[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
         
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                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
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                       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

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      Questions Submitted to Andrea R. Coleman by Senator Grassley

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

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   Questions Submitted to Prof. Dean Hill Rivkin by Senator Grassley

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        Questions Submitted to Elissa Rumsey by Senator Grassley

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 Responses of Elissa Rumsey to Questions Submitted by Senator Grassley

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             Responses of Mark Soler to Questions Submitted
                          By Senator Klobuchar

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

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                Miscellaneous Submissions for the Record

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