www.dcj.state.co.us/ors

Abstract

the DCSIP Advisory Board, for financially supporting this evaluation to allow us to meet our legislative mandate to evaluate the Youthful Offender System. We would like to thank all those who assisted us in this research effort. We are especially grateful for the assistance of the administrators and staff of the Youthful Offender System, who spent time talking with us about the program and answering our interview questions. We are particularly grateful to Pam Ploughe who arranged interviews, program observations, and access to other documentation about the program. We are grateful to the many, many other individuals who were interviewed for this project including current and former state legislators, Department of Corrections and Division of Youth Services Staff, and other individuals involved with the program, including those serving offenders in Phase III in the community. Also, we would like to thank the offenders we interviewed and the families of offenders who took the time to provide input through our focus group. These contributions were invaluable to the research. Finally, we would like to thank Heather Cameron, Nicole Hetz, Kerry Lowden, Diane Pasini-Hill, and Suzanne Gonzalez Woodburn from the Office of Research and Statistics for their contributions to the design, data collection and management of this study. Thanks to Linda Harrison for her work with the complicated electronic files. As always, we would like to thank our Divisio