    [Senate Hearing 114-834]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                                                           S. Hrg. 114-834

                     IMPROVING ACCOUNTABILITY AND OVERSIGHT
                           OF JUVENILE JUSTICE GRANTS

    =======================================================================

                                    HEARING

                                   BEFORE THE

                           COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
                              UNITED STATES SENATE

                        ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS

                                 FIRST SESSION

                                   __________

                                 APRIL 21, 2015

                                   __________

                              Serial No. J-114-12

                                   __________

             Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary

    [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                        U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
    47-425 PDF                  WASHINGTON : 2023

    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                           COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

                      CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa, Chairman
    ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah                 PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont,
    JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama                   Ranking Member
    LINDSEY O. GRAHAM, South Carolina    DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California
    JOHN CORNYN, Texas                   CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York
    MICHAEL S. LEE, Utah                 RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois
    TED CRUZ, Texas                      SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island
    JEFF FLAKE, Arizona                  AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota
    DAVID VITTER, Louisiana              AL FRANKEN, Minnesota
    DAVID PERDUE, Georgia                CHRISTOPHER A. COONS, Delaware
    THOM TILLIS, North Carolina          RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut
                Kolan L. Davis, Chief Counsel and Staff Director
          Kristine Lucius, Democratic Chief Counsel and Staff Director

                                C O N T E N T S

                                  ----------

                           APRIL 21, 2015, 10:01 A.M.

                        STATEMENTS OF COMMITTEE MEMBERS

                                                                       Page

    Grassley, Hon. Charles E., a U.S. Senator from the State of Iowa.     1
    Leahy, Hon. Patrick J., a U.S. Senator from the State of Vermont,
        prepared statement...........................................    72
    Whitehouse, Hon. Sheldon, a U.S. Senator from the State of Rhode
      Island.........................................................     3

                                   WITNESSES

    Witness List.....................................................    35
    Coleman, Andrea R., Disproportionate Minority Contact
      Coordinator, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
      Prevention, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, DC.........    12
        prepared statement...........................................    36
    Lerner, Hon. Carolyn, Special Counsel, U.S. Office of Special
      Counsel, Washington, DC........................................    27
        prepared statement...........................................    39
    Mason, Hon. Karol V., Assistant Attorney General, Office of
      Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, DC...    26
        prepared statement...........................................    43
    Rivkin, Dean Hill, Professor and Clinic Lead, Public Interest
      Lawyering Practicum, University of Tennessee College of Law,
      Knoxville, Tennessee...........................................     8
        prepared statement...........................................    49
    Rumsey, Elissa, Compliance Monitor, Office of Juvenile Justice
      and Delinquency Prevention, U.S. Department of Justice,
      Washington, DC.................................................     5
        prepared statement...........................................    52
    Soler, Mark, Executive Director, Center for Children's Law and
      Policy, Washington, DC.........................................    10
        prepared statement...........................................    62
    Teske, Hon. Steven C., Chief Judge, Juvenile Court of Clayton
      County, Jonesboro, Georgia.....................................     7
        prepared statement...........................................    65

                                   QUESTIONS

    Questions submitted to Andrea R. Coleman by Senator Grassley.....    74
    Questions submitted to Hon. Karol V. Mason by Senator Grassley...    75
    Questions submitted to Prof. Dean Hill Rivkin by Senator Grassley    85
    Questions submitted to Elissa Rumsey by Senator Grassley.........    86
    Questions submitted to Mark Soler by Senator Klobuchar...........    88
    Questions submitted to Hon. Steven C. Teske by Senator Klobuchar.    88

                                    ANSWERS

    Responses of Andrea R. Coleman to questions submitted by Senator
      Grassley.......................................................    89
        attachment I.................................................    95
        attachment II................................................    96
        attachment III...............................................    98
        attachment IV................................................   103
        attachment V.................................................   106
        attachment VI................................................   111
    Responses of Hon. Karol V. Mason to questions submitted by
      Senator Grassley...............................................   116
    Responses of Prof. Dean Hill Rivkin to questions submitted by
      Senator Grassley...............................................   139
    Responses of Elissa Rumsey to questions submitted by Senator
      Grassley.......................................................   143
    Responses of Mark Soler to questions submitted by Senator
      Klobuchar......................................................   150
    Responses of Hon. Steven C. Teske to questions submitted by
      Senator Klobuchar..............................................   155

                    MISCELLANEOUS SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD

    Submitted by Senator Grassley:
        Email correspondence, ``Subject: FW--Oklahoma DMC
          Compliance,'' October 14, 2014.............................   191
        Email correspondence, ``Subject: FW--Question...has any state
          ever been found out on DMC-- If so what state and when,''
          October 23, 2014...........................................   196
        Email correspondence, ``Subject: FW--Compliance in the
          context of DMC,'' December 8, 2014.........................   183
        Email correspondence, ``Subject: FW--Discussion Follow-Up-
          Correspondence,'' December 8, 2014.........................   184
        Email correspondence, ``Subject: FW--DMC Compliance
          Determination Assessment Instrument (CDAI) Information,''
          December 8, 2014...........................................   189
        Rivkin, Dean Hill, University of Tennessee, letter to U.S.
          Department of Justice, November 6, 2013; redacted..........   248
        Smart on Juvenile Justice: Technical Assistance to End Racial
          and Ethnic Disparities in the Juvenile Justice System
          Solicitation Peer Review, Andrea R. Coleman, July 28, 2014.   242
        United States Department of Justice letter regarding Arizona
          Compliance Monitoring Report, September 30, 2014...........   171
        United States Department of Justice letter regarding
          California annual Compliance Monitoring Report, September
          30, 2014...................................................   175
        United States Department of Justice letter regarding Delaware
          annual Compliance Monitoring Report, September 30, 2014....   179
        United States Department of Justice letter regarding Georgia
          annual Compliance Monitoring Report, September 30, 2014....   198
        United States Department of Justice letter regarding Illinois
          annual Compliance Monitoring Report, September 30, 2014....   211
        United States Department of Justice letter regarding Illinois
          annual Disproportionate Minority Contact, September 28,
          2012.......................................................   208
        United States Department of Justice letter regarding Iowa
          annual Compliance Monitoring Report, September 30, 2014....   204
        United States Department of Justice letter regarding Iowa
          annual Disproportionate Minority Contact, August 14, 2012..   202
        United States Department of Justice letter regarding
          Louisiana Compliance Monitoring Report, September 30, 2014.   223
        United States Department of Justice letter regarding
          Minnesota Compliance Monitoring Report, September 30, 2014.   227
        United States Department of Justice letter regarding North
          Carolina Compliance Monitoring Report, September 30, 2014..   231
        United States Department of Justice letter regarding Rhode
          Island Compliance Monitoring Report, September 30, 2014....   235
        United States Department of Justice letter regarding Texas
          Compliance Monitoring Report, September 30, 2014...........   244
        United States Department of Justice letter regarding Utah
          Compliance Monitoring Report, September 30, 2014...........   250
        United States Department of Justice letter regarding Vermont
          Compliance Monitoring Report, September 30, 2014...........   254
        United States Department of Justice letter to Hon. Charles E.
          Grassley, a U.S. Senator from the State of Iowa, October
          28, 2014...................................................   158
        United States Department of Justice letter to Hon. Charles E.
          Grassley, a U.S. Senator from the State of Iowa, April 14,
          2015.......................................................   165
        United States Office of Special Counsel, referral, September
          16, 2014...................................................   239
        United States Office of Special Counsel, referral, January
          13, 2015...................................................   215
    Submitted by Senator Whitehouse:
        Coalition for Juvenile Justice, Washington, DC, April 28,
          2015, letter with attachments..............................   258

                          IMPROVING ACCOUNTABILITY AND
                      OVERSIGHT OF JUVENILE JUSTICE GRANTS

                                  ----------

                            TUESDAY, APRIL 21, 2015

                                  United States Senate,
                                    Committee on the Judiciary,
                                                        Washington, DC.
        The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:01 a.m., in
    Room 226, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Charles E.
    Grassley, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
        Present: Senators Grassley, Tillis, Durbin, Whitehouse, and
    Franken.

             OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CHARLES E. GRASSLEY,
                 A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF IOWA

        Chairman Grassley. In 1974, Congress passed the Juvenile
    Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act with two goals in mind:
    first, to prevent at-risk youth from entering the criminal
    justice system; second, is to help minors already in the system
    become valuable members of society.
        To help States achieve these goals, the JJDPA authorizes
    the Justice Department to award Federal grants to States.
    However, the law says that the Federal money comes with strings
    attached. Specifically, States must comply with four core
    requirements in order to qualify for grants.
        First, States must not imprison children for committing
    offenses that would not be unlawful if they were committed by
    adults; truancy, as an example.
        Second, juveniles must not be detained in adult jails
    unless some narrow exceptions apply.
        Third, when children are held in adult jails, they cannot
    be housed with adult inmates or next to adult cells.
        Fourth, States must address the disproportionate contact of
    minority youth with the justice system.
        These four requirements are the bedrock of the system that
    Congress designed to help juveniles, and Judge Teske and Mr.
    Soler are here to explain why these protections are so
    important.
        To ensure States' compliance with these requirements, the
    Act created the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
    Prevention, or the OJJDP. By law, that office is supposed to
    cut a State's funding for the following year by 20 percent
    anytime States fail to satisfy one of the four requirements in
    a given year.
        In other words, Congress designed these grants to be earned
    each year, not to be handed out as an entitlement.
        Today we will examine whether the Justice Department has
    been doing its job to make sure States qualify for Federal
    funding.
        Last year, multiple whistleblowers contacted me about the
    Justice Department's failure to follow the law. The
    whistleblowers allege that it is common knowledge among the
    States that the Justice Department did not take compliance with
    the four core requirements very seriously.
        The whistleblowers also claimed that States know the
    Justice Department does not even check if they are submitting
    accurate reports in their annual application for grants. So
    many States allegedly report whatever figures they want in
    order to keep money flowing, even if the data is false or
    incomplete.
        At the same time, States that submit honest data are
    reportedly being penalized for having their grants reduced as
    the law requires.
        In January 2014, for example, the Inspector General found
    that the Department had failed to hold the State of Wisconsin
    accountable despite an admission of fraud from a State
    employee.
        Of course, the true victims in all of this are the children
    who come in contact with inadequate juvenile justice systems.
        So to get to the bottom of these allegations, I wrote a
    letter to the Department in September last year. The Office of
    Special Counsel expressed similar concern last September and
    again in January. Special Counsel Carolyn Lerner, who will be
    testifying here today, asked the Attorney General to
    investigate these allegations.
        Two separate whistleblowers had brought the allegations to
    her office's attention, as well. The Office of Special Counsel
    found that there is a substantial likelihood that each of their
    allegations reveal possible violation of law, a gross waste of
    resources, and gross mismanagement of juvenile justice grant
    funds.
        For its part, the Department initially responded to my
    inquiry by standing by its practices. The Department also
    sought to downplay the allegations by blaming the problem
    squarely on the shoulders of a single State official in
    Wisconsin.
        So I sent three more letters with allegations of DOJ's
    widespread mismanagement in other States, including Virginia,
    Tennessee, Illinois, Puerto Rico. I also explained to the
    Department how its own responses to my initial letter revealed
    fundamental misunderstanding of the law.
        Now, to its credit, the Department has now owned up to its
    problems. The Justice Department admitted to having a
    compliance monitoring policy in place since 1997 that is,
    quote, ``not permitted under the statute,'' unquote.
        The Justice Department has disbursed more than $2 billion
    in the past 40 years to State and local authorities under this
    Act. Given the unlawful 1997 policy, there is a question as to
    how much of this was granted to States that jailed young people
    in violation of funding requirements. To shed light on these
    issues, Ms. Karol Mason is here to testify as Assistant
    Attorney General of the Office of Justice Programs.
        I want to thank Ms. Mason for her leadership and showing a
    commitment to accountability and beginning to fix these
    problems at long last.
        As they say, the first step to recovery is admitting that
    you have a problem and it is encouraging that the Department
    has finally taken that step. But it should not have taken 7
    years and the intervention of Office of Special Counsel or
    Inspector General or the Congress for the Department to take
    whistleblower allegations seriously.
        Whistleblowers are a linchpin to transparency and
    accountability. They should be lauded for their efforts, but
    are often treated like skunks at a picnic and subject to
    retaliation, which we all know is illegal, but it still
    happens.
        So, I want to thank Ms. Elissa Rumsey and Ms. Andrea
    Coleman who are here to testify today. Both of them have been
    trying to bring these issues to light since 2008. Their
    testimony today will include accounts of resistance and
    retaliation they experienced from agency officials for simply
    trying to do their job in accordance with law.
        In addition, I want to thank several whistleblowers who
    will not be testifying today, but provided valuable information
    as part of the investigation. These individuals made similar
    allegations of resistance and whistleblower retaliation. So, I
    want to reiterate to Ms. Mason the need to improve the
    treatment of whistleblowers.
        Finally, I want to thank Professor Dean Rivkin, who
    operates a public interest clinic that represents juveniles in
    Tennessee. The professor will testify about his efforts to
    alert the Justice Department about discrepancies of data in
    Tennessee. He will also contrast those official reports with a
    number of juvenile incarcerations that he personally observed
    in court.
        We must remember that the true victims in all this are the
    young people, children who face an inadequate juvenile justice
    system.
        That is why my colleague here to my left, Senator
    Whitehouse, and I introduced a bill in December to revise and
    extend the statute, which has not been reauthorized since 2002.
    The bill updates protections and extends programs established
    in the Act and authorizes funds for the law for 5 years.
        It also takes steps to improve the treatment of youth under
    the Act by bolstering core protections, improving conditions
    for detained juveniles, incorporating new science on adequate
    adolescence development, and increasing accountability and
    oversight in administering the law.
        That last part is the subject of this hearing and I hope
    that we will have a better idea of what can be done
    legislatively to improve accountability and oversight. Whatever
    measures we come up with, however, will be useless if the law
    is not actually followed.
        Now, I call on my friend, Senator Whitehouse, for his
    remarks.

             OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE,
             A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF RHODE ISLAND

        Senator Whitehouse. Thank you, Chairman. Good morning,
    everybody.
        I first want to thank Chairman Grassley for holding this
    important hearing and thank the witnesses who are here today
    for their time and their testimony.
        Let me particularly welcome Judge Teske, who has come here
    all the way from Georgia. He brings with him the high regards
    of our colleague, Johnny Isakson, and I know Senator Isakson
    would want me to extend to you his best wishes for being here;
    and, also, Mark Soler, who is the executive director of the
    Center for Children's Law and Policy, in addition to the
    witnesses who have already been recognized by the Chairman.
        I really applaud Chairman Grassley's efforts to improve the
    juvenile justice system when it fails the children that it is
    supposed to serve and I am very proud to be working with him on
    legislation to reauthorize and strengthen the Juvenile Justice
    and Delinquency Prevention Act.
        As the Chairman has pointed out, I am to the left of him--
    in more ways than one, I would add--but we are working very
    well together on this legislation and it is a pleasure and a
    privilege to be working with him and his staff.
        The JJDPA celebrated its 40th anniversary last summer, but
    it has not been reauthorized since 2002. Since 2002, we have
    learned a lot about adolescent development and about best
    juvenile justice practices. So, it is long past time to update
    the law governing the Federal Government's role in reforming
    juvenile justice.
        This hearing, of course, is about accountability and I
    applaud Chairman Grassley for his efforts to improve oversight
    over Federal dollars.
        Thanks to the Chairman's efforts, the Department of Justice
    has acknowledged the longstanding and systemic problems in its
    Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's
    compliance monitoring program. I have been encouraged by the
    Department's response to Chairman Grassley's inquiries and I
    look forward to hearing more about how OJJDP will address
    compliance issues going forward.
        Through this Committee's oversight and legislation the
    Chairman and I expect to introduce in the coming weeks, we are
    poised to make significant improvements to the Juvenile Justice
    and Delinquency Prevention Act.
        The reauthorization Chairman Grassley and I introduced last
    year contained important new provisions to hold grantees
    accountable and provide incentives to grantees that
    consistently pass muster.
        The bill also contains strengthened transparency
    requirements. I anticipate this year's legislation to contain
    the same safeguards and I hope our witnesses will be able to
    discuss, based on their own experiences, how the new language
    will help improve program accountability.
        Before I conclude my remarks, I would like to take a step
    back for a moment. It is because of JJDPA that, for the most
    part, our children are not locked up in adult prisons, that
    they are not placed in solitary confinement, that they are not
    shackled for running away from home or failing to attend
    school.
        We need to reauthorize this statute and revive its mission.
    And we also have to face the consequences of Federal juvenile
    justice funding having been cut dramatically in the last
    decade. Funding for the Act's main grant programs, Title 2 and
    Title 5, have been cut, respectively, by 40 percent and 80
    percent. At the same time, OJJDP went for far too long with
    ineffective or nonexistent leadership.
        We should not spend scarce resources on States that make no
    efforts to comply with JJDPA and we should never tolerate fraud
    on the local, State, or Federal levels.
        At the same time, we must be mindful of creating unfunded
    mandates and of the message we send when we fail to update key
    legislation and cut Federal support for programs that are
    proven to make a difference.
        So thank you, Chairman Grassley, and I look forward to
    today's hearing.
        Chairman Grassley. I am going to give just a short
    introduction and I will introduce all and then we will do the
    testimony from my left to my right.
        Elissa Rumsey is a compliance monitor in the Office of
    Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention at the Department
    of Justice.
        Steven Teske is chief judge, Clayton County Juvenile Court,
    Georgia.
        Dean Rivkin, professor of law at the University of
    Tennessee College of Law.
        Mark Soler is executive director of the Center for
    Children's Law and Policy.
        Andrea Coleman is the disproportionate minority contact
    coordinator at the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
    Prevention at the Department of Justice.
        Would you proceed, Ms. Rumsey?

       STATEMENT OF ELISSA RUMSEY, COMPLIANCE MONITOR, OFFICE OF
    JUVENILE JUSTICE AND DELINQUENCY PREVENTION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF
                        JUSTICE, WASHINGTON, DC

        Ms. Rumsey. Thank you, Chairman Grassley and Members of the
    Committee.
        My testimony concerns illegal conditions in States that
    incarcerate children not charged with a crime, sometimes with
    adult felons, falsify reports that enable the receipt of
    millions in Federal grant dollars, and benefit from DOJ's
    coverup of this fraud.
        I will illustrate this misconduct through two States that
    have been particularly brazen: Wisconsin and Virginia.
        My name is Elissa Rumsey. I am the compliance monitor in
    the DOJ's OJJDP. My job is to enforce the JJDP Act.
        I have monitored jails in over half of the United States,
    which, I think, gives me a pretty clear picture of what is
    happening to kids in jails.
        This testimony is in response to the Committee's request
    and is submitted in my personal capacity alone.
        As Senator Grassley noted, the JJDP Act provides that jails
    should not be detaining children who are not charged with a
    crime. DOJ regulations do allow States some very minor
    exceptions in this area, but only in juvenile-only facilities.
        Wisconsin, in contrast, began submitting data in 2005,
    2006, and 2007 that showed detention rates nearly 10 times
    higher than allowed by our regulations. In fact, these data
    showed such a dramatic increase from years prior that OJJDP
    did, in fact, restrict Wisconsin's funding in 2007.
        The State protested this finding of noncompliance. My
    superiors responded to me by preventing me from assessing the
    situation onsite in Wisconsin. But it turns out I did not
    really need to go to Wisconsin, because internal emails later
    obtained by our own Inspector General made clear that Wisconsin
    was falsifying reports in return for millions of dollars in
    Federal grants.
        Wisconsin officials wrote emails that include the following
    admissions, and I am going to quote to you from these emails
    because I found them so striking when they were provided to me.
        Quote, ``Our complete lack of a compliance monitoring
    system is what has set us back.'' From a different Wisconsin
    employee, quote, ``Wisconsin DOC assures us we will find enough
    violations on all core requirement areas, like an adult inmate
    and children being held together in jails, that we will not
    receive Federal funds.''
        And finally, from the State agency administrator in
    Wisconsin who is tasked with overseeing millions in DOJ grant
    funds, he wrote the following in an email, quote, ``We supply
    the evidence that convicted us and now want DOJ to forgive us.
    Every time I think we have a good case, I learn of another flaw
    on our end. Elissa knows her business and is not inclined to
    back off.''
        These are Wisconsin's own words. Back in 2007 when they
    were writing these emails, of course, I did not know about it
    and I tried to learn more about this dramatic increase in
    illegal detentions in Wisconsin, but I was blocked at every
    turn. The State officials denied there was a problem.
        After almost a year of back-and-forth with the State, I
    asked one of the officials to call me. He did. He said
    Wisconsin is faking the data. He also said watch your back.
        Within weeks of this warning, I reported the allegations to
    our Inspector General. Subpoenas were issued. OIG staff went to
    jails in Wisconsin and saw the fraud themselves. They even got
    two confessions from Wisconsin State officials.
        Unfortunately, the retaliation back at the office for me
    mounted. As Senator Grassley noted, I really was the skunk at
    the company picnic for a number of years.
        I had to file a lawsuit. I had to hire an attorney. And
    fortunately, the MSPB, the court in this jurisdiction, did find
    in my favor in 2013. And, of course, more cause for hope when
    Chairman Grassley showed his interest and wrote letters to DOJ
    asking what is really happening here.
        Finally, there was a report that the OIG posted in late
    September which says the fraud did, in fact, occur. I remain
    concerned about other States like Virginia, where I have seen
    adult inmates walking freely in juvenile facilities among
    children. I have heard officials from Virginia say that State
    compliance officials know that DOJ will accept false data and
    still find compliance.
        I can also speak to OJJDP's failure to hold other
    jurisdictions, like Puerto Rico, accountable despite years of
    noncompliance with funding requirements, as well as issues like
    this in other States.
        I welcome questions from the Committee on these issues and
    I thank Chairman Grassley so much for his time and attention to
    this matter. Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Ms. Rumsey appears as a
    submission for the record.]
        Chairman Grassley. Thank you, Ms. Rumsey.
        Now, Judge Teske.

