Kudos to Senator Grassley for his leadership in pushing reauthorization of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA). This much needed update of the federal act does not solve some of the problems related to increasing funding for federal and state efforts, and a recent push by Senator Grassley to further investigate issues that stem from some Wisconsin compliance problems a decade ago don’t help. It is too complicated to get into the details of the compliance issues and the fraud allegations that led to internal investigations in D.C., but a recent JJIE post does illustrate that Senator Grassley is serious about this issue – and that can be a good thing, as concerns that rise to the level of fraud (now, one could argue whether $7 million is a relatively small percentage of overall funding) emerge it only makes it more difficult to seek more funding. This story was also recently addressed by NPR.
How this will impact Wisconsin yet is unknown. OJJDP has already frozen some funds that will be coming to Wisconsin pending this being cleared up. At least part of the “ball” is in Wisconsin’s court to clear up and whether or not sufficient attention and resources are being directed at this is unknown. We can applaud Senator Grassley’s advocacy on this issue while at the same time committing to cleaning things up on this end. by Jim Moeser
