Juvenile Justice

Title V of the reauthorization of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 established an incentive grants program for local delinquency prevention. The reauthorization also required GAO to study the incentive grant program and report its findings to Congress. This report determines (1) which states and how many local government units applied for and received title V incentive grants; (2) how much fiscal years 1994 and 1995 grant money had been awarded and how much had been spent as of the end of 1995; (3) what the sources and the amounts of matching funds committed to local delinquency prevention projects were; (4) what title V funds were used for; (5) whether eligibility requirements have affected title V participation; and (6) what funding, other than title V, was provided to support local delinquency prevention activities.

GAO found that: (1) as of March 1996, $29.6 of the $33 million in 1994 and 1995 Title V grants had been awarded to 54 jurisdictions and an additional $1 million was awarded for 6 grants to local jurisdictions under the Safe Futures Program; (2) of the 51 jurisdictions reviewed, 45 awarded $18.9 million in Title V subgrants to local governments to support 277 delinquency prevention projects; (3) these subgrantees spent about $3.6 million of their funds as of December 1995; (4) 44 jurisdictions received $17.2 million in Title V matching funds for 1994 and 1995; (5) 7 jurisdictions did not award subgrants; (6) the 2-year total funding for the 277 local delinquency prevention projects was about $36 million; (7) most of these projects addressed delinquency affecting youth in early or middle adolescence; (8) over 75 percent of the projects emphasized the prevention of delinquent activity, attempted to reduce delinquent behavior and recidivism, and addressed multiple risk factors; (9) most projects used community-based outreach intervention programs and services as well as some sort of parent training in conflict resolution and after-school program; (10) local governments generally reported that act's core requirements were not a barrier to local government participation in Title V program activities; (11) while 19 jurisdictions devoted $319 million in funds to support delinquency prevention activities in 1995, 31 jurisdictions did not know how much local or private funding was devoted to these activities; and (12) in 1995, nine other federal agencies reportedly spent $4.3 billion to support juvenile delinquency prevention, juvenile justice, or youth-related programs.