Meet the 2017 JDAI Distinguished System Leadership Award Winners

Three indi­vid­u­als have earned this year’s JDAI Dis­tin­guished Sys­tem Lead­er­ship Award from the Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion. The award — which rec­og­nizes stake­hold­ers who have lever­aged data and inno­v­a­tive part­ner­ships to real­ize last­ing juve­nile jus­tice reforms — is the high­est hon­or that the Foun­da­tion bestows on an indi­vid­ual or team work­ing at a Juve­nile Deten­tion Alter­na­tives Ini­tia­tive (JDAI) site.

This year’s hon­orees serve as JDAI ambas­sadors for their site and state and also across the initiative’s net­work. They are:

Toni Carter, com­mis­sion­er for Ram­sey Coun­ty, Min­neso­ta, and chair of the county’s JDAI stake­hold­er committee

An 11-year vet­er­an of JDAI, Carter has spear­head­ed dra­mat­ic drops in the use of deten­tion and out-of-home place­ments for youth in Ram­sey Coun­ty. She is a sea­soned col­lab­o­ra­tor, strength­en­ing con­nec­tions between ini­tia­tive stake­hold­ers and com­mu­ni­ties of col­or and also among mem­bers of coun­ty lead­er­ship, law enforce­ment, the courts and the pub­lic. Oth­er notable accom­plish­ments include allo­cat­ing $1.1 mil­lion in coun­ty funds to sup­port JDAI and grow­ing the ini­tia­tive with­in the coun­ty as well as to six oth­er juris­dic­tions in Minnesota.

Lisa Gar­ry, direc­tor of equi­ty and reform at the Mary­land Depart­ment of Juve­nile Services

Gar­ry is cred­it­ed with re-start­ing the Bal­ti­more City JDAI site and expand­ing the ini­tia­tive to coun­ties across the state. She is a data-dri­ven leader who has pro­mot­ed the use of objec­tive deten­tion screen­ing instru­ments statewide, start­ing with Bal­ti­more City and Prince George’s Coun­ty — the two largest juris­dic­tions in Mary­land with the high­est num­ber of juve­niles detained. Gar­ry is a fierce pro­po­nent of reduc­ing racial and eth­nic dis­par­i­ties with­in the juve­nile jus­tice sys­tem and guides pub­lic agen­cies in deter­min­ing root caus­es of dis­parate treatment.

Kurt Wolf, cap­tain of patrol with the Lafayette Police Depart­ment in Tip­paca­noe, Indiana

Wolf is ded­i­cat­ed to build­ing pos­i­tive rela­tion­ships between law enforce­ment and young peo­ple. He ensures that every offi­cer in his depart­ment is trained on the teen brain, trau­ma-informed police prac­tices and implic­it bias. At the state and local lev­els, Wolf leads work­groups focused on youth issues, JDAI and race equi­ty. In his coun­ty, he has col­lab­o­rat­ed with JDAI part­ners to iden­ti­fy racial dis­par­i­ties relat­ed to two types of offens­es — dis­or­der­ly con­duct and resist­ing arrest — and he has tak­en steps to dra­mat­i­cal­ly reduce arrests for these offens­es, espe­cial­ly among African Amer­i­can youth.

Casey rec­og­nized all three hon­orees at its 23^rd JDAI Inter-Site Con­fer­ence in Orlan­do, Flori­da, in April 2017.

Read about the win­ner of the Natal­ie S. Bimel Award for out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions of com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers to juve­nile deten­tion reform

Read about the win­ner of the Glo­ria J. Jenk­ins Award for out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions to juve­nile deten­tion reform