The Washington Post has joined the critics rapping President Obama for not naming a director of the Justice Department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. The Post says in an editorial that, “The office has been hampered, to the point of being ineffectual, as a result of serial budget cuts; the absence of an administrator at the helm has only exacerbated its woes.”
Under Presidents Obama and George W. Bush, the agency has suffered from crippling funding cuts from $450 million in 2002 to $180 million now, and House Republicans want to cut it further, to roughly $100 million. The Post says that, “the need for a federal voice on juvenile justice is more important than ever,” citing a National Center for State Courts survey showing that juvenile court budget have been slashed. An appointment to head the juvenile justice agency, says the newspaper, “could serve as a catalyst for the federal government's coordination with states that have been financially handicapped and unable to safeguard efforts to protect young people.”