Hawaii County Comprehensive Strategy for Juvenile Justice

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Hawaii County Comprehensive Strategy for Juvenile Justice INTRODUCTION The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) has developed a Comprehensive Strategy for combating juvenile crime. It provides a framework for communities to identify and implement solutions to juvenile delinquency that is community focused and research based. The Plan coordinates prevention efforts with the juvenile justice system's response to criminal behavior through a comprehensive strategic planning process that builds on and unifies the efforts of all service and program providers and integrates the full spectrum of prevention and juvenile justice efforts. The Comprehensive Strategy is based on six general principles: • Strengthening the family in its primary responsibility to instill moral values and provide guidance and support to children. • Supporting core social institutions —including schools, religious institutions, and other community-based organizations in their roles of developing capable, mature, and responsible youth. • Promoting delinquency prevention as the most cost-effective approach to reducing juvenile delinquency. • Intervening immediately and effectively when delinquent behavior occurs to successfully prevent delinquent offenders from becoming chronic offenders or committing progressively more serious and violent crimes. • Establishing a system of graduated sanctions that holds each juvenile offender accountable, protects public safety, and provides programs and service that meet identified treatment needs. • Identifying and controlling the small group of serious, violent, and chronic juvenile offenders who have committed felony offenses or have failed to respond to intervention and non-secure community-based treatment and rehabilitation services offered by the juvenile justice system. The Comprehensive Strategy is based on a"risk-focused" prevention model that makes it possible to examine communities for known risk factors associated with juvenile delinquency and violence. These risk factors exist at the community, family, school, individual and peer levels. Based upon 30 years of research on factors related to adolescent problem behaviors (substance abuse, delinquency, teen pregnancy, school drop-out and violence), OJJDP identified 19 risk factors that contribute to these problem behaviors and three classes of protective factors that buffer a child against development of problem behaviors. Approaches that reduce risk factors while enhancing protective factors are likely to provide the strongest form of prevention. 1