    STATEMENT OF HON. STEVEN C. TESKE, CHIEF JUDGE, JUVENILE COURT
                 OF CLAYTON COUNTY, JONESBORO, GEORGIA

        Judge Teske. Good morning, Chairman Grassley, Ranking
    Member Whitehouse, and Members of the Senate Judiciary
    Committee. Thank you for having me here to testify today about
    improving accountability and oversight of juvenile justice
    grants.
        In addition to my judicial duties, I have served on the
    Federal Advisory Committee for Juvenile Justice and have the
    pleasure of serving for former Governor Sonny Perdue and our
    current Governor, Nathan Deal, on our State advisory group.
        I co-chair the Oversight and Implementation Committee of
    our Reform Commission and I can appreciate why we are here and
    the oversight role of this distinguished body to bring
    transparency to the accountability and oversight of juvenile
    justice grants.
        I, like my colleagues at the National Council of Juvenile
    Family Court Judges, am a supporter of the reauthorization of
    the JJDPA because it is a strategic Act of Congress that has
    helped to bring consistent use of those practices that go to
    the core of effective juvenile justice, what the JJDPA refers
    to as the four core protections.
        It goes without saying that because JJDPA has assisted
    States to make significant improvements in their local juvenile
    justice systems, imagine how much more effective those systems
    will become with improved accountability and oversight
    measures.
        To illustrate my point, I will take just a moment to point
    out some Georgia examples. When I took the bench in 1999, my
    county was inundated with high commitment rates to State
    custody, of which most were kids of color and nonviolent
    offenses.
        In search of ways to improve our system, I found the Annie
    E. Casey Foundation's Juvenile Detention Alternative
    Initiative, which inspired me to create a number of programs
    using Federal funding. These programs, ceded by JJDPA funds,
    have accomplished the following in my county: an 83 percent
    decrease in the average daily detention population; a 75
    percent reduction in the average daily population of minority
    youth; 77 percent fewer commitments to State custody; 70
    percent fewer commitments of minority youth; yet--get this--a
    62 percent decrease in juvenile arrests.
        Our statewide reforms, also ceded by JJDPA formula moneys,
    has resulted in a 62 percent reduction in commitments to State
    custody, which included the removal of the valid court order
    exception for status offenders.
        To improve upon what is already effective, I have noted
    some accountability and oversight issues of attention and offer
    some solutions.
        Notwithstanding any findings that may be made that grants
    were fraudulently obtained, to which serious controls must be
    contemplated to preclude future fraud, I am here to speak to
    another dimension of accountability and oversight deficiencies
    that are just as serious, but may be overlooked, and that is
    the compliance process.
        It came to my attention in 2007 during a FACJJ meeting that
    some States were audited using more restrictive criteria than
    others. As the conversation evolved, I learned from juvenile
    justice specialists around the country the following: The DMC
    compliance manual itself is 389 pages in length and extremely
    difficult to follow.
        Guidelines contained in this compliance manual lack
    specificity. The rules continuously change without notice in an
    opportunity to provide feedback. Audit findings were delivered
    to States up to 2 years after the audit. For example, our last
    audit in Georgia occurred in 2010. We did not receive the
    findings until 2012. But we were expected to respond to their
    letter within 60 days, and we did, having already addressed
    many of those issues.
        The compliance monitor did not reply until 2014, a total of
    4 years. And this is a widespread issue across the country.
        My concern then, and it remains a concern today, is
    compliance findings that are made using subjective criteria
    that can create tension externally between the States and OJJDP
    and internally between compliance staff and those
    administrators who may be acting to correct an errant outcome
    due to subjective interpretation.
        I recommend the following: standardize practices for
    compliance monitoring; help States develop comprehensive data
    collection systems; revise the compliance manuals; provide
    State representatives notice and comment of changes in
    compliance criteria; reauthorize the JJDPA with accountability
    provisions with the necessary funding.
        The time is right to reauthorize the JJDPA and in so doing
    make the changes necessary to improve the accountability and
    oversight of juvenile justice grants. I do not view this
    hearing as an obstacle to reauthorization, but an opportunity
    to improve upon a historical and strategic Act of Congress that
    has assisted States that, like mine, do the right thing for our
    youth.
        And to that end, Chairman Grassley, I want to express my
    gratitude to you for bringing transparency to this
    reauthorization process.
        [The prepared statement of Judge Teske appears as a
    submission for the record.]
        Chairman Grassley. Thank you.
        Now, Professor Rivkin.

       STATEMENT OF DEAN HILL RIVKIN, PROFESSOR AND CLINIC LEAD,
     PUBLIC INTEREST LAWYERING PRACTICUM, UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE
                  COLLEGE OF LAW, KNOXVILLE, TENNESSEE

        Professor Rivkin. Mr. Chairman, Senator Whitehouse, Members
    of the Committee, my name is Dean Hill Rivkin. I appreciate the
    opportunity to testify today.
        I am a College of Law Distinguished Professor at the
    University of Tennessee College of Law, where I have taught
    since 1976. With the assistance of Community Cooperating
    Attorney Brenda McGee, who is here with me, and law students, I
    teach a course called the Public Interest Lawyering Practicum.
        Since 2009, we have represented in juvenile court youth
    prosecuted by the State for the status offense of truancy,
    which is not a crime in Tennessee. Youth in status offense
    cases in Tennessee are not entitled to counsel, which makes
    Federal and State oversight--effective Federal and State
    oversight especially critical.
        A number of our clients had been locked up in the juvenile
    court's secured detention facility following their problematic
    pleas of guilty. These lockups range from 24 hours to a week or
    longer.
        In the juvenile jail, our clients were shackled,
    indiscrimately drug tested, asked to strip, given orange jail
    jumpsuits, and placed in a facility that held serious juvenile
    offenders.
        They were not screened for mental health problems and,
    indeed, one of our clients threatened suicide following her
    release from the detention facility and was admitted to a
    psychiatric hospital through her parents.
        We sought to halt these practices by urging our State
    agency to exercise more vigilant oversight. Suffice it to say
    that our questions about data that we had obtained from the
    local juvenile court were never satisfactorily answered.
        After exhausting these efforts with the State agency, we
    turned to OJJDP for assistance. In the spring of 2013,
    following the appointment of a new administrator, we conveyed
    our concerns about the problems in Tennessee.
        In July 2013, I received a telephone call from an official
    of OJJDP who said he was following up on my communication. In
    this conversation, I was informed that OJJDP was preparing to
    conduct an audit of Tennessee, the first full audit since 2005.
    I offered to send this official the local detention data that
    we possessed and to meet with the auditing staff to convey our
    catalog of concerns.
        The official told me that he was not interested in the data
    and left the impression that OJJDP would conduct the audit
    without meeting with us. They did not.
        The audit was released in January 2014. It failed to
    consider the information that we possessed and other
    information about Tennessee's compliance practices.
        Significantly, the auditors only looked at 4 months of TCC
    data from our county, despite the data that we had that showed
    many more lockups. This was 2012.
        Also, the audit failed to mention the large number of
    lockups under OJJDP's so-called 24-hour exception. This
    exception, which finds no grounding in the absolute ban on
    secured detention in the Act, allows courts to jail status
    offenders for up to 24 hours before and after, excluding
    weekends.
        In our county alone, 237 non-DSO lockups were reported in
    2012. We believe that this was an abuse of this exception and
    OJJDP turned a blind eye by not meeting with us about this.
        The audit also failed to reconcile the sizable
    discrepancies in valid court orders in Tennessee. There were
    212 reported in the audit for 2012, despite the fact that the
    State statistics showed the number of CO referrals to be 889
    for 2012.
        Based on our experiences, we believe that the compliance
    system as it is currently administered is one of the least
    transparent of any Federal program that I have encountered.
    Public access is limited. The bureaucratic language is mind-
    boggling.
        Without greater transparency and clarity, accountability,
    which is the touchstone of this Act, suffers.
        In conclusion, the need for a strong Federal presence, with
    adequate funding, to prevent vulnerable children from being
    incarcerated for non-crimes is even more important today than
    it was in 1974. We believe--I believe Congress should proceed
    with a fortified reauthorization of the Act in light of the
    evidence presented here.
        Thank you for inviting me.
        [The prepared statement of Professor Rivkin appears as a
    submission for the record.]
        Chairman Grassley. Thank you, Professor Rivkin.
        Now, Mr. Soler.

        STATEMENT OF MARK SOLER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR
               CHILDREN'S LAW AND POLICY, WASHINGTON, DC

        Mr. Soler. Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, my
    background is summarized in the bio that I submitted, but I
    think it suffices to say I have worked on juvenile justice
    reforms around the country for the last 37 years.
        I want to start by thanking you, Mr. Chairman, and you,
    Senator Whitehouse, for introducing S. 2999 in the last
    Congress. As you know, the Act has been essentially unchanged
    since 1992. Yet, every year, some 1.3 million young people
    enter the juvenile justice system in this country, more than
    the entire population of the 20 largest cities in the State of
    Iowa, more than the entire population of the State of Rhode
    Island, and that is just arrests, which is only one way that
    young people get into the system.
        For a statute that affects millions of children and their
    families every year, it is long past time for an update.
        S. 2999 includes critical revisions to the Act and I urge
    you to keep them in the legislation when you introduce it in
    this session. Particularly important are the provisions to keep
    youth awaiting trial in criminal court out of adult jails; to
    enforce the prohibition on locking up status offenders by
    phasing out the valid court order exception; to support the
    elimination of solitary confinement and dangerous restraints in
    juvenile facilities--and I particularly want to thank Senator
    Durbin for your interest in that and work on that issue; and,
    finally, to provide much needed guidance to the States on how
    to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in the system.
        These important reforms and others in 2999 will improve
    OJJDP's ability to help States ensure that the juvenile justice
    system is fair, safe, and effective.
        The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act,
    however, has already proved its value many times over and I
    have seen its impact firsthand.
        When I first started this work in 1978, 4 years after
    passage of the Act, there were 500,000 children held in adult
    jails in this country for some period of time. I worked with
    many jurisdictions around the country to help them remove
    children from adult jails pursuant to the core requirements of
    the Act.
        I also brought litigation to protect children in adult
    jails when local authorities ignored the mandates of the Act.
    For example, I represented a 15-year-old girl in southeast Ohio
    who was held in the county jail for staying out overnight and
    was subsequently raped by a jailer.
        I represented youth held in the Boise, Idaho, jail, where a
    boy was put in jail for not paying $73 in parking tickets and
    was beaten to death by other inmates over a 14-hour period.
        I worked on the case of a teenaged girl in California who
    was jailed for curfew violation for being in the town square at
    night and then hanged herself in her cell.
        I represented the family of a young boy in La Grange,
    Kentucky, who hanged himself in his cell on the second floor of
    the jail while the jailer sat in his office on the first floor.
        I have seen the needless tragedies that occur when the
    mandates of the Juvenile Justice Act are not followed. This
    statute saves children's lives and prevents physical and sexual
    abuse. We would all want our own children or our nieces and
    nephews, if they got in trouble, to have the protections of
    this Act.
        The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
    has had a mixed track record over the past 20 years. During the
    second half of the 1990s, it was a leader in the field. For
    much of the last 15 years, however, until recently, OJJDP did
    not keep up with advancements in the field or provide strong
    leadership.
        It did not help that appropriations for system improvements
    were cut by 80 percent or that the Obama administration did not
    name a permanent administrator for the agency until 4 years
    after he took control of the executive branch of government.
        The vacuum in leadership was partially filled by the Annie
    E. Casey Foundation through its successful Juvenile Detention
    Alternatives Initiative to reduce unnecessary use of detention
    without jeopardizing public safety and by the John D. and
    Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, whose Models for Change
    initiative supported important reforms in mental health
    services, representation by counsel, reduction of racial and
    ethnic disparities, aftercare, and other areas.
        But even large foundations cannot replace the authority and
    resources of a Federal agency and some foundations eventually
    leave juvenile justice and move on to other areas of social
    reform, as the MacArthur Foundation has recently done.
        I applaud Bob Listenbee for his efforts over the last 2
    years to engage OJJDP more effectively on the critical issues
    in our field. He has brought energy, commitment, and
    intelligence to a difficult and complex task.
        To fully realize its role as a leader, OJJDP needs to
    continue to reform itself. Fortunately, there are two recent
    reports from the National Research Council to provide guidance.
        First is ``Reforming Juvenile Justice: A Developmental
    Approach,'' a really superb compendium of recent research in
    the field and its relevance to the mission and goals of OJJDP.
        The second report, ``Implementing Juvenile Justice
    Reform,'' published last year, was commissioned by Mr.
    Listenbee soon after he took over as administrator of OJJDP. It
    lays out a thoughtful, detailed, 3-year plan for OJJDP to
    implement the findings of the earlier report, ensure that
    juvenile justice reforms are grounded in knowledge about
    adolescent development, and support his role as a leader in the
    field.
        I urge the Committee to support Mr. Listenbee and OJJDP as
    they seek to follow that plan.
        Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Mr. Soler appears as a
    submission for the record.]
        Chairman Grassley. Thank you, Mr. Soler.
        Now, Ms. Coleman.

