Thank you so much for having me here and I bring you greetings from Assistant Attorney General Schofield. I may be new still to the Community Capacity Development Office, having served as the director for several months, but I have been with the Office of Justice Programs for many years. I am here to tell you about the things we do, and to honor the work that you do.

I titled this speech “The Office of Justice Programs: Helping You Strengthen Your Community.” We value our partnership with you, and we want you to not just know about OJP's support, but to feel it. We are working for common outcomes.

We want you to consider us partners and help us foster a collaborative relationship with you. I hope by now everyone realizes that simply throwing money at a problem does not work. You need a strategy, cooperation, concepts, and synergy. Money runs out, but a strategy endures. Of course we make grants, but money without a plan is almost like having nothing at all.

At CCDO , our flagship “Weed and Seed” strategy is a perfect example of what works when you have a plan. We help community stakeholders design their own initiatives for bringing down crime and drug use. Weed and Seed provides an opportunity for community leaders, practitioners, and residents to voice their ideas. In fact, we changed our guidelines for this coming year to emphasize planning and development.

With more than 300 Weed and Seed sites nationwide along with the awarding of 32 new sites that Assistant Attorney General Schofield announced last month, we have an opportunity for sites to coordinate with Project Safe Neighborhoods; couple intensive crime reduction strategies with recreational and educational programs; run gang intervention services and parent gang awareness classes; and help organize prevention, intervention, and treatment programs. Community policing functions as the bridge between the “weeding” out of criminal activity and the “seeding” of social services. Collaboration and communication are not buzzwords for our sites; they are building blocks and intrinsic to their success. OJP wants to do as much as it can to help you in the same way.

One of the most stunning successes at CCDO and an example of a comprehensive Weed and Seed strategy is the new VITA program, where sites are learning to run Volunteer Income Tax Assistance centers. In partnership with the IRS, CCDO provides the computer lab and technical assistance for sites to help low- to moderate income families prepare their returns and learn about programs that can help them save money, like the EITC, the Earned Income Tax Credit. The 50 VITA centers processed more than 11,000 tax returns worth more than $15 million in tax refunds and credits last tax season. This year there will be almost 100 centers in our Weed and Seed sites. We have a lot of information on our Web site, including materials in Spanish, about the EITC and VITA.

DRUG COURTS

Drug courts are now integral components of many Weed and Seed neighborhoods.

In the budget President Bush sent to Congress earlier this year, he proposed more than 69 million dollars for drug courts nationwide. That's an increase of more than 59 million dollars over last year's enacted level. We recognize a continuing need to assist you at the state and local level, and the President has sent a strong expression of his support.

We in OJP are especially proud of our support of hundreds of new drug courts—today, there are more than 1,600 drug courts in the United States—and we have also explored their effectiveness. For example, the National Institute of Justice followed 17,000 drug court graduates and found that, within one year of graduation, only 16 percent had been re-arrested and charged with a felony. That compares with a 43 percent re-arrest rate for those who did not graduate from a drug court. By the two-year mark, the recidivism rate for graduates rose a little to 27 percent, but that's in contrast to an almost 60 percent rate of re-offending for non-graduates. The difference in both instances is remarkable.

Drug courts have economic benefits, too. Incarcerating drug offenders costs between 20,000 dollars and 50,000 dollars a year for each offender. By contrast, drug courts usually cost between 2,500 dollars and 4,000 dollars a year for each offender. And that doesn't even account for the considerable indirect expenses incurred by our public health and criminal justice systems in arresting, prosecuting, and treating recurring abusers.

Despite the proliferation of drug courts and their documented effectiveness, still many more substance abusers could benefit from the services available through drug courts. More than 400,000 offenders have enrolled in drug court programs to date. But that represents only four to eight percent of drug-using offenders who are on probation and living in our communities. Clearly, the need is great.

A second reason for trumpeting the value of drug courts is that they are more than just a proven drug treatment and criminal justice strategy. They actually represent a reference point for a new, more enlightened way of dealing with the problems of criminality and delinquency.

Too often, our public health and criminal justice systems operate on separate tracks. Health and mental health professionals have their responsibilities, and law enforcement officials, prosecutors, and judges have theirs.

However, no effort is made to join them. Drug courts recognize the tremendous disservice this fragmentation does to the people these systems are meant to serve. The courts bring these systems together. In this way, treatment goals and public safety goals become inseparable. And we have begun to see the wonderful merits of this new paradigm.

Again, collaboration and communication. I want to thank you for your efforts to support access to effective treatment to this critical group of of people who want to turn their lives around.

The drug court model has been so successful that it has spawned similar approaches throughout the justice system. This includes adult, juvenile, tribal and family drug courts as well as reentry courts, community courts, mental health courts, and teen courts.

These problem-solving courts are important not simply because of their effectiveness, but because they reconcile the needs of the offenders that contribute to criminality while balancing the need for public safety. If we are honestly committed to using our criminal and juvenile justice resources to make our communities safer, as well as to punish those who have done wrong, then we need to direct those resources to the root causes of criminal behavior. It's that simple.

Revolving-door justice is not an answer to our public safety problems. We know that drug-abusing criminals come back to our communities, and if not treated and given the chance to reform, they will re-offend. Using the coercive power of the court to—quite honestly—give a choice of treatment or jail time, we are giving non-violent offenders the opportunity to reform.

At the Office of Justice Programs, we believe that these problem-solving methods of holding non-violent offenders accountable are the best way to achieve true personal reform. They're humane, they're compassionate, but they are tough. Drug courts contribute to ending the plague of drug abuse.

We'll keep working with you and other organizations to promote drug courts. And we'll keep encouraging communities to adopt drug court models.

