In this CVR podcast series, we talk with those doing research and serving victims and learn about the work they've done together.

Tell Us About It, Episode 10: Understanding Juvenile Justice Services in Minnesota

A convo with Cecilia Miller and Valerie ClarkMar 15Time: 27:08

On this episode of Tell Us About It, we spoke with Valerie Clark and Cecilia Miller, who make up one of CVR’s funded VOCA-SAC partnerships in Minnesota. Throughout the episode, they discussed how and why their agencies joined together in a research partnership. Our conversation also covered their project focus – examining the crime victim services currently available in juvenile facilities in Minnesota and understanding the resource needs of those facilities in order to better serve young victims of crime.

Cecilia Miller is the Grants Director for the Minnesota Office of Justice Programs. Valerie Clark is the Director of the Minnesota Statistical Analysis Center (SAC).

Related Links:

• Read the final report from this partnership.
• Watch a short presentation about this partnership.
• Find more resources from the Minnesota SAC on their website.

 

Transcript:

Susan Howley: [00:00:03] Welcome to Tell Us About It: Victim Research Convos, a podcast from The Center for Victim Research with support from The Office for Victims of Crime. On each episode of Tell Us About It, we talk to researchers and practitioners about their work, the tools being built for use in the field, and how we can work together to build an evidence base for victim services. Today we’re talking with Cecilia Miller and Valerie Clark about their work together in a partnership funded by the Center for Victim Research. Cecilia and Valerie, welcome. Please introduce yourselves to our audience.

Cecilia Miller: [00:00:37] Hi, I’m Cecilia Miller from the Minnesota Department of Public Safety. I’m the Grants Director for the crime victims services grants.

Valerie Clark: [00:00:47] I’m Valerie Clark. I’m the Director of the Minnesota Statistical Analysis Center.

Susan Howley: [00:00:53] Cecilia and Valerie, your agencies joined together in a research partnership. Valerie, what was the focus of that research?

Valerie Clark: [00:01:01] We wanted to find out what crime victim services are currently available in juvenile facilities and what types of resources these facilities think they need in order to serve young victims of crime.

Susan Howley: [00:01:16] Cecilia, why was this focus important to you as a VOCA administrator?

Cecilia Miller: [00:01:22] The statistical analysis center has done – over time – reports every three years in conjunction with this Minnesota student survey. The report is called Youth in Minnesota Correctional Facilities and Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs as we’ll refer to them. That report has shown a great disparity between what mainstream youth report and what youth and correctional facilities report with regard to ACEs and their experiences, including things like suicide attempts and experience being a crime victim of a variety of crimes. And we were – as a VOCA administrator, I’ve been trying to think about how we get services to people who may not be seeking services now. Who’s underfunded in our state? What are the gaps? Where are we not reaching people? And using correctional facilities, I thought, was quite likely one of those gaps and with a very high incidence of crime victimization. So we wanted to see, we wanted to assess really what is happening for youth that are in Minnesota Correctional Facilities.

Susan Howley: [00:02:44] Great. Valerie, what would you add to that, since Cecilia said your agency had done this work looking at the ACE scores. What were you looking for as you started this research project?

Valerie Clark: [00:02:57] Well I didn’t come up with the idea for the project, that was more Cecilia. But you know once we said or asked, “what are we currently doing in facilities?” It seemed like something we should have already been thinking about. Because all of our work and all of my past research, there is a mountain of evidence that young people and especially young people in the juvenile justice system, have very high rates of victimization and a large focus of this entire office is about crime victim services. And, you know, we do some work with juveniles but we didn’t seem to connect the dots previously about oh this is a major focus of our office. All these resources we have, it seems like we don’t do anything with juveniles right now. So what could we be doing? And I know that some juvenile facilities, they already think about trauma and they think a lot about ACEs, but more broadly not focused on victimization or violent crime. So I thought it was a kind of an aha moment.

Susan Howley: [00:04:05] So Valerie, were there any other agencies that were involved in this project with your two agencies?

