8/28/06 -- The National Center for Juvenile Justice’s Technical Assistance to the Juvenile Court Project produces Special Project Bulletins, supported by a grant from the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Special Project Bulletins are developed periodically on important juvenile justice issues and emerging topics for best practice. NCJJ recently released three new bulletins in the series:

Guide to the State Juvenile Justice Profiles guides users through the layout and content of the State Juvenile Justice Profiles website.  The web site is organized to make it easy to find the national and state-specific information for which you are searching.

The Importance of Timely Case Processing in Non-Detained Juvenile Delinquency Cases
Although unnecessary delays in juvenile court case processing increase the likelihood of a juvenile’s continuing and escalating law-violating behavior, few jurisdictions actually monitor the amount of time needed to process delinquency cases. This bulletin lists seven steps for achieving timely court processing, one of the Juvenile Delinquency Guidelines’ key principles.  It also describes promising practices and programs that help courts speed up case processing of non-detained delinquency cases, such as youth courts and school-based intake probation officers.

How Does the Juvenile Justice System Measure Up? Applying Performance Measures in Five Jurisdictions presents a case for measuring and reporting juvenile justice system performance outcomes.  Two state systems, Pennsylvania and South Carolina, and three county-level jurisdictions, Allegheny County, PA, Deschutes County, OR, and Marquette County, MI, are used as examples illustrating that it is both possible and useful to measure juvenile justice system performance for individuals, agencies, and entire systems. The bulletin also describes six essential features of a strategy for measuring juvenile justice performance.

All seven Special Project Bulletins can be downloaded for free from NCJJ’s website. Limited numbers of hard copies are available. For copies, please contact NCJJ at (412) 227-6950 or ncjj@ncjj.org.