Through a recently awarded grant to Boston University from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, we will evaluate investigative training that will be developed to support Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task forces. Trainings developed by Boston University will focus on Internet of Things (IoT) and cryptocurrency tracking and we will collect information to improve the trainings as they are developed and piloted with ICAC investigators.

The Riverside County Probation Department receives funds from the California Board of State and Community Corrections’ (BSCC) Juvenile Justice Crime Prevention Act (JJCPA). With these funds, the probation department supports other Riverside County agencies (i.e., District Attorney’s Office, Sheriff’s Department) and community-based organizations to provide programming to youth offenders and youth deemed to be at high risk of offending. Beginning in October 2019, the probation department contracted with our team to provide evaluation services for its JJCPA-funded programs. We developed data collection tools and resources for the evaluation and provided annual reports describing the number of youth and families served, the types of services and programs provided, and changes in outcomes related to the number of new arrests, length of supervision, school day attendance, mental health and well-being, and social and emotional competencies.

The JPRC won the new contract for this work in 2024. We will continue to evaluate the effectiveness of the programs currently funded by the JJCPA grant and will update the County’s Juvenile Justice Plan for the next 3 years. The JPRC will also provide a report on the programs’ effectiveness to reduce recidivism, identify any gaps in service and areas where programmatic changes need to be made, update the Riverside County Juvenile Justice Plan, and identify regional needs of target populations throughout Riverside County.

 

The JPRC and the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (NICJR) have been funded by the California Bureau of State and Community Corrections (BSCC) to conduct the project, Identifying Effective Interventions and Replicable Strategies for Reducing Racial and Ethnic Disparities. The JPRC team and NICJR will use a mixed-methods approach utilizing quantitative and qualitative data to address questions related to identifying what works to reduce racial and ethnic disparities. The research approach will result in four deliverables: (1) the identification of juvenile racial and ethnic disparity metrics; (2) the development of a data dashboard displaying these metrics at the county and state levels; (3) rich qualitative findings from an in-depth review of a sample of counties to identify county policies, practices, and interventions that contribute and/or mitigate such disparities; and (4) a framework to help guide the BSCC and the Racial and Ethnic Disparities Subcommittee.