Valerie Clark: [00:04:13] Yes. In Minnesota, our juvenile justice system is decentralized. So there’s this committee that they kind of loosely oversee Juvenile Services in Minnesota – The Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee or JJAC. They’re appointed by the Governor. But there’s a liaison who is housed in our office who is responsible for ensuring juvenile inspections take place, that we’re doing something about disproportionate minority contact and things like that. So before this project officially started, when we were still applying for it, we met with that liaison to say you know, is this a feasible project? Would this be worthwhile? How should we approach facilities? What would be the most appropriate way to get their involvement or the best way to get their involvement? And we heard that Hennepin County, which is the largest county in Minnesota, was doing something related or similar. They were looking at trauma-informed care just in Hennepin County facilities and they were focused on LGBTQ youth. So we met with them to say you know what are you doing? How are you serving the facilities or what exactly are you looking at? We didn’t want to duplicate their work. We also went to the Minnesota Department of Corrections. They license almost all of the agencies that we were working with and we wanted to first get their approval on the survey. They have their own institutional review board. So we had to get their approval on the survey, not for all facilities just for the one facility that they directly operate. But because they license all the other facilities we thought it would be a good idea just to get their approval. I think those are all the facilities that all the other agencies that we worked with.

Susan Howley: [00:06:16] So after the two of you talked with the JJAC liaison and the Hennepin County facility and the Department of Corrections, at that point what did you want to know as you started the survey? What did you want to know from the juvenile facilities.

Valerie Clark: [00:06:34] We wanted to know first: Do they have any any procedures or processes that could be used to actually identify victims. Are they aware of the victims that are in their facilities? What programs or treatment options do they currently have available for victims? And the most important would be, what do they think that they need in order to better serve victims or to serve victims at all? We already we knew that at least some are very progressive and they’re way ahead. They already think about trauma-informed care. They’ve already implemented trauma-informed care but we also know that some facilities, they only hold juveniles for a short time. They don’t have time to do all these different things. They don’t have the money or the staff to do everything. So we know there we knew there was probably a lot of diversity in terms of what they could do, and we just wanted to find out the full picture

.

Cecilia Miller: [00:07:41] I wanted to know, specifically as well, if they knew about the victim service agencies in their communities. If they were connected to them and we’re working with them, or if the agencies in their communities that we fund to provide crime victim services was actually providing any services within the facility. What we’ve tried to assess that connection and see if they knew who these programs were and we’re utilizing any services there.

Susan Howley: [00:08:15] So then how did you go about crafting the questions to get the level of detail that you were after in a way that would encourage them to finish the whole survey?

Valerie Clark: [00:08:25] Well prior to that actually administering the survey, we wanted to send them a letter – and it was an old fashioned letter mailed through the US Postal Service – to give our survey some legitimacy and to introduce project and the goals of the project. And to really emphasize that we’re not here to judge you or to get you in trouble with your licensing agency or to expose you in any way, because there have been some high profile media incidents about things that have gone on in some juvenile facilities, and we just wanted to let them know that that’s not what we are here to talk about. We want to know about you know your current juvenile populations and what resources you have and then to also emphasize that we’re here to help, maybe, if we can. Not to assume too much but to let them know, we might have some resources that might be of value to you and we just want to find out what you need. And then the survey itself, again approaching them in a way that lets them know that we’re not some kind of authority. We’re not here to wag our fingers at you or to shame you for what you don’t do or what you do, but just to really get a basic assessment of what you have and maybe what you need.

Susan Howley: [00:09:54] So Valerie as you launched this survey, did you have any challenges in fielding it?

Valerie Clark: [00:10:00] There are surprisingly few challenges. Right away when we contacted facilities, a few came back right away and asked “How is this going to affect my license? Are you going to report us based on what we say? And what are you going to do with the data that you collect?” So ideally we would have made this survey completely anonymous and we would not have asked for any identifying information.

Valerie Clark: [00:10:30] But we also didn’t want just one individual to speak for an entire facility, knowing that different staff from different parts of the facility might have different ideas. So we wanted to get a number of individual responses and then sort of average those out to represent a single facility. So we needed to know at least what facility each respondent came from, so that once we collected all the responses we could group them by a facility. I love the people asking, you know, why can’t this be anonymous? I do not want these responses sitting somewhere with my facility’s name attached to it. So what are you going to do with the data? Why do you need to ask us what facility we’re coming from? So I explained that and I assured them that any report that we write is going to be completely – or all the identifying information will be completely taken out. And then once we have collected all the data, we have written the report and finished the project, we will destroy the data, which we have. So we just assured them that their information would be protected and we would, more importantly, we would not be reporting anything that they tell us to their licensing agency. And we’re also not collecting any information that would be pertinent to their license. We’re not asking about abuses or things that happen within the facility or any victimization experiences that happen once the juveniles are taken in. We are more concerned with past victimization with this project.

Cecilia Miller: [00:12:10] In the cover letter that was sent to the facilities, it asked that they give it out to a variety of staff. We were asking for as many people as possible to complete the survey.