REENTRY

At CCDO, we do even more to help the ex-offender population. In an inter-agency agreement with the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) we have resolved to:

Reduce ex-offender recidivism and crime with a focus on Weed and Seed communities, and promote successful reentry into society by connecting mayoral and DOJ reentry initiatives with linkages to volunteer support and grassroots and faith-based and community initiatives.

and

Build capacity for President Bush's reentry and mentoring initiatives in Weed and Seed and other communities using AmeriCorps*VISTA member support to establish volunteer hubs, in collaboration with other federal partners, state service commissions, and correction institutions.

The CCDO /CNCS partnership is an important collaboration which supports the reintegration of former offenders using existing control capabilities of law enforcement and the support resources available in the faith and community-based organizations. VISTAs can help make those linkages and networks work through the leveraging of resources and the building of local collaboratives.

The supervision and support of returning offenders is a primary Weed and Seed focus. Corrections, law enforcement, and social service systems should focus in a coordinated manner, through the Weed and Seed strategy, on this easily defined high-risk population. The most effective reentry programs use an array of resources typical of both sides of the Weed and Seed continuum.

I noticed that one of the workshops here is about TASC working in Ohio with the reentry community through Citizen Circles. The first Citizen Circle was established in the Toledo Weed and Seed site; today, Ohio has between 20 and 25 Circles. Weed and Seed is ready to help expand that number in different sites.

MENTAL HEALTH COURTS

Our Bureau of Justice Assistance, in coordination with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, administers the Mental Health Courts Program. This program funds projects that seek to mobilize communities to implement innovative, collaborative efforts that bring systemwide improvements to the way the needs of adult offenders with mental disabilities or illnesses are addressed.

The goal of this grant program is to decrease the frequency of clients' contacts with the criminal justice system by improving their social functioning through stable employment, housing, treatment, and support services.

The program is designed to provide continuing judicial supervision—including periodic review—to qualified offenders with mental illness, mental retardation, or co-occurring mental illness and substance abuse disorders who are charged with misdemeanors and/or non-violent offenses.

For example, this program would:

Give specialized training to criminal justice personnel to identify and address the unique needs of offenders who are mentally ill or mentally disabled.

Provide defendants with voluntary outpatient or inpatient mental health treatment, and permit the possibility of dismissal of charges or reduced sentencing on successful completion of treatment.

Centralize the management of cases that involve mentally ill or mentally disabled defendants (including probation violations), and coordinate all of the mental health treatment plans and social services for each participant who requires such services.

Continue supervision of treatment plan compliance for a term not to exceed the maximum allowable sentence or probation for the charged or relevant offense and, to the extent practicable, ensure continuity of psychiatric care at the end of the supervised period.

For more information on technical assistance available under this program, visit the BJA Mental Health Courts Program page at www.consensusproject.org and/or register for the Consensus Project e-newsletter.

I also want to mention the new funding we received under the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Act.

This new program, funded at 5 million dollars in 2006, provides resources to support collaboration with mental health partners throughout the system, including partnerships with adult and juvenile, law enforcement, courts and corrections. It also allows for strategies to cross train criminal justice and treatment staff about criminal justice, substance abuse, and mental health issues.

This will allow us to expand on our problem-solving courts to address all the points when those with mental health issues may come in contact with the criminal justice system.

This funding also will support the critical issue of co-occurring mental health and substance abuse disorders. We encourage you to partner with your criminal justice and mental health partners to take advantage of these important approaches.

More information about this program can be found on BJA's Web site.

METHAMPHETAMINE

One of our biggest challenges is the spread of methamphetamine.

According to the most recent data, 583,000 people are “current users” of meth, meaning that they report having used meth within the previous 30 days.

Some 1.4 million people report having used meth within the last year. That's almost four times the number of heroin users in the United States . Sixty percent of counties rank meth as their biggest drug problem.

Attorney General Gonzales has made fighting meth one of his top priorities. Last year, the Justice Department teamed up with the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and the Department of Health and Human Services to launch a Web site that helps in fighting the spread of meth.

MethResources.gov provides a host of resources on issues ranging from enforcement to clean-up to drug-endangered children. It also provides information on state laws designed to prevent and reduce meth use.

For our part, OJP is helping to support training and technical assistance for criminal justice practitioners. We continue to fund the Drug Prosecution and Prevention Program, which is managed by National District Attorneys Association's American Prosecutors Research Institute. That program is working to educate and train prosecutors on the problems associated with meth.

BJA also supports training for law enforcement on identifying and responding to meth labs. The issues associated with meth production create a critical need for an approach that ensures officer and community safety and reduces the dangers associated with exposure to meth labs. Through these trainings, state and local partners learn about how to effectively clean up the site, assess and address child and community safety issues, dispose properly of materials, and protect officers while they are at these labs.

States are responding to the problem by passing laws that make it harder for meth makers to get the ingredients they need.

Through our Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, OJP also is working with states to explore adding precursor drugs to the schedule of monitored drugs, in order to better manage their sales and prevent meth production.

As you may know, the Combat Meth Act contains provisions for training state and local prosecutors and for the investigation and prosecution of meth offenses. It also includes several provisions aimed at preventing the spread of meth. Those provisions improve regulation of meth precursors and toughen federal penalties for traffickers and smugglers. They also provide for grants to help children affected by meth. We applaud Congress for taking up the problem of meth.

We look forward to continuing to work together on substance abuse prevention and treatment issues. We are both reaching for the same goal of “safer communities”—it's in your name and our mission. That goal is attainable, and it seems within our reach now. We can move closer to that goal as partners.

Thank you.