Monmouth, OR

Introduction
Purpose
Action
Challenges
Summary
In the News
Contact

Introduction

The Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, located on the campus of Western Oregon University, develops collaborations with criminal justice institutions, county governments, human service organizations, non-profit service providers, and universities in Washington and Oregon. The purpose of these collaborations is to create partnerships among institutions and organizations that subscribe to the furtherance of public safety and social justice.

The Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, in collaboration with Western Oregon, is situated in a unique environment to promote public safety and social justice. The benefits of collaboration between Western Oregon University and the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice include:

• Western Oregon University is the home of Oregon's largest Criminal Justice program, which offers an opportunity for the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice to participate in the education and training of criminal justice and other social science majors who will become the next generation of criminal justice practitioners and social service providers.
  
  
  
• Western Oregon University is the current home of the Department of Public Safety Standards and Training (DPSST) which provides a vital position to train and provide public safety.
• Western Oregon University is the current home of the Western Community Policing Center which facilitates interaction and cooperation between police and other institutions, as well as promoting public safety through community policing training, education, and collaboration between institutions.
• Western Oregon University, located in the heart of the Willamette Valley, is close to the Oregon State Capital, the Oregon Supreme Court, Oregon Department of Corrections, and other crucial state offices.
• Western Oregon University offers an institutional base from which the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice can construct bridges to other universities throughout the Northwest for the purpose of collaboration and the development of institutional partnerships.
• Opportunities for students of Western Oregon University to learn and experience the relationship between applied methods and grounded theory in an atmosphere of liberal arts education which is crucial for successful practitioners and/or service providers.
• Opportunities for collaboration between Western Oregon University faculty and the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice strengthens the quality and depth of conducting policy analysis, research, and services, at local, regional, and national, levels. Such collaboration provides a high level of expertise in areas such as healthcare, race and ethnicity, geographic mapping, cultural and rural anthropology, labor relations, the self and society, criminal justice, education, and more.
  
  
  
• Western Oregon University students and faculty have the opportunity to become active participants in partnerships established with other institutions, organizations, and universities.
• Undergraduate and graduate students at Western Oregon University have opportunities for research and applied experiences that are currently not available at other universities in Oregon. These opportunities and experiences have a positive effect on the growth of undergraduate and graduate programs in social science, education, and other disciplines throughout the university.
• Western Oregon University is the hub for alliance-building and partnership development between institutions, organizations, and universities throughout the Northwest that support the goals of public safety and social justice.
• The Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice is designated as the policy analysis center for the Northwest by the nationally recognized Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice - an organization that has developed a profound national reputation for innovative community and criminal justice reform over the past 20 years. Western Oregon University is the home for this policy analysis center.

Purpose

The Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice is a participatory action research and policy planning cooperative that fosters engagement with contemporary justice issues. The Center offers a unique experiential and laboratorial facility created specifically to facilitate the development of transformational leadership in all phases of the criminal justice system. The Center's activities will include the conduct and coordination of research; organizing symposia; delivering educational programs; producing educational materials; and contributing to a variety of criminal justice-related policy initiatives.

The Center will provide a safe, politically neutral space in which to develop alternative strategies to address the persistent problems associated with social segregation, bureaucratic fragmentation, and political exclusion. Through this work the Center will demonstrate the possibility for alternative identities for individuals and neighborhoods finding themselves mired in the effects of our justice apparatus. Similarly, justice system officials will find useful, positive, and proactive alternative identities for themselves. All sides need reinvention for each to succeed.

For the first time in recent memory there is widespread bi-partisan agreement among elected officials, justice professionals, and communities that a fundamental restructuring of priorities is needed to address the crisis in criminal justice. Growth in prison and other justice system spending has out-stripped public investment in education, health care and public infrastructure, and threatens to become a permanent drain on scarce state resources. In short, the revolving door between prisons, jails, and our communities is simply not affordable, and many parts of the system are desperate for help of a different kind.

Geographic Information Systems analysis has shown that street crime and incarceration are concentrated in a relatively few distressed communities where justice spending has come at the expense of schools, social programs, and civic infrastructure. New research also shows how "penal migration"-the cycle of removing and returning people to and from a place-reaches a tipping point where further removals and returns actually destabilize communities, producing more crime instead of less, depressing property values, and increasing STD's (Sexually Transmitted Disease), unemployment, and family breakups.

The harm to children living in these hard-hit areas is especially pronounced: feelings of abandonment, anger, insecurity (physical and emotional), betrayal; all have lasting effects that soon reverberate in personal, school, and community life. The final tragic irony is that the children of incarcerated parents then themselves become more likely to end up in prison. They are the real "invisible victims" of our well intentioned, but shortsighted, justice policies.

Action

At the Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice, we believe that the complex causes of the crises in criminal justice require complex systems solutions. These are best approached from the most salient leverage points, which surely include interrupting the revolving door between prisons and communities. Justice investments can be focused on repairing the root causes and resulting harms of the many civil and institutional failures that today make young people and adults vulnerable to unlawful activity, criminalization and incarceration.

The Center is dedicated to building and sharing a practical body of knowledge that will help keep our initiatives in constant evolution and expanding ownership. The Center will work with communities and justice/prison agencies and provide technical assistance for public/private justice re-investment ventures for system innovation and community restoration. The focus will move beyond running programs to working with stakeholder organizations and institutions to redirect and leverage public and private resources for investment in equitable and sustainable justice. Neighborhood infrastructures will be capacitated to achieve commonly accepted goals based on shared accountability and broader social, political, and economic re-enfranchisement and civic participation.

