OJJDP Administrator Flores reflects on 6 years of failure progress in Juvenile Justice.

Fore!

And Flores left the part out on ignoring his staff in grant decision making and steering more than 50% of $8.4 million of grant money to certain individuals and organizations to well connected Bush Administration's religious and political agenda. Let's not forget the increase of gang problems, juvenile arrests, and ignoring the juveniles that most need the grant money for rehabilitation during his tenure. No apologies. No accepting responsibility. Zip. Nada.

OJJDP News:

As my tenure at OJJDP draws to a close, I wanted to take the opportunity to reflect on the accomplishments of the Office since I began as Administrator in April 2002. A leader is only as good as his team and, first and foremost, I want to thank the dedicated men and women in OJJDP and all of our partners in the field for their hard work and commitment to improving the lives of youth in this country.

These past 6½ years with OJJDP have been both challenging and rewarding.

Together we have made outstanding achievements in the field of juvenile justice and improved conditions for the children of this country. We have made progress in difficult areas such as reducing youth gang activity, improving child safety, building new tools to enable States to make significant reductions in disproportionate minority contact, fulfilling trust responsibilities with tribal communities, and increased partnerships and collaboration between Federal agencies in addressing the needs of youth who often receive services from multiple social service providers across multiple sectors.

Faith-based and small community organizations play an important role in everything from mentoring youth in detention to helping gang-involved youth. My efforts to reach out to this extensive resource and include them in our mission have yielded great dividends. Their work demonstrates the power we can harness from people who live and work in the communities where need is greatest. We need every hand at the tasks before us and this work demonstrates that these partners can add invaluable aid that should be continued in years to come.

While challenges lie ahead, we can and should recognize where we have succeeded and work to expand and export those programs and practices that have demonstrated positive results. In that same way, we must also be willing to abandon those efforts that are not successful.

Overall, OJJDP's efforts remained focused on the goals of the Office in a period of change, by addressing new challenges—from youth gangs to child prostitution—in ways that advanced the basic responsibilities of the Office. What follows is a brief chronology highlighting our accomplishments. As our time together draws to a close, I hope you are as proud of these achievements as I am.