Colorado will focus its efforts on improving the juvenile justice system

The Colorado Department of Public Safety, Division of Criminal Justice will receive $797,505 under the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's Formula Grant program to support efforts to improve Colorado's juvenile justice system from October 1, 2022 to September 30, 2026. Key initiatives include delinquency prevention programs, addressing youth violence, implementing juvenile justice requirements, and reducing racial/ethnic disparities. The Division will also support juvenile justice programming for Indian tribes and urban Native American youth. Initiatives will focus on culturally appropriate secure detention services, school-based delinquency prevention partnerships, and law enforcement training. The state will continue research and evaluation efforts and collect performance measures for the federal government. Funding will support strategic juvenile justice system improvements through evidence-based programs and engagement of professionals and youth.

This will happen in various ways, from delinquency prevention, to programs addressing youth violence and violent crimes, to implementation of the core requirements, both compliance monitoring and reducing racial and ethnic disparities. CO will continue to utilize funds for planning and administration and the state advisory group. In addition, indian tribe programming will support juvenile justice and delinquency prevention programming within the tribe(S) and within urban areas to support non-reservation based native american populations in colorado. The state will work to address red by supporting the 18TH JD as they implement a pilot project focused on culturally specific services to youth in secure detention, support the 1ST judicial district in their efforts to prevent delinquency by partnering with schools and testing intervention strategies. In addition, the R.E.D. Work will continue to partner with local law enforcement agencies to train in the connecticut evidence based curriculum effective police interactions with youth in an on-going effort law enforcement has in protecting juvenile rights. The jjdp council identified several new priorities in 2021 and confirmed the continuation of some of their previous priority's activities. The first new project and committee, the school to prison pipeline, will look at the issues around the suspensions and expulsions of youth currently involved in the juvenile justice system and the referrals to law enforcement for school discipline issues. The second new project and committee, will look at the rise of violent crime committed by youth in colorado. The council will continue the children's code committee that will focuses on reviewing the CO children's code in a manner that ensures IT embraces the developmental hallmarks, research, and best practices. The council will continue to support the emerging leaders (EL) committee in their efforts to improve the juvenile justice system by educating professionals on the value of including youth in all aspects of planning and development of services and other strategies aimed at improving youth's lives. In addition, the council will continue to support research and evaluation that often leads to practice changes across the state. Lastly, so the federal office of juvenile justice and delinquency prevention can aggregate data from states to show outcomes, the division of criminal justice (DCJ) coordinates and monitors reporting of performance measures in the federal on-line tool annually. Programs funded also complete and submit programmatic narrative and financial information quarterly.