You may want to look at http://code.google.com/p/ocropus/, which is an open-source OCR system.
But, it appears to be written in C++ and python.
*UPDATE: *
Since one of the research projects is a handwritten analyzer I expect it may help.
The OCRopus engine is based on two research projects: a
high-performance handwriting recognizer developed in the mid-90's and
deployed by the US Census bureau, and novel high-performance layout
analysis methods.
And if you look at http://code.google.com/p/ocropus/source/browse/ the source files have been updated since 10/2011 (one of the three was from 3/2012), so it appears to be currently under development still.
