1. Research on the disparate impact of the justice system on minority youth, on the effects of new adult-court transfer legislation in the states, and on the privatization of juvenile justice facilities by for-profit corporations;

2. Analyses of decision-making at critical points in the justice system, including arrest, detention, adjudication, and disposition;

3. Direct advocacy on behalf of youth in the justice system, particularly on issues that disproportionately affect youth of color such as conditions of confinement in jails, prisons, and juvenile facilities; access to counsel and adequacy of representation in juvenile court; and zero tolerance and other issues relating to school suspensions and expulsions;

4. Constituency-building among African American, Latino, and Native American and other minority organizations, as well as organizations in the medical, mental health, legal, law enforcement, child welfare, civil rights, human rights, religious, victim's rights, and domestic violence areas, at the national, state, and local levels;

5. Development of communications strategies to provide timely, accurate, and relevant information to these constituencies, public officials, policymakers, the media, and the public.

The initiative is supported by the Annie E. Casey, Ford, Walter Johnson, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur, and Rockefeller Foundations, and the Center on Crime, Communities & Culture of the Open Society Institute.

The authors would like to gratefully acknowledge the vision and effort of the many individuals forming the Building Blocks for Youth initiative. Special thanks are extended to Mark Soler, Marc Schindler, Vincent Schiraldi, and Carolyn Haynes for valuable feedback and editing assistance.

The Authors

Ms. Poe-Yamagata has authored and co-authored several publications including: Females in the Juvenile Justice System, Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 1997 Update on Violence, and Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 1996 Update on Violence and a forthcoming OJJDP report on juvenile transfers to criminal court.

Michael A. Jones is a senior researcher and director of forecasting with the National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD). Previously based in Washington, DC for several years, he has recently returned to NCCD's Oakland, California office. Prior to joining NCCD in 1990, Mr. Jones served as research and planning director for the Virginia Department of Corrections. He has conducted numerous research, evaluation and population projection studies in the areas of juvenile justice and adult corrections in over 25 states across the country. Mr. Jones directs NCCD's offender population projections program and since 1990, he developed offender simulation and projection models for numerous state and local agencies across the country and in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. In the areas of sentencing guidelines and reform, Mr. Jones completed formal assessments of recently enacted truth-in-sentencing proposals for the Oklahoma and Nevada legislatures and is presently working with the Arkansas and Kansas Sentencing Commissions. In the area of juvenile justice, Mr. Jones has conducted major detention utilization studies in some of the nation's largest juvenile secure detention systems including New York City, Cook County (Chicago), Sacramento, Milwaukee and Multnomah County (Portland). Mr. Jones has conducted planning studies of state youth systems in Kansas, Kentucky, Tennessee and Louisiana.

Mr. Jones has authored and co-authored a number of publications including: NCCD Prophet Simulation Model: An Interactive Microcomputer Simulation System; The Growing Use of Boot Camps: The Current State of the Art; Trends in Juvenile Crime and Youth Violence; Images and Reality: Juvenile Crime, Youth Violence and Public Policy; Assessing the Need for Secure Detention: A Planning Approach; The Aging of California Prisons: The Impact of Three Strikes Legislation; How Long Do Prisoners Really Serve? Reporting Serving Times in the Nation' s Prisons; and NCCD's 1995 National Prison Population Forecast: The Impact of Truth in Sentencing.