JCPC Planning Process

Planning Process

The N.C. Juvenile Crime Prevention Planning Process begins with a collaborative assessment of community risks, answering the following questions pertaining to community risks, resources and needs:

• What are the factors in our county that have been proven to contribute to local juvenile crime or delinquency?
• What are the county resources currently in place to offset the specified risks?
• What are the county resources needed to prevent juvenile crime and to get juveniles the help they need?

Now referred to as the North Carolina Juvenile Crime Prevention Planning Process, this system incorporates elements of DRP's Communities that Care planning model and the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's Comprehensive Strategy for Serious, Violent and Chronic Juvenile Offenders.

The Comprehensive Strategy seeks to mobilize communities to create a multi-disciplinary continuum of care that includes prevention programs for children, early intervention in the lives of juvenile offenders, and graduated sanctions for repeat offenders. The new planning process also incorporates the essential elements outlined in the N.C. Juvenile Justice Reform Act.

Working with the Jordan Institute for Families, the Division of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention developed a research-based profile of risk factors for juvenile delinquency by age in five different domains: individual, family, peer group, school, and community. A county-by-county profile of statistical indicators, N.C. Community Risk Assessment Data, is available on the division's website.

JCPCs can make data-based decisions to determine the need for prevention programs and disposition options from the actual indicators of the risk factors in each county and from juvenile justice data maintained by DPS. The Community Programs section works to guide local communities in developing an appropriate continuum to serve local youth based on collected data.