       STATEMENT OF ANDREA R. COLEMAN, DISPROPORTIONATE MINORITY
    CONTACT COORDINATOR, OFFICE OF JUVENILE JUSTICE AND DELINQUENCY
         PREVENTION, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, WASHINGTON, DC

        Ms. Coleman. Good morning. I would like to thank the Senate
    Judiciary Committee for allowing me to speak today. My name is
    Andrea R. Coleman and I am the Disproportionate Minority
    Contact, or DMC, Coordinator for the U.S. Department of Justice
    Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, or
    OJJDP.
        Prior to joining the Department in 2007, I served as the
    DMC coordinator for the great State of Kentucky. I have over 15
    years of experience working with at-risk and delinquent youth
    in various settings.
        In 2009, I received the Assistant Attorney General's award
    in recognition of outstanding contributions to the mission and
    goals of the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Justice
    Programs.
        As a subject matter expert in this area, I have worked to
    help State and local efforts to reduce the disproportionate
    number of minority youth who come into contact with the
    juvenile justice system pursuant to Section 223(a)(22) of the
    Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, or the JJDP
    Act.
        OJJDP is a distinctive Federal agency because it has the
    statutory duty to hold States accountable for violations of the
    DMC, or disproportionate minority contact, requirement by
    withholding a portion of their Title 2 formula grants.
        Unfortunately, based on my years of experience in reviewing
    DMC compliance plans submitted by all 55 States, territories,
    and the District of Columbia, I have often wondered how OJJDP,
    in good conscience, can allow certain States to receive full
    funding despite clear evidence of violation of this core
    requirement.
        For example, Illinois has continued to receive full funding
    even though I made several recommendations of noncompliance
    starting in 2008. I made these recommendations because
    Illinois' submitted DMC plans did not even meet the program
    requirements such as not submitting enough data to determine
    whether DMC even exists, which is part of the regulatory
    requirement. However, my supervisors overturned my
    recommendations and gave the State full funding. Unfortunately,
    this practice of not holding States accountable continued even
    after Mr. Robert Listenbee became administrator of OJJDP in
    2013.
        I and other OJJDP staff members recommended findings of
    noncompliance against Illinois and other States. However, Mr.
    Listenbee overturned these recommendations without providing
    any substantive information in support of that decision and per
    a brief meeting with the head of the Office of Justice
    Programs' Office of General Counsel or OGC.
        Even further, Mr. Listenbee and his leadership team
    announced that all States would get a, quote, ``pass'' for
    their compliance with the DMC core requirement with respect to
    their funding for Fiscal Year 2014.
        As recently as last week, OJJDP staff were told that this
    blanket, quote, ``pass'' would be issued again for Fiscal Year
    2016's Title 2 formula grant funds.
        This means that States like Illinois that have not met the
    funding requirements will receive grants in the same manner
    that States that have met or even exceeded those requirements,
    such as Connecticut, Iowa, and Utah. This strikes me as unfair.
        Other States have flatly admitted to me over the years that
    they will not even attempt to achieve compliance with the DMC
    core requirement as stated in the JJDP Act or in the
    regulations because they know that OJJDP will not enforce them.
    This decades-old failure continues because Mr. Listenbee has
    focused more on his relationships with advocacy groups rather
    than on the States and compliance with the DMC core protections
    and the first three of the JJDP Act.
        For example, Mr. Listenbee did not want States to
    participate in a stakeholders meeting in March 2014 until I
    forced the issue. When he finally relented, Mr. Listenbee
    wanted me to invite DMC officials who were minorities, which
    would have excluded the juvenile justice specialist for the
    State of Connecticut, who has worked over 35 years to elevate
    the State's DMC work to national recognition.
        According to a letter that was sent to Chairman Grassley in
    October, which the staff never saw, including me, the reason
    that no State will be found out of compliance with the DMC core
    requirement is because a new compliance monitoring tool is
    being developed. However, I was the one who developed this tool
    way back in 2011. This tool is called the Disproportionate
    Minority Compliance Determination Assessment Instrument, or the
    CDAI.
        Even after the CDAI was piloted, no senior leader would
    grant final approval. A proposal was submitted to Mr. Listenbee
    and his senior leadership team in June 2013 and again in
    February 2014, in addition to other status inquiries, but all
    to no avail.
        When Mr. Listenbee was appointed to be administrator in
    March 2013, I, like many other staff members, were excited that
    he would bring his expertise and vision to OJJDP, particularly
    with addressing DMC. However, compliance monitoring issues have
    been exacerbated under his tenure and individuals who speak up
    suffer retaliation.
        After I made recommendations of noncompliance in 2013 and
    voiced concerns in 2014 and 2015, my job duties were reassigned
    to another staff member, even though I still hold the title as
    OJJDP's DMC coordinator.
        These experiences have been extremely difficult to me, to
    say the least, but what I do not want to get lost in all of
    this is the unfair treatment of youth, regardless of their race
    and ethnicity, who have come into contact with our Nation's
    juvenile justice system and that is why I am here to testify
    today. I want to make sure that the agency that I proudly work
    for achieves this mission on behalf of our Nation's youth.
        So, I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity to
    testify today and I look forward to answering any of your
    questions.
        Thank you.
        [The prepared statement of Ms. Coleman appears as a
    submission for the record.]
        Chairman Grassley. Thanks to all the panel. We will have 7-
    minute rounds of questions, unless there is objection.
        By the way, does the Senate Minority Whip need to go early
    because you have other responsibilities? Because if you do, I
    will let you go.
        Ms. Rumsey, as you noted in your opening, it is disturbing
    that the Department has been handing out grants to States
    despite admissions of noncompliance with these requirements.
        In my January letter to the Department, I asked about
    allegations that the Office of General Counsel for the Office
    of Justice Programs approved handing out money to States that
    failed to meet the statutory requirements.
        Briefly, what can you tell us about this allegation that
    the General Counsel's office signed off on the practice that
    the Department now admits is inconsistent with law?
        Ms. Rumsey. Thank you, Chairman Grassley. It is my
    understanding they wrote the memo which creates that practice,
    the secret legal memo which essentially authorizes or sort of
    retrospectively authorizes what Wisconsin was doing.
        So, in fact, there was an email with the subject line
    ``Wisconsin'' which has a legal opinion attached to it, which
    essentially allows Wisconsin to do what they are doing, which
    is lock up non-offenders.
        So, it is my understanding that they actually wrote the
    memo that allows this practice.
        And I just want to add, quickly, too, this came to light
    because of the dogged work of the DOJ/OIG special investigator
    who worked this case for over a year and a half and was
    abruptly removed in late 2009, at which point the Wisconsin
    case went dormant.
        Chairman Grassley. Thank you.
        Now, Professor Rivkin, you wrote to the Department in
    November 2013 asking why the Department was not interested in
    receiving the data that you had concerning compliance issues in
    your State.
        The letter will be submitted to the record, without
    objection.
        [The information appears as a submission for the record.]
        Chairman Grassley. The Department needs to improve its
    handling of such reports. So my question, Why was the
    Department uninterested in hearing about violations and do you
    have any recommendations for improving the Department's
    management of the Justice grants?
        Professor Rivkin. Chairman Grassley, asking me why they did
    not accept it would only lead to speculation. This audit, the
    audit that was done in September 2013 was the first audit since
    2005, 8 years.
        In terms of recommendations, I believe there needs to be
    more frequent audits than once every 8 years. There needs to be
    greater collection of data and the integrity of that data. This
    is a time of great sophistication in data collection and yet
    the data does not appear to be as robust as it should be.
        There should be much greater transparency in this agency
    rather than guidance documents and compliance regulations that
    go on and on. And I think there needs to be greater public
    participation among people in the States when audits take place
    and when OJJDP comes in. Those are some recommendations, Mr.
    Chairman, that I think would be prudent.
        Chairman Grassley. Ms. Coleman, some in the juvenile
    justice community have sought to blame States' noncompliance
    issues on reductions in the budget of the program. Yet, the
    Department policy that unlawfully rewarded noncompliant States
    with Federal money existed long before those budget cuts.
        You noted in your statement that in my home State of Iowa
    and other States, like Connecticut and Utah, have not only met
    the core funding requirements, but exceeded them.
        How much funding in juvenile justice grants do these
    compliant States get more or less than other States?
        Ms. Coleman. Yes. So funding is actually an issue and, as
    others have noted, the funding has dropped precipitously over
    the last decade. But these States actually are our minimum
    States.
        So over the last couple of years, Connecticut, Iowa, and
    Utah have received roughly around $400,000 annually in Title 2
    formula grant funds to carry out various functions of the
    JJDPA. So, they have actually been able to exceed the core
    protections of the JJDP Act.
        And particularly with the DMC core requirement, we have
    done a study that is soon to be released and even though they
    have received the minimum amount of funding, they have really
    been able to exceed the core protections.
        So although funding is really an issue, they have really
    been able to come up with some resourceful ways to exceed the
    core protections and do really well and we have seen this
    through their data.
        So although funding, again, is an issue, it is not the only
    issue and they have been very resourceful in being able to
    exceed the core protections and work and do really well.
        Chairman Grassley. I want to ask you another question about
    ``blanket pass.''
        Ms. Coleman. Sure.
        Chairman Grassley. The Justice Department sent me a letter
    in October that confirms your allegations that the Department
    issued a ``blanket pass'' to States regarding disproportionate
    minority contact requirements.
        This letter will be submitted to the record, without
    objection.
        [The information appears as a submission for the record.]
        Chairman Grassley. In your view, how does this ``blanket
    pass'' square with the requirements in the statute?
        Ms. Coleman. It does not square at all. OJJDP is required
    annually to make annual determinations of requirement with all
    the four core protections of the Act, including DMC, pursuant
    to Section 223(a)(22) and its accompanying regulations. And so
    the letter that was sent in 2014, that will also be sent this
    year for 2016 funds, is unprecedented.
        Since DMC has been a core requirement in 1992, this has
    never occurred. States have never been given, quote, ``a
    blanket pass'' for funding. It has never happened. Under this
    administration is the only time it has ever occurred. So, it
    does not square with the law.
        Chairman Grassley. Senator Whitehouse.
        Senator Whitehouse. I am going to be here through the
    entire hearing. So let me yield to my distinguished senior
    colleague, the Senator from Illinois.
        Senator Durbin. Thanks, Mr. Chairman, and thank you,
    Senator Whitehouse, for accommodating my schedule a little bit
    here.
        Ms. Coleman, we took a closer look at your testimony
    involving my State, obviously, with great interest and I might
    say at the outset that one of the gentlemen on the Juvenile
    Justice Commission in Illinois is retired Judge Timberlake,
    whom I greatly respect, who has been a leader in the areas of
    juvenile justice.
        It appears that the first notification Illinois had that it
    was out of compliance was in 2012. They were also notified that
    they had the right to appeal, which they did. And during the
    course of the appeal, I think, according to Judge Timberlake's
    letter, they answered the data collection issues which were
    raised in the 2012 notice and by 2013 they were given a
    notification that they were going to continue to receive
    funding and that they were in compliance.
        So, they were not ignoring it. When they were notified,
    they moved on it and I am glad they did. We want to gather this
    information.
        I think most of us would concede that on a national basis
    we have disproportionate minority contact in virtually all
    aspects of our justice system and we certainly want to make
    sure that we, as a Nation, address it and particularly among
    children.
        I had a hearing in another Subcommittee a year or 2 ago on
    the school-to-prison pipeline. Many of the offenses which these
    young people are accused of and then incarcerated because of,
    God forbid they would have been doing the same thing when I was
    in school, I might not be sitting here today--but it is a
    reality.
        Mr. Soler, if I have pronounced your name correctly, you
    have highlighted some of the most egregious examples of
    students who, for what was considered a disciplinary infraction
    when I was in school, is now viewed in the criminal context
    with disastrous results personally and on the reputations of
    these individuals.
        Judge Teske, I remember when you testified at that hearing.
    You were as impressive then as you are today. And I will tell
    you the thing that struck me the most in your testimony is when
    you waved 389 pages of Federal jargon on how these agencies are
    supposed to comply with all of the things that we can dream up.
