Preface
This year, the Office of
Justice Programs (OJP) Program Plan has a brand new format, one
we hope will prove more informative and easier to use for our
constituents. But this year's OJP Program Plan is much more than
just a new design. Our issue-oriented format reflects OJP's integrated
approach to program planning, development, and implementation. The program
planning process has been a learning experience for OJP and its bureaus
and offices. As a first step, for the past few years, OJP published a
combined Program Plan incorporating information from all OJP
components into one document. Although that was a significant move toward
making information more accessible to the field, we recognized the
critical need to take further steps to carry through on the Attorney
General's vision for broader integration of our planning and programming
efforts.
At OJP, our goals continue to be to ensure that we can respond quickly, across the bureaus and offices, to newly emerging issues; to institute the vision and priorities of the Attorney General, the President, and the Congress; to make certain there is real coordination within OJP; and--most fundamentally--to ensure that OJP is advancing a comprehensive and coherent program, across all of its components, to address public safety and criminal and juvenile justice needs in this country.
While funding streams dictate in large part how our programs will be shaped, we are attempting to focus OJP resources on programming that can make a positive difference in communities throughout the nation. For Fiscal Year 1999, OJP built on the integrated planning process developed in preparing our FY 1999 budget request, and began planning programs based more along thematic lines than organizational breakdowns. We pulled together representatives from all the OJP components that could impact each of the 12 issue areas addressed in this document and asked them to think collectively--and strategically--about where OJP should be investing taxpayer dollars, to identify the knowledge gaps that need to be filled, what resources or other information are needed to fill these gaps, in what direction we should be heading in addressing each of these critical issues, and how OJP support can have the greatest "bang for the buck."
I hope our state and local customers will find this Program Plan to be more than just a tool for identifying grant funding. The Program Plan can also, I believe, help serve as a catalyst for helping state and local planners and policy makers think more strategically about crime problems in their jurisdictions, and determine what are the most effective approaches to address their jurisdiction's individual problems, what existing resources can be tapped, what additional resources are needed, and, most importantly, how all the various "pieces" can be brought together to impact a problem.
As we conclude the last year in this century, I look forward to working with our partners at the state and local levels to help communities enhance justice services and operations, address crime problems, and ensure the public safety. I invite you to let me know your ideas on how OJP can best support your efforts--and what you think about the newly designed Program Plan and how OJP can make this document more useful for the field. You can write to me at the address listed on page 218 or send me an E-mail at askojp@ojp.udoj.gov.
Laurie Robinson
Assistant Attorney General
Office
of Justice Programs