The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation recently announced that it will award Sedgwick county $300,000 over the next three years to address racial inequalities in the county's juvenile justice system. Additionally, Sedgwick county will become the newest member of the Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC) Action Network. Rep. Melody McCray-Miller, Wichita, has been instrumental in these accomplishments.

"One of my highest priorities as a state legislator has been to decrease the number of minority juvenile delinquents in this state," said McCray-Miller. "Those who think there aren't disparities simply haven't seen the statistics. Black and Hispanic young people account for over half of juvenile arrests in Sedgwick county. Those numbers must come down. It is our responsibility to keep our children on the right path, and when we fail to do that we must allocate our resources to get them back where they need to be."

McCray-Miller has long been an advocate in the arena of juvenile justice. Since her election in 2005, she has been actively committed to reducing the number of minority juvenile delinquents. In the legislature, she served as a member of the House Corrections and Juvenile Justice Committee before it disbanded in 2006. She also led efforts to pass SB47 in 2006, which required Kansas' juvenile justice system to reduce racial, geographic and other biases. Governor Kathleen Sebelius appointed McCray-Miller to the Kansas Group on Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention in 2005 and then reappointed her in 2007. Through this committee, she works to evaluate programs that can be tailored to individual communities and is active in the development and review of the state juvenile justice plan.

"Racial disparities touch our society in a number of arenas, not just in the juvenile justice system. It takes a long time to solve social problems like this, but we won't stop moving forward," said McCray-Miller. "Every new grant such as this MacArthur award and every new relationship we build with an action network like DMC moves us that much closer to closing the gap. We've still got work to do, but this is a wonderful advancement for Sedgwick county, for our minority community and for Kansas."

McCray-Miller began her career as an educator in Wichita public schools. From there, she was elected as the first female African-American Sedgwick County commissioner. She now represents the 89th House district, and currently serves on the House committees on Taxation, Federal and State Affairs and Elections and Governmental Organizations.