Discretionary Grant Programs Juvenile Accountability Block Grant Programs
Formula and Title V Grant Programs Discretionary Grant Programs
General Questions
Do existing grantees and subgrantees have to use these performance measures?
Yes, include all active grantees and subgrants as of the beginning of the reporting period. There may be program-specific exclusions, so check the specific instructions for the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) grant program under which you are funded.
Will there be repercussions for grantees that do not show "adequate" performance?
OJJDP will use the performance measure data to show Congress what is being accomplished nationally with OJJDP funds and whether the federal OJJDP programs are fulfilling their missions. Recipients/grantees are expected to use this feedback to adjust their administration of OJJDP funds to improve program performance. Consistently failing to improve program performance and/or to submit performance measure data can impact OJJDP's funding decisions.
What if grantees or subgrantees collect additional data?
That is fine, but grantees should not submit such data to OJJDP through the performance measurement system. The only data that OJJDP requests through this portal from grantees relate specifically to the list of performance measures. OJJDP may have other data-reporting requirements for grantees, related to a multisite evaluation or other activity. Refer to the specific OJJDP grant program under which you are funded for more information.
Can we modify existing data to fit OJJDP's needs?
Only if the existing data will exactly match the requested data. Data that are similar to the requested data, but not an exact match, cannot be aggregated by OJJDP with the data from other grantees.
Who can I contact if I have questions?
Your OJJDP grant manager or State Representative should be your primary contact.
Selecting Performance Measures and Collecting Data
How are youth-related outputs and outcomes measured if a project is more of a strategy and does not directly serve youth (e.g., a training program for probation officers or a program to build community capacity to reduce underage drinking)?
When a state, locality, or multisite program is using funds to implement or develop a strategy to bring about systems change at a policy level, it should report on the specific performance measures that apply to the activity (e.g., number of state/local agencies reporting improved data collection systems, number and percent of program staff with increased knowledge of program). But, in most cases, such projects will also be expected to provide some data on the ultimate outcome of those activities with regard to their effect on youth. For more information about reporting youth outcomes, please refer to the guidance provided for the specific OJJDP grant program under which you are funded.
Why use arrest or juvenile court contact to measure recidivism rather than other access points?
Recidivism or reoffending is generally understood as a return to crime. While there is no commonly accepted measure of recidivism, it is generally measured at one of four access points in the juvenile justice process: arrest, intake, adjudication, or incarceration. While the preferred performance measurement for reoffending is arrest, referral to juvenile court intake is also an acceptable measure of reoffending. These various measures have many advantages, but each also has disadvantages. Arrest may identify youth who were later released by the police, whose charges were dismissed by the courts, or who were found not guilty at an adjudication hearing. Intake can overrepresent the number of youth brought before the court more so than arrest because cases can be referred to court intake by a number of sources besides law enforcement agencies, such as social services agencies, schools, parents, probation officers, and victims. Adjudication does not take into account the results of plea-bargaining and insufficient evidence. Incarceration typically reflects the more serious crimes and overrepresents offenders with lengthy justice histories. Other important factors include the seriousness of the new charge and the duration of followup. Finally, some observers argue that a reliance on "official" measures of crime to assess recidivism is altogether misleading because these measures miss the many crimes that escape detection by law enforcement. The performance measure of reoffending allows the grantee to use either arrest, juvenile court referral, or juveniles' self-reports.
Some grantees and subgrantees do not have access to police or court records. How can they collect and report these statistics?
Grantees and subgrantees will need to develop data-sharing relationships with law enforcement agencies, juvenile courts, schools, child welfare agencies, and others with needed performance measurement outcome data. Interagency agreements, commonly known as Memoranda of Understanding (MOU) or letters of commitment, will need to be developed. Such agreements specify the types of data that can be shared between agencies, the conditions under which the data can be shared, and policies regarding security of records, dissemination, and retention/destruction of data and records. For excellent examples of model interagency agreements, see Appendix D in OJJDP's Sharing Information: A Guide to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and Participation in Juvenile Justice Programs (NCJ 163705).
How should we measure the outcomes of youth who do not exit the program during the project period?
Youth who are enrolled in long-term programs and do not exit the program during the project period should be assessed using short-term outcome measures.
How can we produce an unduplicated count of youth served?
The number of youth served for a specified reporting period should count the number of new admissions to a program during that period plus the number of current program youth carried over from the previous reporting period.
Program Reporting Period and Tracking Program Participants
For how long after the conclusion of grant funding is the program/project responsible for data collection?
In general, all OJJDP grantees are responsible for reporting on the performance indicators relevant to their specific funding stream. For most, this includes reporting on the long-term outcomes for the service population (e.g., youth, families, or communities). Long-term outcomes refer to changes realized 6 to 12 months after a participant has left the program and apply to both completers and noncompleters. In some cases, especially for shorter programs (e.g., a 6-week training curriculum), this long-term outcome period will occur during a program's funding period and will require that program staff gather followup data on program participants. In other cases, the long-term outcomes of those served will occur after the end of the program's OJJDP funding. In these cases, it is still desirable to collect and report long-term data. These data will be extremely useful to OJJDP in measuring the outcomes of its programs and can also help grantees secure future funding by demonstrating successful performance. Please contact your OJJDP grant monitor for guidance and tools to help you collect long-term outcome data for your program.
Youth in these programs are often transient and difficult to track. Please clarify followup tracking system requirements.
While collecting data on outcomes is essential to demonstrate the success of a federal program, it is important to acknowledge the significant challenge that grantees and subgrantees face in obtaining data to measure performance for programs of this kind. The tracking of services to individuals is a very difficult task. For this reason, OJJDP has provided tools and tips for grantees and subgrantees to use in tracking youth and reporting findings. Many of these tools and tips are available on the San Antonio Training Materials Web page. For example, to locate participants to administer the followup survey, it is often useful to arrange for a locator form to be completed at admission and sent home periodically during the program. The locator has names and contact information for the parents/guardian or someone who will always know the whereabouts of the participant. Postage-paid reminder cards can be sent prior to the followup to remind participants that they will be contacted shortly and request a notification of address changes. In addition, many of the required performance measures use archival data, such as "number of participants who reoffend," that can be obtained from police records or court data, without actually locating and surveying each youth.
Reporting
What options are available for reporting the data?
Data will be reported to OJJDP on a to-be-designated site maintained by an OJJDP contractor and will also be submitted as an attachment on GMS.
What if grantees or subgrantees collect data on more than the required number of performance measures? Should grantees to report on as many performance measures as possible or only the mandatory ones?
Grantees or subgrantees can report on more measures as long as they also use the approved OJJDP measures. Some grantees or subgrantees may want to collect data on performance measures outside of the approved OJJDP performance measurement system for their own purposes. They can do so but should not report them to OJJDP (or states, in the case of subgrantees) because such data cannot be aggregated on a national basis. For more detail about the mandatory indicators for your grant, please refer to the guidance provided for the specific OJJDP grant program under which you are funded.
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