Susan Howley: [00:12:23] Great. So that you could get the complete perspective from each facility. And then in your report, did you identify facilities by name or did you just grouped them by type?

Valerie Clark: [00:12:38] No. In the report we didn’t identify anyone that participated and we just gave basic characteristics of all the participants, so whether they’re a short term holding facility or a long term residential facility, their capacity, which varies quite a bit, their general location in the state but nothing where you could actually identify a facility.

Susan Howley: [00:13:05] So Cecilia, what did you learn about screening and services for victimized juveniles?

Cecilia Miller: [00:13:11] I was surprised when I saw the results that the screening part wasn’t 100 percent. But then it was explained to me that you have some situations that act a bit more like a foster home and so they’re not using really – they’re not using screening tools. So that percentage in the report was 93 percent and that helped me understand why that wasn’t 100 percent. So I learned that some of them know where there is crime victim services in their community. Some of them are accessing crime victim services from those agencies in their community. Some don’t know anything about where to access crime victim services.

Cecilia Miller: [00:13:57] One of the most common responses was that they wanted more training and that was very helpful to know. So it was really a mix. I was pleased about the responsiveness to addressing crime victimization. Understanding the trauma-informed focus, the tools that they were using. More was happening in the facilities than I knew and that was helpful to know.

Susan Howley: [00:14:26] Valerie what would you add to that?

Valerie Clark: [00:14:29] I knew that a lot of the facilities were obligated by law or by licensure to conduct intake assessments or different types of assessments. I was pleasantly surprised with the types of assessment tools that they were using. These are widely used, validated, and credible instruments. So I was happy to see that a number of facilities, not all of them, were using really credible tools that include questions about past victimization or trauma experiences that could be useful for identifying victims or treating victims.

Susan Howley: [00:15:01] Did you learn anything about the facilities or their operations that was unexpected?

Valerie Clark: [00:15:07] Yes. I have been responsible for collecting data from many of these facilities for a few years. So I was somewhat familiar with most of the facilities and I’ve seen their names a lot and I felt like I was familiar with them. But then when I was going to get their addresses and the names of administrators to to send them a letter in the mail I saw the names that were Mr. and Mrs. and I realized that some of these facilities are actually just homes, they’re family homes and these are actual foster residences.

Valerie Clark: [00:15:41] And that really just drove home what I thought I already knew, which is that these facilities are very diverse. They’re very diverse in size and scope. Some of them have specific treatment targets – they’re focused on chemical dependency or they’re focused on young sex offenders. But I was surprised with how much they vary in capacity and what they can do.

Susan Howley: [00:16:09] Cecilia, as a VOCA administrator, how do you plan to use what you’ve learned?

Cecilia Miller: [00:16:13] I spoke with the coalitions in our state about this report and I’m anxious to get it finalized on our end with all the information we want to put into it and distribute it. But we want to do targeted outreach to the crime victim service grantees in the areas of these facilities and actually have the grant managers help connect programs to facility staff and to see about how we can help in providing more services. Whether it is within the facility, whether it is as a resource when the youth are discharged, whatever could be helpful in that community. So some already have a great relationship. There’s a few but not the majority. And I want to see how we can be increasing the crime victim services for the youth, increasing that connection.

Cecilia Miller: [00:17:16] We also are collecting all of the contact information for the facilities and including them in our email blast information about the annual crime victim conference that we hold every year in the middle of Minnesota in May, because this would be a great opportunity for staff to come and get training about various aspects of Crime Victim Services. So we’re looking to see if any of these facilities are already on our list and if not we’re adding them. I think that they’re probably not on it and it would be great to include them and have them come. We also are talking about what kind of sessions we can provide specific to these agencies within the Crime Victim conference agenda. Both to help get them there and to provide information that is very direct and relevant to them in the work that they’re doing.

Susan Howley: [00:18:18] Right because you all said that a lot of the agencies spoke about their desire to get more training, that they are already doing some screening but they really would like more training. How are you thinking about those training needs?

Cecilia Miller: [00:18:32] Well both with the Crime Victim conference and then also directly related to the crime victim services program in the area, see if that program can come in and do an in-service with the staff. So various techniques in that way. I mean that’s a start. I think there could be significantly more but that’s a start. We met with the liaison, the JJAC liaison, yesterday about some other things we want to do for this report, like to create a map of the state of Minnesota and where each of these are located and to provide that information to the crime victim programs and the coalitions.

Susan Howley: [00:19:17] Great. Valerie, anything to add to that?