        I would like to ask you--you gave some specific examples,
    but how can we simplify this so we serve the cause of justice,
    put limited resources--incidentally, this program has been cut
    by 80 percent in funding over the last 10 years--put these
    limited resources to work to remedy the injustice that has been
    described?
        Judge Teske. Senator, first of all, regarding the
    compliance matter, let me just say there is actually a great
    deal of good information in here. However, I think that it can
    be divided up separately. And when we talk about a compliance
    manual, let us talk about only those rules and regulations that
    the States need to comply and then make reference to some other
    separate document.
        The other problem is that--and it is kind of a perfect
    storm that is coming about here, and that is why I was hoping
    in my testimony to bring another dimension to what Ms. Rumsey
    and Ms. Coleman are sharing with us, which are egregious
    situations, no doubt about it.
        But thanks to them in bringing this about. Let us explore
    the entire universe. And what I mean by that is that we have--
    this perfect storm includes not only the 80 percent reduction
    in funding, but at the same time, there was an expansion of the
    monitoring universe, and the States were pushing back.
        We were asked to start inspecting shopping malls, going
    into group homes. I have a letter here, 2014, that says it's
    from a compliance monitor and Georgia is pushing back, saying
    wait a minute, the JJDPA does not specifically expressly say
    that. Why is this going on? That is creating more expense to us
    when, in fact, funding is going down.
        So when you have that happening, that is creating tension
    between States and OJJDP. That is a dynamic happening.
        And then I think we are witnessing another part of the
    dynamics going on internally within OJJDP, as well. Now, that
    is not withstanding egregious and flat-out fraud like
    Wisconsin. That is a whole separate issue. But there are other
    issues going on that we need to take a look at.
        Now, let me close by saying that in terms of the programs,
    like what we did in Clayton County, Governor Deal, in the March
    5, front page, Atlanta Journal Constitution, lead story, titled
    ``Clayton County Program Model for State.'' Governor Deal put
    me on the Reform Commission for a reason. He wanted to know how
    can we take the 77 percent reduction in commitments and do it
    statewide.
        And to Governor Deal's credit, he turned to our State
    advisory group and he said how can we use these formula moneys,
    how can we use moneys that we need to be reducing DMC and do it
    effectively. Well, let us look at statewide reform. And because
    of using these formula moneys on a statewide basis, attacking
    the most egregious, highest commitment counties in the State of
    Georgia, we have reduced commitments by 62 percent, most of
    them kids of color, in one fell swoop.
        And so last year, January 2014, Bob Listenbee comes down
    and meets with me and my juvenile justice specialist, Joe
    Vignati, at CDC. He says, ``How did you all do it? '' We
    explained it to him. And then not too long later, he comes back
    with the SMART grant. He says, ``Let us see if we can help
    States be more effective in reducing DMC by taking it on
    statewide instead of all this piecemeal, patchwork stuff that
    is going on in the States, which are good in that piecemeal,
    patchwork way, but let us really sock it, let us do the
    knockout.''
        Senator Durbin. I have to reclaim because I am running out
    of time here. But, Mr. Chairman, I understand this program has
    not been reauthorized for a long, long time, 2002, and I hope
    that this hearing is an indication of our sentiment that it
    should be. And I hope that we will keep an eye on the key goals
    that started us down this path.
        But I think Judge Teske's experience, again, impresses me
    so much, that he has results to show and we should be
    encouraging States to either look for better programs or, at
    least, to follow your example in the approach you are taking.
        So thank you for this hearing and thanks to all the
    witnesses.
        Chairman Grassley. I think a long time before I became
    Chairman, Senator Whitehouse and I had agreed on a basic format
    and we are ready to move forward.
        Senator Durbin. Great.
        Chairman Grassley. And hope you will follow.
        Senator Durbin. I would be happy to. And I also, as Mr.
    Soler mentioned, focusing on aspects such as isolation,
    segregation, and solitary confinement for children in America,
    come on. We are better than that and I hope that some aspects
    of that will be included.
        Thank you.
        Chairman Grassley. Thank you.
        Senator Tillis.
        Senator Durbin. I would ask that these two letters be made
    part of the record, without objection.
        Chairman Grassley. Without objection, so ordered.
        [The information appears as submissions for the record.]
        Senator Tillis. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
        Ms. Rumsey, before I ask a couple of questions, I am
    curious. As Judge Teske was commenting, you seemed to have a
    reaction to a few things. Do you want to expound on that?
        Ms. Rumsey. I have never monitored shopping malls as part
    of my job.
        Senator Tillis. But it sounds like, at least in one case,
    we had somebody on the ground who was asked to.
        Ms. Rumsey. Specifically, they may have been asked to
    monitor police departments which exist in shopping malls, which
    is not very common and, again, in my over 10 years doing this
    work, I have never once monitored a shopping mall.
        Senator Tillis. I do know down in North Carolina,
    particularly in urban areas, that is increasingly common in
    terms of police presence. So maybe that explains it, maybe not.
        But, Judge Teske, I wanted to come to you. You are from
    down in Clayton County and on its face, it sounds like you all
    are doing good things in Clayton County and producing positive
    outcomes.
        You lifted up that procedure manual which has--or the
    policy manual which has some 300 or 400 pages in it, but there
    was something interesting that you said. You lifted up the 300-
    or 400-page document and then you said, ``But now we need some
    more specifics.''
        So one question I have that goes back to the problem I
    have--I came from State government to the Federal Government--
    is, that we spend so much time dictating precisely what you do,
    but we do not spend enough time measuring what you accomplish.
        So, as we are going back and looking at reauthorization, to
    what extent should we be looking at measuring outcomes and
    having interventions based on--we have baseline information--
    measuring outcomes and modifying funding as a result of a
    failure to meet what we believe are reasonable outcomes, which
    may have to vary from State-to-State or region-to-region based
    on the circumstances, the demographics?
        What are your thoughts on that?
        Judge Teske. I completely agree, Senator. First of all, in
    my domain of being a judge, specifics means reducing, not
    expanding.
        Senator Tillis. Good. It does not mean that up here, by the
    way.
        [Laughter.]
        Judge Teske. So there is kind of--the data definition
    there. But directly to your point, as you recall, initially, in
    my testimony, I made reference that I chair the Oversight and
    Implementation Committee of our Criminal Justice Reform
    Commission. Yet, again, another great idea of Governor Deal, he
    wanted to make sure that we do not do what other States have
    done in the past, including our own, historically, where we
    reform something and then we pat each other on the back and we
    walk away without thinking, well, did we just enact something
    that really works? We need to measure it.
        So in fact, in our second year, what we did in my committee
    is we brought in researchers and analysts to help us develop an
    outcome and performance measure document.
        We are now creating a centralized juvenile data system.
    What we are doing is collecting that data, using that document,
    plugging the data in so that we can measure whether it is
    working.
        Governor Deal said let us keep the commission going so we
    can continue making changes and recommending to the
    legislature. So, you are absolutely correct.
        Senator Tillis. Well, I hope that we will focus on that
    because I think the way you get to a more reasonable document
    that is more likely to be complied with is to start looking at
    this a different way in terms of measuring outcomes.
        Ms. Coleman, you seemed to react to the question, so I was
    going to come to you next.
        Ms. Coleman. Thank you, Senator. I want to note the
    document that he is referring to is the Disproportionate
    Minority Contact Technical Assistance Manual and we are--
    actually, it has gone through several reiterations over the
    years and I was actually--that is part of my job duties and
    responsibilities and we were actually working to reduce that.
        That is one of my job duties and responsibilities that I
    was actually working on before it was actually reassigned to
    another staff member. And the purpose of that document,
    actually, is guidance for States to implement the DMC reduction
    model.
        And, yes, it is a mammoth monster and I always say that if
    you cannot sleep at night, you should pick up that manual, you
    should read it. So that was actually one of the things that I
    was working on is actually shortening that guidance and
    condensing it.
        And currently, if you do go online, you can actually take
    it into pieces. You do not have to take the whole manual. So,
    if you want some assistance on data collection, you can just
    print out the first chapter and take that. If you want to look
    at evidence-based or best practices on interventions, you can
    just print out that section.
        So you do not have to print out that mammoth document. You
    can take it in pieces. But as I was stating in my testimony,
    those were one of the duties that were actually reassigned to
    another staff member that I am no longer able to work on.
        Senator Tillis. Thank you. And I should have mentioned to
    begin with, Ms. Coleman and Ms. Rumsey, thank you for your
    courage in stepping up and identifying some things that you
    think are problems, and I am sorry for the financial burden
    that you and your family are facing in what I think was doing
    the right thing.
        I have a question for both of you. Do you feel that there
    were people in the OJJDP that intentionally misread and applied
    the statute or is this just an example of careless application?
        I will let both of you respond in my remaining time.
        Ms. Rumsey. Yes is the short answer.
        Senator Tillis. I can ask a follow-up. You can continue.
        Ms. Rumsey. And a lot of this is hindsight. As I said in my
    testimony, I was provided some emails----
        Senator Tillis. Well, maybe I should ask just a follow-up.
    Is it a systemic problem or is it just an example of maybe
    certain sections or certain people not actually doing their
    jobs?
        Ms. Coleman. I will go ahead. It is hard to see you at the
    other end of the table.
        I think it is a combination of factors. I think sometimes
    folks are put in place of content areas in which they have no
    background and experience and I do not think that is a DOJ
    problem. I think sometimes it is a governmentwide problem.
        We have some senior leaders that have no background in
    criminal or juvenile justice that are placed in positions of
    leadership. So sometimes that is difficult. So then you have
    staff, such as myself and Ms. Rumsey and others, that do have
    the experience and then we are trying to basically train them
    on the job. And so that is somehow difficult. And then you do
    just have people that will not enforce the law, as we have
    stated in our testimony today, and so then that creates the
    situation that Judge Teske says, that we go and we do these
    onsite audits and then you get a report 4 and 5 years later,
    which I think is just a disservice not only to kids in these
    systems, but to the American people when you expect a report
    and it comes 4 or 5 years later.
        So it is a lack of enforcement of the law, much to our
    protesting over and over, and it is just that people will not
    do it, for whatever reasons.
        Senator Tillis. Thank you.
        Thank you, Mr. Chair.
        Chairman Grassley. Senator Franken.
        Senator Franken. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
        Professor Rivkin, as you noted in your testimony, OJJDP's
    compliance monitoring system has historically lacked
    transparency and accountability.
        As an advocate with a wealth of experience navigating the
    juvenile justice system, you nonetheless found it incredibly
    difficult to report your observations to the body tasked with
    program oversight. And once you connected with OJJDP, your
    offer to submit data to document noncompliance was rebuffed.
        In your view, what were the consequences of OJJDP's
    decision to disregard your data not just in terms of taxpayer
    dollars, but particularly to young people in the criminal
    justice system?
        Professor Rivkin. By failing to look at the local detention
    data, as I said, the statistics that we had and our experience
    with our clients, there was an absence of on-the-ground
    understanding of what was happening to kids when they were
    being locked up in our community for non-crimes, for these
    status offenses.
        And I have to say I was--and I am not often this nonplused.
    After 45 years, almost, of a legal career, I was nonplused that
    they said to me they were not interested in trying to reconcile
    these numbers. And as a result, the integrity of the entire
    process was significantly reduced.
        Kids continued to be locked up and, as I mentioned, the DSO
    violations in our county may have reduced, although the
    integrity of that data is in question, but instead the whack-a-
    mole sort of situation is that mostly runaways are being
    locked. The default is to lock up, to arrest and then to lock
    up a runaway under this, I think, legally dubious 24-hour
    exception and bring them to jail, and that is an issue that we
    very much would have wanted to raise if we had a chance to
    meet.
        We did not even know when the auditors were coming. So
    there is real human cost. There is efficiency cost. One way of
    getting a simpler system, frankly, would be for Congress to
    make it very clear that the language that they adopted in
    Section 223 in 1974 that says that States cannot lock up kids
    in secured detention for status offenses, which is as plain as
    day, as far as I can tell, would be the law and forget about
    the exceptions or phase the exceptions out, if Congress so
    wishes.