The Center will host ongoing justice dialogues with all major constituencies using innovative systems-oriented methodologies. The dialogues will capture lessons learned and help develop action-agendas for implementation of reforms.

The Center will become the hub for an expanding network of organizations and individual stakeholders operating under the same shared purposes and principles.

An explicit aim of the Center will be to pursue a deep-down agenda of fostering civic participation while exploring the potential for new, revitalized organizational forms. It has been and continues to be our hope that advocacy, education, and innovation are sufficiently powerful tools to reshape local communities and society at large along more equitable lines. It is in the area of innovation that the Center promises to be both unique and effective.

The Center will be designed as an intentional learning community that features conference facilities, a retreat center, and a policy research institute. The Center will be an education facility that will conduct classes for students, the public, and justice professionals, present films and performances that feature relevant artists, and create and disseminate educational materials. The Center will also offer formal education opportunities, such as joint graduate programs, trainings, and certificates, in partnership with a consortium of local universities.

Overall, the Center will facilitate reconciliation on multiple levels: national, regional, local, familial, and personal, by using its assets and influence to:

• Promote strong social networks among community members by encouraging inclusion, broad participation, and local leadership.
• Facilitate linkages between often socially and politically isolated local neighborhoods and larger regions.
• Support student and professional continuing justice education through courses, service and learning.
• Inform public policy through research and its dissemination.
• Assume a convening role to build bridges among all stakeholders.
• Create a whole new way of thinking about criminal sanctions that takes into account the magnitude and complexity of the problem, and acknowledges a need for a holistic, systems perspective.

Challenges

Among the many challenges facing justice reform in Oregon, however, none may be greater than the often contentious, fractious relationships among key stakeholders. The inability of policy makers, administrators, community representatives, and both victim and prisoner advocates to plan and work together could defeat the best of reform intentions. We aim to turn this multifaceted and ultimately dysfunctional dynamic on its head, and use community building as both a point of entry and impetus to a brand new justice conversation. We believe that today's openness to change and urgent search for solutions provides a once-in-a-generation opportunity for societal regeneration.

The Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice will create a foundation for a new, sustainable justice and community ecology. We envision systemic and coordinated strategies to acknowledge and address the historically complex social, political, and economic conditions that define the crisis in justice governance. These strategies will:

• Create a space for collaborative justice solutions to fundamentally transform distrustful, antagonistic stakeholder relationships
• Increase shared responsibility and accountability for public safety and justice equity across the various societal sectors contributing to the current crisis
• Re-enfranchise at-risk-neighborhoods-economically and politically-through civic participation and reinvestment of justice resources to strengthen civil society institutions and increase public safety equity
• Maximize successful resettlement of residents after prison and eliminate or significantly reduce recidivism by 2020, breaking the inter-generational cycle of imprisonment

Summary

The Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice accommodates students and faculty at Western Oregon University who are interested in social and criminal justice related issues and policies. The Center is equally committed to accommodate and assist institutions and communities in their struggle to provide services throughout the Northwest. We provide an analysis center on criminal and social justice issues and policies. This Center engages in policy design, analysis, implementation of programs, and comprehensive evaluation processes. Students and faculty of Western Oregon University, as members of a broader coalition, have full access to the Center. Students are able to apply their classroom education in the real world by working on research, and working with practitioners, supervisors, and directors in the community. These students are the future practitioners and service providers in our communities.

In the News

[ Hooley Applauds Efforts at County Jail to Fight Meth - The Program Relies on Research and Science ]
Statesman Journal
8 August 2006

Marion County Program Gets Attention of
U.S. Representative Darlene Hooley

In July 2005, the Western Regional Office of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice completed a survey of Marion County, Oregon jail inmates. The results of the survey are now being used to address the methamphetamine problem and recidivism in the County.

CJCJ's survey pointed to a number of issues that lead inmates to continue behaviors like meth-use and criminal offending. These include a lack of education, a lack of parenting skills, a cycle of untreated mental illness or homelessness and a lack of resources outside of jail.

The information compiled is now being used by a coalition of local agencies to respond to the issues identified. The Children of Incarcerated Children project offers family support for children involved in the criminal justice system. The treatment model run by the County Sheriff's Department starts with the youngest victims of meth use, children under three, and proceeds to provide services to the whole family, including job placement, mental health treatment and parenting skills training,

Recently, U.S. Representative Darlene Hooley, D-Ore., toured the program and applauded its efforts to address the problem with the support of social science research and model development. She noted that the possibility of duplication is greater because of the model's foundation.

Twenty-nine people signed up for the first Children of Incarcerated Parents program. At six months, the follow-up analysis indicates that 12 individuals graduated and 17 individuals did not. Of the graduates, four were reincarcerated in the six months after graduation. 11 non-graduates were reincarcerated during the same period.

To read more of Representative Hooley's comments, please see the article from the Statesman Journal in our press room

Contact

William B. Brown, PhD
CJCJ's Northwest Regional Office Director
Monmouth, OR

Western Oregon University
HHS 223A
345 N. Monmouth
Monmouth, OR 97361

Associate Professor
Department of Criminal Justice
Western Oregon University
503-838-8912

Email: brownw@wou.edu