criminal justice advisory Board (LC-CJAB) Working group

This page is dedicated to the Lebanon County PA Criminal Justice Advisory Board (LC-CJAB). It includes:

HISTORY & BACKGROUND. Links to background information on CJABs in the Commonwealth of PA, including their origins starting in the early 2000s;
LEBANON COUNTY CJAB. Links to web pages and key documents relating to the LC-CJAB; and
LEBANON COUNTY NAACP & CJAB. Summaries of our ongoing efforts to have our voice heard on the LC-CJAB.

1. HISTORY & BACKGROUND

Pennsylvania's Criminal Justice Advisory Boards were launched in most PA counties thanks to an initiative undertaken in the early 2000s by the PA Commission on Crime & Delinquency (PCCD). A couple of years ago, a brief history of PA's CJABs could be found on the PCCD website (at pccd.pa.gov/criminaljustice/advisory_boards/Pages/CJABS), but sadly, that webpage has vanished.

Fortunately, we were able to rescue a copy on the Internet Archive. Unfortunately, we were not able to rescue a helpful 5-page PDF file titled, "County Criminal Justice Advisory Boards: Minimum Operating Standards" (Nov. 2015). Nor can we now find the onetime PCCD dashboard on CJABs that offered a wide array of data relating to crime and criminal justice from all of Pennsylvania's 67 counties. It is a shame that the PCCD no longer maintains or publishes this dashboard.

Before the CJAB portion of the PCCD website was scraped and revised, it offered the following on the "membership" of CJABs:

"Membership is diverse, and includes representatives of:

Courts
Corrections
Law enforcement
Community-based organizations
Executive branch of government
Health and human services agencies
Victims’ services agencies
Business
Faith communities"

These are merely recommendations, however. Each county's CJAB operates independently, and they vary widely across the Commonwealth. One used to be able to see this on the PCCD's "digital dashboard" for CJABS, which at one point resided at pacjabdash.net . There was also "pajabdash.net/Dashboards," which has also vanished.

A couple years ago, one could read on the digital dashboard homepage, "The dashboards track key metrics from the county justice system, including: prison indicators, courts indicators, juvenile indicators, probation/parole indicators, [and] law enforcement indicators." Sadly, these digital dashboards no longer exist.

2. the Lebanon County Criminal justice advisory board (LC-CJAB)

The Lebanon County Criminal Justice Advisory Board, launched in 2009, meets at 9:00 a.m. on the second Monday of every other month, at the Mental Health / Intellectual Disability / Early Intervention Office (MH/ID/EI), 220 East Lehman St., Lebanon. See the "Meetings / Minutes" webpage of the LC-CJAB, at https://lebanoncountypa.gov/departments/criminal-justice-advisory-board/meetings-minutes As this webpage says, "Meetings are approximately one hour in length and are open to members of the criminal justice community, invited speakers, and accepted guests."

We are happy to report that in 2023, after substantial effort, the Lebanon County NAACP became a non-voting member of the Lebanon County CJAB.

The LC-CJAB webpages are routinely updated in a timely manner under the able leadership of CJAB Planner John Shott. These webpages include:

Meeting Minutes dating back to 2014: https://lebanoncountypa.gov/departments/criminal-justice-advisory-board/meetings-minutes

Current Membership List: https://lebanoncountypa.gov/departments/criminal-justice-advisory-board/members

Strategic Plan for 2024-2025: https://www.lebanoncountypa.gov/getmedia/5aa07bc2-bdb7-4afc-bc61-db18c3240a6e/Strategic-Plan-docx.pdf

As can be seen in recent meeting minutes, the LC-CJAB has five standing committees:

D.U.I Court
Prison Reduction
Mental Health / Team M.I.S.A. (Mental Illness & Substance Abuse)
Veterans Court
Drug Court

Also as gleaned from recent meeting minutes, the LC-CJAB also has at least three "Departments, Reports, and Issues of Interest":

Day Reporting Center
Heroin Task Force
Offender Reentry Coalition

3. THE Lebanon County NAACP and the LC-CJAB

The Lebanon County Branch of the NAACP first reached out to the LC-CJAB in December 2020, asking to attend their next meeting on February 9, 2021. After some back & forth, we received an invitation for one of our members to attend the June 8 meeting. Executive Committee member Lori Burrus did so, introducing our fledgling Branch to the Lebanon County CJAB and inaugurating what we hoped would be a fruitful relationship moving forward.

Either Lori Burrus or Michael Schroeder (or both) attended as "guests" the next eight CJAB meetings (October and December 2021 and all six meetings of 2022). "Guests" are seated in chairs lined up against the walls of the 2nd-floor conference room. "Core members" are seated at the conference table.

In a letter dated January 18, 2023, our Branch respectfully asked the LC-CJAB that we be granted “core” member status and have a seat at the table. After a lot of back & forth, and to make a long story short, on April 10, 2023, the CJAB voted unanimously to make our NAACP Branch a non-voting member -- a position we are proud to hold.

We now have a third member of our Branch, Joe Duke, to represent our Branch at CJAB meetings and to give voice to the interests and concerns of members of marginalized, under-served, and under-represented communities of Lebanon County.