        It would make compliance a whole lot easier and my hunch is
    that there would be a significant reduction in these lockups.
        Senator Franken. Thank you. I want to talk about mental
    health. Among the compliance failures you identified in your
    testimony, you mentioned that juvenile clients that your
    students represented were not screened for mental health
    conditions and one of the consequences was that one of your
    clients threatened suicide after being released and was
    subsequently admitted to a psychiatric facility.
        Professor Rivkin. Yes.
        Senator Franken. One of the issues that I have been most
    focused on is how to improve the ways in which people with
    mental health conditions interact with the criminal justice
    system and I have just reintroduced a bill, with a number of my
    colleagues on both sides of the aisle, that would assist in
    training law enforcement on how to recognize and how to respond
    appropriately to individuals who have mental health issues or
    are experiencing mental health crises.
        And that would invest in mental health courts so that
    people with mental health issues are directed or diverted to
    treatment rather than incarcerated, because right now we are
    really using our criminal justice system as a substitute for a
    fully functioning mental health system and that has to stop.
        Based on your experience representing juvenile offenders,
    how would you characterize the juvenile justice system's
    ability to adequately protect young people with mental health
    issues and conditions?
        Professor Rivkin. From our observations, very poorly, and
    this legislation, I think, would be very promising.
        What we were able to do with our clients was to stabilize
    their school experience. We were doing truancy cases. And many
    of our clients had either identified educational disabilities
    or the school system had not screened them very well.
        I have to say that our school system, over the course of
    the last 6 years, through a lot of advocacy and school
    meetings, has done a much better job of using the Individuals
    with Disabilities Education Act to screen individuals before
    filing petitions.
        And I am really happy to say that in our county, the number
    of petitions--and in our State, there is a State prosecutor
    there with a kid--the number of petitions in our county dropped
    from hundreds and hundreds each year to 26 last year and the
    major part of it was the screening done by the school system
    for largely mental health-related issues.
        Senator Franken. In the SCH mark-up, we included more
    mental health in schools.
        Professor Rivkin. I think it would be really helpful to
    keep kids, as we say, in school and out of court.
        Senator Franken. I see some nodding. Would anybody else
    like to comment briefly on that?
        Yes, Mr. Soler?
        Mr. Soler. I think the provisions in the Act, in 2999, to
    include trauma-informed care and trauma considerations are
    really critically important. Many of the children we see in the
    system live lives in trauma all the time. They live in violent
    communities. They may live in violent families.
        Many, many of them, an enormously high percentage, are
    exposed to trauma and by putting this into 2999, putting it
    into the legislation, it will assist in having more of a focus
    on this issue to make sure that there are the right kinds of
    training for personnel in the juvenile justice system and also
    that people will understand that young people who have been
    traumatized do not react to things in the same way that
    children who have not.
        They may react in ways that cause behavior--cause problems
    inside of juvenile facilities, but it is not because they are
    being wilfully disobedient to the staff in there. These kids
    are traumatized and they are acting it out.
        Senator Franken. Thank you.
        Judge Teske. Senator, I just wanted to say traumatized
    people traumatize people and we need to keep that in mind and
    why it is there. The JJDPA and what it provides and what Mark
    is saying is so important because what we do not need to do is
    put kids in a system, detaining them unnecessarily, that
    traumatizes them more.
        Senator Franken. Thank you.
        Chairman Grassley. Now, Senator Whitehouse.
        Senator Whitehouse. Thank you, Chairman.
        Let me just take a moment of my time to thank Senator
    Franken for his work on the education bill on the mental health
    issue. I am on the Health Committee with him and I think we
    made really good progress in that area.
        Let me also say that for those who are skeptical about
    Washington's ability to get things done and sense too much
    partisanship around here, under the very expert leadership of
    Chairman Alexander and Ranking Member Murray, we did a very
    significant piece of legislation in a hotly contested issue
    area that cleared the Committee 22-0. So I hope that Chairman
    Grassley and I can match that on the JJDPA reauthorization here
    in the Judiciary Committee.
        Ms. Coleman and Ms. Rumsey, both of you exhibited
    considerable frustration with the failures at the State level
    that were being accommodated rather than addressed and I have
    to believe that that frustration is founded in a sense of
    purpose and value to the underlying JJDPA program, and clearly
    this is an area in which two very talented people have
    dedicated your professional skills. Could you say something,
    just briefly, about the role of the Juvenile Justice and
    Delinquency Prevention Act and why it is that you are so
    committed to having that enforced and why that is your career?
        Ms. Coleman and then Ms. Rumsey.
        Ms. Coleman. Thank you so much for the question, Senator
    Whitehouse. My dedication to this actually started before I
    became a Federal Government employee. Before I came to the
    Department of Justice, I did this work in the State of
    Kentucky. Go Cats, go Cards--had to get that in there for my
    folks in Kentucky who are watching.
        This started long before I got here, my investment in the
    JJDP Act. Again, I did this work there, serving as the
    disproportionate minority contact coordinator and also working
    on the juvenile accountability block grant, serving as the
    Title 5 coordinator, working long ago under the serious violent
    offender re-entry work.
        I mean, I have done this JJDP Act work for so long, being
    with the JJDP Act, sort of feeling like it is my baby, so to
    speak.
        Senator Whitehouse. And you have seen the difference that
    it makes.
        Ms. Coleman. I have seen the difference. I remember when
    Kentucky was a nonparticipating State. Wyoming--we were with
    Wyoming. So when OJJDP would have its national conference, we
    would actually have our own little table because we were sort
    of the bad children of the--we had some very serious challenges
    in Kentucky.
        So I have seen where it has come and I have seen the impact
    on the ground in the weeds. So this legislation, I can attest
    to what everyone has said here--saw some very awful things
    happening to children in the Bluegrass State.
        So, it is very, very important that this Act gets
    reauthorized.
        Senator Whitehouse. Ms. Rumsey----
        Ms. Coleman. And so coming to the Federal level and seeing
    it at the sort of 30,000-foot-high level, that is my
    commitment. And so this is more than a job to me when I go and
    visit the facilities and do the work with Ms. Rumsey and other
    staff.
        I mean, this almost sort of brings an emotional--this is
    emotional for me. Seeing what happens to these children in the
    facilities and seeing the minority over-representation, that is
    why I am here today. It is not really to point fingers. It is
    really to ensure that we hold States accountable, that we
    protect these children and that we make sure that taxpayer
    dollars are being spent wisely.
        So that is my commitment to the JJDPA and why the
    reauthorization is so important.
        Senator Whitehouse. Ms. Rumsey?
        Ms. Rumsey. Thank you. The best way to describe why I do
    what I do is to actually go into jails and see where these kids
    are being housed. And if I may recommend one very close to
    here, the Baltimore City Detention Center, BCDC, you have
    probably heard of it because it made the front page of The
    Washington Post a year or so ago.
        And if you go into that facility, you will see children in
    isolation in the most extreme circumstances that are shocking
    and unbelievable and disgraceful. And I do the work I do
    because the impact it has is that changes are made, often after
    the Justice Department shows up.
        For example, there was a 16-year-old girl in isolation in
    BCDC, which is a 1,000-bed adult jail, so very few juveniles
    there, thankfully, but if they are there, it is not a good
    place. Right? A 16-year-old girl there, should not have been
    there. There was an AAG with me there, along with a number of
    other staff.
        We were told within an hour she was moved out because we
    all saw this girl in a circumstance she should not have been
    in. We expressed our concerns as politely as we could and the
    good news is, she was moved to the juvenile justice system
    almost immediately.
        So that is why I do what I do, because I think the power of
    this law is the change that we can bring to children's lives
    can be immediately. Now, quickly, I want to say, too, I think
    oversight is still so important here, because you are going to
    hear from Carolyn Lerner later today that she has ordered a
    reinvestigation of sorts of the Wisconsin case and our OIG is
    handling that. That began about 7 months ago and they still
    have not talked to me.
        So in some ways, I am still the skunk at the company
    picnic. They are reluctant to talk to me for some reason. I am
    not sure why. But hopefully I will get the chance at some point
    to share what I know in hopes of actually fixing the problems
    which I believe still exist in Wisconsin.
        Thank you.
        Senator Whitehouse. Judge Teske, you come at this as a
    former prosecutor, as someone with a background in corrections.
    You are from the enforcement part of law enforcement.
        The numbers that you gave showed substantially reduced
    engagement and intervention with the criminal justice system.
    Just remind us why that is a good thing.
        Judge Teske. We cannot let appearances fool us. The get-
    tough rhetoric can be convenient, it can be quick, but the
    problem is that we are now armed with so much research over the
    last 40 years that we know that if we do not do it right, be
    right on crime, smart on crime, that we do not do those things
    that make us look soft, if we get the courage, we are going to
    find out in the end that we are going to have better safety in
    the community. We are going to improve community safety.
        I remember the days in Clayton County we had drive-by
    shootings every week. I cannot remember the last one now. I
    cannot remember the last one. And we are the poorest county in
    all metro Atlanta.
        The AJC education reporter wants to know how come our
    graduation rates are going up, how come we are beating the
    trend, the research, when our graduation rates should be going
    down because we are the poorest county; but the other ones are
    either steady or going down and they are wealthier than we are.
        Well, I will tell you why. It is because we collaborate,
    because we have a backbone agency, a private and public--we
    took the research, we put it together, we followed it, and,
    most important of all, we were able to cede it with Federal
    money because of the JJDPA.
        You can have all the research you want, but until you get
    something to at least get it going, like my daddy said, in the
    old carburetor, ``Son, when you go fill it up when you run out
    of gas, because I know you are going to, because, you know,
    kids are neurologically wired to do stupid things, make sure
    you do not pour all the gas out in that tank, just leave a
    little bit to pour in the carburetor, it just takes just a
    little bit,'' and that is what JJDPA is all about.
        We just need that little bit to help us States get going.
        Senator Whitehouse. For what it is worth, my wife would
    probably say that it is men who are neurologically wired to do
    stupid things, it is not kids. But that is after 30 years of
    marriage to me.
        [Laughter.]
        Judge Teske. Well, Senator, actually, women are ahead of
    us. Their prefrontal lobe cortex is developed at 23, ours is
    25.
        Senator Whitehouse. So let me thank all the witnesses. Let
    me thank the Chairman. I think this has been a very, very
    useful hearing. And I think the point that Judge Teske closed
    with is one that we have already accepted and agree with on
    this Committee at the adult level with the Second Chance Act
    and with some of the criminal justice reform legislation that
    we are working on.
        I have seen it in my home State of Rhode Island, in which
    we address some of the issues related to incarceration, reduced
    incarceration rates, got people exited better and out of the
    prison sooner, and saw our crime rate go down, not up, in
    coordination with that.
        So I am very pleased that the Committee, I think, is going
    in the right direction here and I hope that we can make real
    progress, and I think the witnesses have been terrific in
    helping to guide us in that direction.
        So a great hearing, Mr. Chairman, and thank you.
        Chairman Grassley. And I associate myself with your
    remarks.
        Before the panel goes, thank you all for your participation
    and particularly, as whistleblowers in this town know, I
    consider whistleblowers patriotic citizens who just want to do
    their job and have government do what government is supposed to
    do, and I thank you for that.
        Before you leave, I would like Ms. Coleman and Ms. Rumsey
    to know that I am going to ask this first question of Ms. Mason
    after she testifies: Can I have your commitment that the
    Department will not engage in any prohibited personnel
    practices against Ms. Rumsey and Ms. Coleman for their
    testimony here today or for their previous communication with
    this Committee?
        I thank all of you and you are dismissed now.
        Would the next panel come, please? Well, you cannot come
    until they leave, but they are going to leave.
        [Pause.]
        Chairman Grassley. Thank you all for being here. I am going
    to give a short introduction.
        Karol Mason is Assistant Attorney General for the Office of
    Justice Programs at the Department of Justice. The Office of
    Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention is a component of
    the Office of Justice Programs.
        Carolyn Lerner heads the U.S. Office of Special Counsel.
    She has been serving in that role since June 2011.
        I will start with you, Ms. Mason.

