Report 2019-116 Recommendation 13 Responses

Report 2019-116: Juvenile Justice Crime Prevention Act: Weak Oversight Has Hindered Its Meaningful Implementation (Release Date: May 2020)

Recommendation #13 To: San Joaquin County Probation Department

To adequately assess the effectiveness of its programs at reducing juvenile crime and delinquency, San Joaquin should collect data on all participants in each JJCPA program and for each service it provides.

1-Year Agency Response

In the current fiscal year (2019 - 2020) Consolidated Annual Plan, the San Joaquin Community Data Co-Op included outcome data from all of our JJCPA participants in the Positive Youth Justice Initiative agencies and the services they provide (Attached plan pgs. 42-58). This includes Fathers and Families of San Joaquin, Sow a Seed Community Foundation, and the Community Partnerships for Families of San Joaquin. Also included in the scope of evaluation is the department's Family Focused Intervention Team (Attached plan pgs. 34-41), which had not been included in previous annual reports.

Completion Date: May 2021
Response Date: April 2021

California State Auditor's Assessment of 1-Year Status: Fully Implemented

To conduct evaluations of its JJCPA-funded programs, San Joaquin works with the San Joaquin Community Data Co-Op to collect data about the participants in those programs. San Joaquin was able to demonstrate that it collected data on participants, and the San Joaquin Community Data Co-Op provided its methodology for ensuring the data includes all participants and is accurate. As a result, we have assessed this recommendation as fully implemented.

6-Month Agency Response

On June 11, 2020, the San Joaquin Community Data Co-Op provided the Probation Department with three separate Scope of Services to evaluate the Family Focused Intervention Team, the Positive Youth Justice Initiative (PYJI)-Community Based Organizations (Fathers and Families, Community Partnership for Families and Sow a Seed), and the Transitional Aged Youth Unit. The San Joaquin Community Data Co-Op will include the outcomes of these programs in next year's JJCPA-YOBG Annual Plan to the BSCC.

Estimated Completion Date: May 2021
Response Date: November 2020

California State Auditor's Assessment of 6-Month Status: Pending

The scope of services document San Joaquin provided us describes the work and tasks that the San Joaquin Community Data Co-Op plans to perform for the county. However, the documents do not indicate whether San Joaquin has begun collecting data on all participants in each JJCPA program and for each service it provides. According to its chief probation officer, the county will be able to demonstrate it implemented this recommendation once the San Joaquin Community Data Co-Op collects the data on all participants, as we recommended.