District of Columbia Juvenile Justice System
In its 2007-2011 long-range plan, the Council for Court Excellence board identified juvenile justice as one of the priority areas for CCE action throughout that period. CCE has completed three juvenile justice projects:

• Guide to the D.C. Juvenile Justice System
• Evaluation of Juvenile Speedy Trial Legislation
• DC Juvenile Arrest Data

Guide to the D.C. Juvenile Justice System
In June 2009, the Council for Court Excellence published a Guide to the DC Juvenile Justice System, in English and Spanish. The guide is the first written roadmap for the general public about how the DC juvenile justice system operates, how a case moves from arrest to discharge, what roles various government and non-governmental agencies and individuals play, and what rights victims of juvenile crime have.

Speaking at the press conference to release the guide, Robert Spagnoletti, the former DC Attorney General who led the committee that produced the guide, said “Last year nearly 3,400 youth were prosecuted in the DC Superior Court’s Juvenile Court. For these youth and their families, the system has been utterly bewildering. The information in this guide will be a great help to youth and their families, but it will be just as important to victims of juvenile crime, who also need to know how things work.”

Marie Johns, the Council for Court Excellence’s board chair, explained “When our board decided to focus on improving juvenile justice, we found very quickly that almost no one could explain to us how the system works. That convinced us that our first major juvenile project should be this guide – to bring some transparency to the system.”

Spagnoletti added, “it’s a confidential system as to the identities of the youth, but that makes it even more important for the community to understand how the system works."

CCE is distributing the English and Spanish guides widely, through the public libraries and private and public agencies. Copies may also be downloaded from our Community Education Publications Page.

Evaluation of Juvenile Speedy Trial Legislation
In September 2008, CCE released its evaluation of the impact of a new DC juvenile justice law that for the first time set a trial deadline for juveniles who are placed in out-of-home “shelter care” prior to trial; a statutory trial deadline already existed for youth who are placed in secure detention prior to trial. The evaluation found that the DC juvenile justice system achieved a high rate of compliance with the speedy trial deadlines and with reducing the time juveniles spent in secure detention following an order to shelter care.

CCE performed the evaluation under a competitively-bid contract from the DC Council, which wanted to know the effect of the law before enacting it as permanent legislation. CCE testified on the evaluation’s findings and recommendations in October 2008 at a DC Council hearing.

Juvenile Arrest Data
About 7% of all the arrests made by the DC Metropolitan Police Department are arrests of juveniles; the remaining 93% of arrests are of adults. In 2006, the Council for Court Excellence analyzed a wide variety of data related to juvenile arrests for the Washington DC Police Fund.