A Review of the Status of DMC Efforts in Iowa and Virginia - April 2010

length of stay in detention; the number of days the detention center was over capacity; the
number of failure to appear and probation violations; and the number of truants in detention. The
presentation also notes a number of additional accomplishments, including the elimination of
video arraignments, the development of guiding principles for the use of detention, hiring a
Detention Expeditor and strict adherence to a Detention Assessment Instrument. 14
In Newport News, DMC work began in earnest soon after the creation of a DMC subcommittee
under the JDAI collaborative. In their first year, the DMC sub-committee conducted a
review of system and community factors that might result in DMC and issued recommendations
to the collaborative for reducing DMC in the juvenile justice system. However, once three-year
funding from Casey for the JDAI coordinator position ended, progress stalled. The DMC
committee has not met regularly for two years, and little progress appears to have been made
since 2007.
Burns Institute
The Burns Institute is a non-profit organization whose stated mission is “to protect and
improve the lives of youth of color and poor youth and the well-being of their communities by
reducing the adverse impacts of public and private youth-serving systems to ensure fairness and
equity throughout the juvenile justice system” (www.burnsinstitute.org). The Institute works
with key agency and community stakeholders in a “data-driven, consensus-based approach to
change policies, procedures and practices that result in the detention of low-offending youth of
color and poor youth.” The key elements of the Institute’s approach to working with local
jurisdictions include; a jurisdictional assessment; formation of a local “governing collaborative;”
securing a local coordinator; establishing consistent meetings; developing a work plan; data
collection and decision point analysis; collecting the appropriate data; analyzing and interpreting
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