Valerie Clark: [00:19:20] Yes. As Cecilia said we met with our JJAC liaison yesterday and we talked about attending and presenting at one of the upcoming JJAC meetings to share the report with them and then to get their feedback. The number one cited need by the facilities was more training. Unfortunately it was a short survey so we didn’t ask exactly what kind of training they would like. So we want to get more feedback on what training would be of interest to the facilities.

Valerie Clark: [00:19:51] So we finished writing the report. We sent a draft of the report to all the facilities to get their information and to make sure that we didn’t mess up any information, that we had our terminology correct, and that we painted an accurate portrait of juvenile justice in Minnesota. And then we’re still working on making a more public-facing accessible report with less jargon and more useful information to both crime victims service providers and juvenile facilities. And we have to work with our communications departments and make that report published on our website and to make sure it’s widely disseminated.

Susan Howley: [00:20:36] That’s great because it would be a shame to do all that great work and then not have it get out to the people who need to see it.

Cecilia Miller: [00:20:43] What was interesting too in looking at the initial report and the jargon was that for me, there were many things that were confusing, that I think would also be confusing for the crime victim programs. Just the different definitions of facilities and how they’re categorized, what short term and long term mean. I did not know that short term could mean six hours. I was assuming three weeks. Or why a short term individual, short term youth, would not be able to be assessed for past experiences. You know, six hours, that’s a very short time to have somebody in your facility. So there were things about the juvenile justice world I did not know and understand that I don’t think the crime victim programs would know and understand. So we’re looking at the the jargon and the language in the report to make it accessible for a wide variety of people.

Susan Howley: [00:21:48] Great. Let me take a step back and ask, have your two agencies ever worked together before?

Cecilia Miller: [00:21:54] Yes. We’re in the same office. There’s an office of about thirty seven people, so we see each other throughout the day. We’re trying to do more of it. And this project was a really great jumping off point for that. The work that we’ve done before has been minimal. The work together we’ve done before has been minimal. So we want to do more and we’ve been trying to think about how can this statistical analysis center be more helpful to what crime victim service programs need, to what coalitions need, to the ways that we look at our data. There’s many opportunities in front of us and I feel like we’re just at that beginning point.

Susan Howley: [00:22:40] Valerie, if your two agencies are in the same office, what is that close proximity to each other mean for your ability to work together on some of this future work?

Valerie Clark: [00:22:51] I think it helps a lot with meeting together. It reduces a lot of barriers between us. We see each other in the hallways, in the break room, at the lunch table, and you can you can be more casual. It feels a lot less intimidating to reach out and say “hey can we meet?” We can just walk by each other’s offices and say “do you have time right now or I come back in an hour?” And so it definitely makes it a lot easier to communicate and work together.

Susan Howley: [00:23:22] That’s great. Do you have anything else to add about where your partnership goes from here? Do you have any direct plans in the works?

Cecilia Miller: [00:23:30] So the crime victims services staff have been able to provide input on the Minnesota student survey that’s administered every three years and the statistical analysis center analyzes it and puts out reports. And I think that it would be very helpful if we were doing more promotion of that report across our crime victim service programs and with the coalitions. And if we find other ways to tie our work together, I think that that would be a great thing.

Susan Howley: [00:24:05] Valerie, any closing thoughts from you?

Valerie Clark: [00:24:08] Well we recently started working on a statewide crime victim needs assessment. And this project started before we even began talking about doing a statewide assessment, but it fits right in with the overall goal of the department to find out what groups or what populations are currently not served and what can we do to make sure our resources reach all crime victim populations, including young people.

Cecilia Miller: [00:24:36] So we have not done this formalized of a statewide needs assessment before and we do a competitive process for all the crime victim funding every five years. So I also need this needs assessment for the VOWA planning, our statewide implementation plan for VOWA funding. So it’s exciting to think about this needs assessment and what it can tell us and how it can help us because we do have crime victim services spread very widely across our state but I’m trying to get at all of those individuals. How do we expand services to those individuals who may not identify as a crime victim, don’t initially seek out services? How can we increase our outreach and promotion of services? Because there is a lot of accessibility across our state for a wide variety of crime victim services. So I’m excited about the needs assessment. The Statistical Analysis Center is heading that up. We’re talking about contracting for part of it and I’m really relying on their expertise and it should be broadly helpful to them, to Crime Victim Services in general, also maybe helpful to JJAC.

Susan Howley: [00:26:02] Wow this sounds like it’s such a great partnership and you all have been doing such solid work. Well thank you both for sharing so much of your time and sharing your work with us today.