ten to fifteen years at least twenty developed new programming for girls in the juvenile justice system for example in the early ninety's minnesota began a rewarding model program grants to community juvenile offender today for this discussion i guess we're all used to the fact that girls and women have different problems in the criminal justice system and we have to do much more about it than we have specially glad to see miss vi or miss your i don't know how much you testify before congressional committees but we and members of the committee mr chairman i'm not happy that the acting director over at department of justice just a lower cost did not see fit to come before the committee today i just called his boss the director of the office of legislative affairs to tell him so  place so looking at it on television doesn't get it for me and i want to meet with him and the director to  we're working with chairman miller and chairmen and judges to make sure we craft some legislation that's going to get us somewhere and  increasing the office of dubin of justice and delinquency prevention within the department takes the federal lead in helping to identify what programs are effective for juveniles and in providing grant funding for these programs you asked us to review the office's effort to assess the effectiveness of girls delinquency programs and its plans to address is finding in response we reviewed the results from the ongoing girls study group which the office funded with a two point six million dollar multi year cooperative agreement in two thousand and four the group's goals include to identify effective or promising programs gaps in research and recommendations for the future in summary we found that first the study group concluded a few girls delinquency programs had been assessed and none of the assessments showed conclusive evidence that the programs were effective second relatively few resources have been devoted to this issue and third justice needs a transparent plan to address the finding to help break the cycle of delinquency the girl study group comprised of fifteen members mainly lead researchers in the field identified sixty one programs to specifically address girls  delinquency but they found that only seventeen programs had been studied and none of the studies showed conclusive evidence of effectiveness as a result among other things the group called for increased efforts to evaluate programs to determine what worked and to publicize it social programs to the juvenile justice community we determined that the groups approach was in line with social science practices and standards but some researchers and practitioners were critical of the methods used they feared that the group standards for effectiveness the program assessments based on a random controlled research design were too hard to meet and that the group eliminated promising programs that communities could use both the group and justice defended the approach however saying that they wanted to ensure that they identify programs certain to work before community spent their money on them the juvenile justice offices had discretionary funds to devote to identifying effective girls program the office has not had funding targeted to research and evaluation since it received ten million dollars in two thousand and five for these purposes since then the office has set aside about thirty three million dollars through two thousand and eight or about three percent from it other appropriation accounts to fund such research but the girl's delinquency issues compete with many of other juvenile justice issues for the set aside fund likewise girls programs compete with other juvenile programs for state and local grant funding for example justice reports in two thousand and seven and eight states use only one percent of their title to forming the grandson girls program not quite two million dollars and that it could provide only about another one point eight million in two thousand and seven  discretionary grants for this purpose based on the girl's study group finding justice is determined that it needs to better prepare programs for evaluation and to fund more evaluation therefore the juvenile justice office is funding a workshop this month to help about ten to twelve programs prepare for evaluation it also hopes to issue a solicitation early two thousand and ten just support a limited number of program or evaluations depending on available funding finally the office expects to provide more training technical assistance information dissemination of programs on girls delinquency issues and the long term but the office could not provide a document showing the steps it would take the people it would hold responsible the deadlines it would set and the in jacksonville florida in girls and young women is grounded in the courageous life experiences of girls and young women who are caught in the juvenile justice and the child welfare system we seek to be the passionate voice for activism to ensure equitable humane and gender appropriate responses to improve outcomes for girls prior to coming to this hearing i had the opportunity to meet with girls who were spending much of their adolescence behind razor wire and facilities in florida and i asked the girls what would they say if they had the opportunity to be individuals who had the power to create change in how the juvenile justice our parents couldn't do somebody we didn't have a friend we don't have anyone really to talk to that's where you can start to help us whether we are good or bad  life and ok with what has happened in my i know i've learned so much from my past and can use my experience to help other young women and maybe lawns and something similar when i go to the detention centers i see the same patterns happening and myself sometimes the girls just want someone to know and i'm sure i can be that person them if they want someone to write so they can write me and i'll make sure are right we have a pen pal program and to help the girls in detention my name is not i am twenty three years old i was born in a women's prison where my mother was locked up when i was two days i was taken from my mother and placed with my grandmother in san francisco california i never knew my father and my mother was incarcerated my entire life i was raised by my grandmother who was forced to pay for the extra expense of caring for me we lived in public housing much of a future for myself due in part to a lack of positive role model the positive role models that existed at the time were not made visible to me in my neighborhood or in my school public schools complete with rundown facilities outdated curricula that undervalued minority communities and overall had a very low standard of excellence at thirteen i got arrested for the first time and was charged with assault i was community capacity by providing research and data to our court offenders are more likely to be placed in the environment most appropriate for rehabilitation and the collaborative efforts of our agency and  career planning and re entry to ensure a well planned community re entry strategy which is vital for any offender returning and although the work we do within our facilities to address the specific needs of girls is critical the country often create programs that are not evidence based and may not work so we need research and evaluation support to ensure that the programs being administered are not harmful but in fact the desired you want to be a detective detectives go to law school hearing said in a hearing much longer than we're going to sit in and here's what i've suggested to my chief of staff to the chairman and to the judge  all of us that can and will let's gather in an informal setting and discuss some of th identify right now they're trying to choose ten to twelve different programs that they will set up to be evaluated so that they can better identify what ones will work for community did you have topics that programs well instead in a separate review that we're doing for you as well it's not specifically focused on girls but focus on effective types of juvenile justice programs and so we are looking at eight to ten models and what the researchers say about those models and which ones have been more effective than others and so in that report which we expect we are looking at different types of programs that prove to be more promising than others at the top of the list would be family based programs that do involve the family the other things that the research what about what about going to holistic long term prevention and early causes because when we talk about prevention i mean you can look one step back what would prevent things like would be best to go to the real heart of what created the different things along the way or what have we done and one of the things that broke my heart when i was saying adult women repeatedly the same story where out of the best of not realizing they get farther and farther behind and then they would either go get a job and not tell the welfare workers now it's a felony you've got to come to court because welfare fraud some of them got involved in drug