     STATEMENT OF HON. KAROL V. MASON, ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL,
        OFFICE OF JUSTICE PROGRAMS, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE,
                             WASHINGTON, DC

        Ms. Mason. Good morning. Thank you, Chairman Grassley and
    Senator Whitehouse and distinguished Members of the Committee.
        I am pleased to be here and grateful for the opportunity to
    discuss the efforts of the Department of Justice to improve our
    implementation of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
    Prevention Act so that we achieve the goals underlying the
    JJDPA to help our Nation's youth to become productive citizens
    and the visionary leaders that they are capable of becoming.
        As Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Justice
    Programs, which includes the Office of Juvenile Justice and
    Delinquency Prevention, investing in our youth so that we
    unlock their tremendous potential is one of the primary reasons
    that I wanted to lead the Office of Justice Programs.
        Ensuring that we have an effective and fair juvenile
    justice system is one of my top priorities. I believe that the
    road to safe and healthy communities begins with the assurance
    of opportunity for our young people, especially those who come
    into contact with the justice system.
        Providing that opportunity to take responsibility, to
    change behavior, and ultimately to become productive and
    successful members of their communities lies at the heart of
    the mission at the Office of Justice Programs and, indeed, it
    is a fundamental moral obligation that we all share.
        This administration and this Department of Justice have
    devoted substantial attention and resources to meeting the
    needs of challenged and justice-involved youth. Efforts like
    the Supportive School Discipline Initiative and our work with
    the Department of Education to provide educational services to
    youth in correctional facilities are designed to keep kids out
    of the juvenile justice system and ensure that those who come
    into our care are given the support, education and guidance
    they need to get on the right path.
        The provisions of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
    Prevention Act and particularly the four core protections set
    forth by the law provide a framework for advancing this
    critical work. For more than 40 years, the Department of
    Justice has used its grant-making authority under the JJDPA to
    make a positive difference in the lives of the young people who
    come into contact with the juvenile justice system.
        As you know, the Act sets nationwide standards for State-
    based juvenile justice systems and authorizes our Office of
    Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention to award funds to
    assist States in improving their juvenile justice systems.
        While I can assure you that the leadership and staff of
    OJJDP are committed to fulfilling the mandates of the law, I am
    also aware of some of the serious problems in the way the
    office has monitored compliance with the Act, problems that we
    have begun to address.
        They arise from three overarching problems: regulations
    that are outdated and inconsistent with the law; vague
    standards that lead to subjectivity in compliance findings;
    and, delays in making compliance determinations.
        While we are already developing new policies to improve
    compliance with the statute and to avoid these errors in the
    future, last month we created a new core protections division
    in OJJDP, which, on an interim basis will be led by an
    experienced auditor. The division will develop guidelines that
    streamline the process for submitting compliance data and it
    will create an online tool that will allow States to submit
    data and enable us to analyze that data in a more timely
    fashion.
        We are also tightening the timeline for making compliance
    determinations to ensure that States are held accountable for
    compliance failures. We are developing objective standards to
    guide our review and analysis and we will make routine use of
    field audits to monitor State compliance activity and identify
    areas where technical assistance is needed.
        Finally, we are reviewing all available options to
    determine whether OJJDP can recover any of the funds that were
    improperly awarded to States because of failures in the
    compliance monitoring process. In fact, in response to the
    Inspector General's recent report outlining systemic failures
    in Wisconsin, we have frozen all of that State's unspent
    formula grant funds and notified officials of our plan to
    conduct an audit within the next 60 days.
        We will be both thorough and expeditious in taking these
    steps. Our goal and my pledge to you is to ensure that our
    compliance monitoring efforts are consistent with the law so
    that we fulfill our job of protecting our youth and putting
    them on a path for success.
        I am grateful to you, Senator Grassley, and to the full
    Committee for calling these issues to our attention and I
    applaud those who brought these serious matters to light. I
    encourage anyone--anyone--who has knowledge of error, waste, or
    malfeasance in the administration of OJJDP programs to come
    forward immediately. They will continue to have my full
    support.
        Thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today and I
    will be happy to answer any questions you may have.
        [The prepared statement of Ms. Mason appears as a
    submission for the record.]
        Chairman Grassley. Thank you, Ms. Mason.
        Now, Ms. Lerner.

