United States Department of Labor announces grant competition exceeding $17 million to help young offenders reform their lives

Press Release

The U.S. Department of Labor today announced a three-category, $17.3 million competition through which selected localities will develop strategies to assist all their young offenders returning from correctional facilities.

"This competition offers communities an opportunity to design and execute strategies to set straight life paths for young offenders returning home," said Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor for Employment and Training Brent R. Orrell. "Award-winning projects will be equipped with a diverse toolkit to deliver employment, educational, mentoring and civic-minded services to young people with a second chance to become productive citizens."

Each year, juvenile courts in the United States handle about 1.6 million delinquency cases, and an estimated 144,000 youth are placed in juvenile correctional facilities. Youth exiting the juvenile justice system have high probabilities of relapsing as they tend to return to high-crime areas. These grants will be targeted toward serving young people who have never been involved with the adult criminal system as they are released from the juvenile justice system.

Successful applicants will be chosen in three categories. "Youth Offender Planning Grants" will be provided to selected county and city governments to design plans for helping returning youth offenders. The second category, "Juvenile Offender Re-entry Grants," will allow state and local juvenile justice agencies to work together to implement strategies for assisting all youth returning home from correctional facilities. Finally, a "Juvenile Offender Re-entry Grant" will be awarded to one organization to implement a model program for returning juvenile offenders in four cities.

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