Memo to lawmakers: Had you learned from the former OJJDP Administrator Al Regnery probe?

Written by Biloxi

Apparently, Congress and Senate haven't. Current OJJDP Administrator J. Robert Flores is not the first Administrator in the DOJ that awarded grants for a political or personal agenda. Meet Al Regnery.

In June 1986, reporter Murray Waas wrote an article of an OJJDP Administrator in the Reagan Administration who awarded grants for political reasons. According to Waas, Al Regnery awarded grant money to the dean of the late Jerry Falwell's Liberty College to devise a high-school course on the Constitution. He awarded $789,000 to a former songwriter for "Captain Kangaroo" to study pornographic cartoons in Penthouse, Playboy, and Hustler. Children under Regnery's leadership became less of a priority and diverted grants from the juvenile crime prevention programs to personal friends. Sounds familiar like in the case of J. Robert Flores.

Al Regnery resigned after being criticized by Congress and confronted with allegations that he, like Flores, had disregarded the recommendations of his career staff and federal regulations to award grants for political or personal agenda.

During a hearing from the Senate, Senator Howard Metzenbaum asked Regnery, "What have you done with respect to juvenile justice matters as far as studying the issues?" Here was the exchange:

Regnery: I have done considerable reading and other study on the juvenile courts system.

Metzenbaum: Tell us some of the works you have read concerning juvenile justice.

Regnery: I guess I cannot give you a list of them off the top of my head.

Metzenbaum: Can you give us any?

Regnery: Well, they are in my office. I cannot think of the titles and the authors, but they are either in my office or my home. I have read quite a number I have also studied the issue of juvenile courts. I have studied the issue of juvenile corrections.

Metzenbaum: How did you study the issue of juvenile courts?

Regnery: Reading.

Metzenbaum: What did you read?

Regnery: Various books and articles.

Metzenbaum: What books?

Regnery: I will have to give them to you. I cannot remember all the titles of the books I have read, Senator.

Read on.

Funny how history repeats itself in the OJJDP and the mistakes weren't corrected by Congress and Senate quickly under Flores' leadership . Unless the Obama Administration in 2009 puts an end of corruption with in the OJJDP and restore transparency and accountability, the OJJDP department will be the defintion of insanity: doing the same thing over again expected a different results.