    STATEMENT OF HON. CAROLYN LERNER, SPECIAL COUNSEL, U.S. OFFICE
                   OF SPECIAL COUNSEL, WASHINGTON, DC

        Ms. Lerner. Chairman Grassley, Ranking Member Whitehouse,
    Members of the Committee, thank you very much for the
    opportunity to testify.
        I also want to thank Chairman Grassley and this Committee
    for your ongoing interest in whistleblower issues and for your
    support of the Office of Special Counsel in enforcing the
    Whistleblower Protection Act.
        OSC is an independent Federal agency. We investigate and
    prosecute on behalf of over 2 million Federal employees. We
    fulfill this role with a staff of about 135 employees and one
    of the smallest budgets of any Federal law enforcement agency.
        OSC provides a safe channel through which Federal employees
    may allege violations of law, rule or regulations, gross
    mismanagement, gross waste of funds and abuse of authority, or
    a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety.
        Unlike its role in retaliation and other prohibited
    personnel practice cases, OSC does not have investigative
    authority in disclosure cases. Rather, OSC first evaluates
    whistleblower disclosures using a substantial likelihood of
    wrongdoing standard.
        In making this determination, we interview the
    whistleblower and assess the reliability of their information,
    among other factors. If this threshold determination is made, I
    send the information to the head of the appropriate agency, who
    is then required to investigate.
        When we receive the agency's report of investigation, I
    assess whether the findings appear reasonable and are complete.
    The assessment considers whether the findings are credible and
    consistent based upon the facts in the disclosure, the agency
    report, and the whistleblower's input.
        I then send the report with my determination and the
    whistleblower's comments to the President and to Congress.
        This oversight role improves Government operations in three
    key ways. First, if an agency is reluctant to investigate
    wrongdoing raised internally, OSC can compel an investigation.
    Second, OSC provides an important accountability and quality
    control function in the investigative process. For example, the
    whistleblowers, who are often the experts on the allegations,
    can comment on the investigation and corrective actions. And
    OSC also ensures that the actions taken by the agency are
    reasonable. Third and finally, the process is transparent as
    OSC makes the results public.
        The number of referrals to agency heads for investigation
    varies by year, but is generally between 40 and 60 cases or
    about 5 percent of all disclosures received annually.
        In 2014 and 2015, OSC referred two cases involving the
    Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, OJJDP,
    to the Attorney General for investigation. The cases involve
    allegations that OJJDP failed to ensure that States and
    localities complied with the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
    Prevention Act and that despite documented noncompliance,
    States continued to receive grants in further violation of the
    Act.
        OSC referred the cases to the Justice Department on
    September 16, 2014 and January 13, 2015. The Justice
    Department's Office of Inspector General is conducting the
    investigations for DOJ.
        In addition, OSC is also reviewing allegations that an
    employee was retaliated against for reporting related concerns
    about OJJDP.
        Because all of these cases are ongoing, I cannot say more
    about them at this time. Doing so would compromise the ongoing
    investigation and my oversight of the OIG investigation and
    Department response. It could also potentially prejudice our
    determinations in the reprisal case.
        I want to acknowledge the Committee staff who I understand
    have communicated these limitations to the Members of the
    Committee.
        Thank you again for the opportunity to testify. I look
    forward to answering your questions.
        [The prepared statement of Ms. Lerner appears as a
    submission for the record.]
        Chairman Grassley. Thank you, Ms. Lerner.
        I will have four questions for Ms. Mason and one question
    for you. I will start with Ms. Mason.
        I want to make sure that there are no repercussions against
    the two Department of Justice employees who testified on our
    first panel. I am particularly concerned about the allegations
    of past retaliation and other misconduct that involved
    officials in your General Counsel's office.
        So a simple question: Can I have your commitment that the
    Department will not engage in any prohibited personnel
    practices against Ms. Rumsey or Ms. Coleman for their testimony
    here today or for their previous communications with the
    Committee?
        Ms. Mason. You absolutely have my commitment, Senator, and
    thank you for this opportunity to answer that question. In
    fact, I welcome their input and, as we work through these
    solutions to the problems you have identified, they are an
    integral part of our process to fix this situation.
        Chairman Grassley. My understanding is that the
    Department--for you, Ms. Mason--that the Department has not yet
    recovered any funds that were given to the States under the
    unlawful policy.
        Now, I would like to have today a ballpark estimate of how
    much money has been unlawfully disbursed under this policy. If
    you cannot give me that figure today, could you commit to
    providing an estimate to the Committee by a date certain?
        Ms. Mason. Thank you for the question, Senator. As we have
    mentioned in the past in our communications with your staff and
    our briefings with your staff, because of the subjectivity that
    is built into the current policies and practices, we are having
    a difficult time being able to determine on an objective basis,
    and re-create the decisions.
        So, it is--I could not give you a time limit as we dig into
    this to try to figure out what moneys, if any, need to be
    returned as a result of earlier decisions. But I can assure you
    that going forward, we are going to have a robust policy that
    is objective and transparent so that everyone going forward
    knows what the rules are and we will hold every State
    accountable going forward.
        Chairman Grassley. I want to ask you a question about
    ``blanket pass.'' In October, the Department informed me that
    since 2013, it has been telling States that they will not be
    found out of compliance with the DMC requirement pending the
    development of a new monitoring tool.
        Ms. Coleman testified that she developed this tool in 2011,
    4 years ago, but could not even get status updates about where
    it stands in the Department's approval process.
        So to you, Ms. Mason. It is unclear whether the
    administrator even has the authority to suspend compliance
    determinations like this. I asked you this question in my
    February letter, but have not received a response.
        Do you believe that the administrator has the authority to
    suspend statutory requirements and, if so, what is the basis
    for that authority?
        Ms. Mason. Thank you for the opportunity to explain what we
    are doing with our disproportionate minority contact compliance
    process.
        As we have explained to your staff, we have determined that
    we do not have the adequate tool that gives it the objectivity
    we need to determine compliance with the disproportionate
    minority contact core requirement. So we are using this time,
    in close consultation with everyone involved at the Office of
    Justice Programs--excuse me--OJJDP who is part of the core
    compliance team.
        We are also working closely with the Bureau of Justice
    Statistics and others to develop a tool that will withstand
    scrutiny and will be more objective.
        We expect to have that tool available to begin testing and
    letting people know about it by the end of the summer. So, I
    think that it is in our best interest to develop a tool that is
    fair and objective so that we can hold States fairly
    accountable for the compliance with that core requirement.
        Chairman Grassley. Ms. Lerner, multiple witnesses testified
    on the first panel that their job duties were stripped away
    after reporting what they believed to be waste, fraud, and
    mismanagement within the Department. To me, that sounds a lot
    like retaliation and textbook example of a prohibited personnel
    practice.
        For the benefit of other whistleblowers in the agency who
    may fear similar reprisal, would you please explain what
    options are available to them for reporting retaliation and
    prohibited personnel practices to your office?
        Ms. Lerner. Sure. A lot of whistleblowers start internally.
    They can go to their IG office. They can always come to this
    Committee or to Congress. But the Office of Special Counsel is
    specifically there for Federal employees who believe that they
    have been subjected to a prohibited personnel practice and we
    will take their case through our complaints examining unit.
        We often can get a quick resolution through mediation. We
    have a very robust alternative dispute resolution program. So
    that if someone comes to us and they suggest that something is
    happening to them that should not be, we can get it into
    mediation quickly.
        We can also get a stay of the personnel action. So, for
    example, if someone is being threatened with termination,
    someone is being threatened with a relocation, we can often get
    a voluntary stay or pause on that activity through the agency.
    If we cannot get it voluntarily through the Department of
    Justice, we can go to the Merit Systems Protection Board.
        So, there are a lot of tools in our arsenal that we can--or
    enough tools in our toolkit that we can use to protect
    whistleblowers and we will do so very robustly.
        Chairman Grassley. One last question for Ms. Mason. I had
    sent a letter in January 2015. I asked you to respond to
    allegations of the Office of Justice Programs' Office of
    General Counsel that it issued a secret legal opinion to
    retroactively justify grants that were given to Wisconsin in
    violation of the law.
        According to whistleblowers, this opinion overturned a
    decades-old interpretation at the agency, a change that should
    have involved public notice and comment. To date, I have not
    heard from you regarding this allegation. So, would you be able
    to provide this Committee with a copy of that legal opinion?
        Ms. Mason. Thank you for the question, Senator. As you
    know, this is part of an active investigation by the Office of
    the Inspector General in response to the inquiry from the
    Office of Special Counsel.
        We would be happy to meet with your staff and give them an
    opportunity to review that document.
        Chairman Grassley. I would not think a legal opinion would
    be so central to an investigation that you could not give us
    the legal document without interfering with the investigation,
    right?
        Ms. Mason. As I have said, Senator, we will be happy to
    provide that information to your staff.
        Chairman Grassley. Thank you.
        Senator Whitehouse.
        Senator Whitehouse. Thank you, Chairman.
        Two things. First, Chairman Grassley mentioned in his
    opening statement that there had been, in response to his
    inquiries about this, an original letter that came back from
    the Department of Justice that I have not seen yet, but that
    apparently said everything is fine, do not worry, and then
    there was a----
        Chairman Grassley. You can see that letter. We will get it.
        Senator Whitehouse. Great. And then there was a follow-up
    when the questions got asked a little bit more pointedly, in
    which the Department said, ``oops, okay, yes, you are right,
    and here are the problems.'' The follow-up letter, I think, was
    the April 14 letter.
        I have to say, as a former United States Attorney, as
    somebody who thinks very highly of the Department of Justice,
    as somebody who is very proud of the Department of Justice, I
    am pretty concerned that that first letter got out and I would
    be interested in your opinion on why it is that adequate
    inquiries were not made in response to a letter from, I guess,
    then the Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee such
    that the Department ended up being put in a position where they
    sent out a letter that proved not to be either accurate or
    complete and had to be corrected after the fact.
        That is not what we expect from the Department of Justice.
    You guys are supposed to meet a way higher standard than that.
    What on earth happened?
        Ms. Mason. Senator, thank you for the opportunity to
    address your concerns.
        I share your concerns about the way that we have been
    operating our compliance process. I think what happened,
    Senator, is that as we dug into this issue more deeply, we
    discovered more issues and more problems. And so I apologize
    for any miscommunication we may have provided to you all, but
    we do acknowledge that there is a problem. We acknowledge that
    things do need to be corrected and we are in the process of
    doing that.
        Senator Whitehouse. I hope that part of this review will
    not just include what happened in Wisconsin or what happened in
    Virginia, but will also look into how it came to pass that an
    apparently inaccurate or, at least, incomplete letter was sent
    about this to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
        Something misfired somewhere in the Department and I think
    an explanation of what went wrong is a worthy part of your
    inquiry.
        Ms. Mason. Thank you for that, Senator, but I want to make
    sure that you all understand what we are doing to correct the
    problem.
        What we are doing is we have invited our Office of Audit
    Assessment and Management, which is our own internal audit and
    compliance division, to help us work with the Office of
    Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention to develop a robust
    compliance process.
        We take your inquiries, we take the concerns very
    seriously, because our first priority is to protect the
    children. So, we are using all of the tools we have available
    to us to figure out how do we develop a system that will ensure
    that the States are complying with the law and making sure that
    the protections that we need for our young people are there.
        Senator Whitehouse. Well, I do not want to get ahead of my
    skis here, having not actually seen the letter, but I will
    reserve the right to put in a question for the record that I
    hope will focus on whatever went--if something went wrong, what
    it was so that part of that inquiry is to answer that question.
        The second thing also comes out of the April 14 letter, in
    which the Department says that OJJDP's compliance monitoring
    program relied on regulations that were outdated and
    inconsistent with the current version of the JJDP Act.
        OJJDP failed to update regulations to reflect statutory
    revisions, the letter said. Many current regulations remain
    unchanged from their initial publication in 1981, the letter
    said, and no new regulations have been released since 1996, the
    letter said.
        Now, developing administrative regulations is something
    that is 100 percent within the purview of the executive branch
    of government. That is something that you control absolutely.
        I am less interested in going back and trying to figure out
    what went wrong such that regulations did not keep track even
    with statutory changes, although I suspect that ought to be a
    matter of interest to the Department and what the heck happened
    there, but I am really concerned that if we go through the
    effort to reauthorize the JJDPA and we get a good bipartisan
    bill out, which I hope we will, and it makes some of the
    changes that the previous panels and other people who have been
    working with us to implement, that you will be quick off the
    mark to make appropriate administrative regulation changes to
    follow through on what we will have done.
        I do not want to pass a new statute and have the Department
    wander off and not bother to update its regulations again. What
    kind of assurance do we have that that will not happen?
        Ms. Mason. Well, Senator, we actually need your guidance.
    We are in the process now of revising the regulations to update
    them because our goal is to make sure that we are complying
    with the law.
        So, we would like some guidance from you all as to whether
    we should hold back on that now and wait for the enactment of
    the JJDPA or whether we should proceed with the regulations. We
    will do whatever you direct us to do.
        But I can assure you that our number one priority is to
    make sure that we are complying with the law because it's in
    our best interest--everyone's interest to protect the children
    that the JJDPA is designed to protect.
        And I would like to offer one clarification about our
    response in January. I do not have the specific letter in front
    of me at the moment.
        Senator Whitehouse. Nor do I.
        Ms. Mason. But I do not think that we sent a message that
    there were no problems. We acknowledged that there were issues
    with our compliance process. We have always accepted
    responsibility in this administration, under my watch, for the
    errors that are in place.
        I have never pretended that everything is fine. We know
    that there is a problem and we have been working to correct
    these issues well before the letters came from Senator Grassley
    and the Office of Special Counsel.
        Once the problems came to our attention, we started digging
    in to try to figure out what has happened--what has happened
    and why it has happened, and began focusing on how do we get
    ahead of this and prepare a robust compliance process that
    satisfies the law.
        Senator Whitehouse. Well, I am not in a position to
    anticipate how quickly we will get our reauthorization passed
    through the Senate, let alone through the House and to the
    President's desk for signature, but I think it is a very safe
    bet that it is at least going to be a considerable number of
    months.
        And my feeling is that the American public and the
    organizations that work with you have the right to be working
    with an agency whose regulations are up-to-date and whether it
    is only bringing them up-to-date for those few months until the
    bill comes along and then you have to go back and do it again,
    I think that is part of what your job is.
        So, I would encourage you to do both in the quickest
    available timeframe under the Administrative Procedures Act.
        Ms. Mason. Thank you.
        Senator Whitehouse. That is my personal sense of it. I do
    not know if the Chairman has anything to add, but I will yield
    back. Thank you.
        Chairman Grassley. Before you go, thank you for your
    testimony. What you show is good faith of changing things. I
    hope they materialize. I hope that you can do what you can to
    right things with the whistleblowers that I think have been
    mistreated within your department.
        Now, I am going to say something that I would say to any
    department. Whistleblowers are patriotic people. We could not
    do our job of oversight--I do not see how you can do your job
    as an administrator or any administrator, because you have got
    so many people working under you. If something is wrong and you
    cannot know everything that is right and wrong, people come to
    you with a good-faith effort to point out something is wrong,
    it ought to be treated with a priority if you did not know
    about it.
        It reminds me of the first whistleblower I ever got
    acquainted with, Ernie Fitzgerald, a long-time employee of the
    Department of Defense. He testified before Congress that the
    wings were going to fall off of the C5-A. Nixon said fire the
    SOB. He was 10 or 12 years through the courts getting his job
    back and when he got it back, he was in the attic of the
    Pentagon, because I went over and saw what sort of an attic he
    was in. And just this week there was some testimony or
    something on the news about some whistleblower at the VA that
    has got some little closet office with no jobs to do.
        Those are messages that are sent that, by golly, there is
    great peer pressure to go along to get along and we do not
    appreciate anybody that is going to make our agency look bad.
        It just does not seem right. We are all working for the
    same doggone--I should not say doggone taxpayers--we are
    working for the same taxpayers and we have got one customer,
    the American public, and we all have got to pull together. And
    I just do not understand.
        You know, I told one President one time--well, I tell every
    President this, but this is the answer one President gave me
    when I said, we need a Rose Garden ceremony to honor
    whistleblowers then they will know from the top of the
    bureaucracy to the bottom that that is a worthy thing to do if
    something is wrong.
        I am ashamed to say it was a Republican President. One
    Republican President said, ``Well, if we did that, we would
    have 3,000 of the whistleblowers come out of the woodwork.''
        Well, that is exactly what you should want to happen. If
    there are 3,000 things that are wrong, we ought to be getting
    on those 3,000 things and correcting them.
        Now, I am yelling at you and you are just one person, but
    we have got to change things in Government generally.
        This is not an Obama problem. It is a culture problem
    within Government that we have got to correct.
        Thank you all very much. Meeting adjourned.
        [Whereupon, at 11:55 a.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
        [Additional material submitted for the record follows.]

                                A P P E N D I X

                  Additional Material Submitted for the Record

    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

          Questions Submitted to Andrea R. Coleman by Senator Grassley

    [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T7133.041

         Questions Submitted to Hon. Karol V. Mason by Senator Grassley

    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

       Questions Submitted to Prof. Dean Hill Rivkin by Senator Grassley

    [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

            Questions Submitted to Elissa Rumsey by Senator Grassley

    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

           Questions Submitted to Mark Soler and Hon. Steven C. Teske
                              By Senator Klobuchar

    [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

             Responses of Andrea R. Coleman to Questions Submitted
                              By Senator Grassley

    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                 Attachment I to Responses of Andrea R. Coleman
                   To Questions Submitted by Senator Grassley

    [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                Attachment II to Responses of Andrea R. Coleman
                   To Questions Submitted by Senator Grassley

    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                Attachment III to Responses of Andrea R. Coleman
                   To Questions Submitted by Senator Grassley

    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                Attachment IV to Responses of Andrea R. Coleman
                   To Questions Submitted by Senator Grassley

    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                 Attachment V to Responses of Andrea R. Coleman
                   To Questions Submitted by Senator Grassley

    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                Attachment VI to Responses of Andrea R. Coleman
                   To Questions Submitted by Senator Grassley

    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

            Responses of Hon. Karol V. Mason to Questions Submitted
                              By Senator Grassley

    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

           Responses of Prof. Dean Hill Rivkin to Questions Submitted
                              By Senator Grassley

    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

     Responses of Elissa Rumsey to Questions Submitted by Senator Grassley

    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                 Responses of Mark Soler to Questions Submitted
                              By Senator Klobuchar

    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

            Responses of Hon. Steven C. Teske to Questions Submitted
                              By Senator Klobuchar

    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                    Miscellaneous Submissions for the Record

    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

                                     [all]