenile Delinquency Guidelines was published in 2005 for use by judges, prosecutors, defense counsel, child advocates, probation officers, law enforcement, and service providers nationwide. This important tool is framed by 16 Key Principles and numerous recommendations for practice.

Since the publication of the Juvenile Delinquency Guidelines in 2005, the focus of the project has been to disseminate the document and encourage its use by jurisdictions to help guide system reform and improve practice in delinquency cases. To this end, the project sought to mirror the successful dependency model court effort spearheaded by the Permanency Planning for Children Department of NCJFCJ and began recruiting implementation sites across the nation.

Currently, there are 12 Juvenile Justice Model Courts involved in the project, which is managed by the Juvenile and Family Law Department of NCJFCJ. With support from project staff in the form of training and technical assistance, these courts are committed to using the Juvenile Delinquency Guidelines to improve practice from intake to case closure and are leaders in this important system reform effort.