Funding Opportunity: Improve Treatment for Youth Involved with the Juvenile Justice System
In case you missed it: The Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs and Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention are looking for communities interested in implementing the Reclaiming Futures model. And they have $1.325 million (over 4 years) in funding to give away.
From the request for proposals:
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Office of Justice Programs (OJP), Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) is pleased to announce that it is seeking applications for funding under the FY 2012 Juvenile Drug Courts/Reclaiming Futures program. This program furthers the Department’s mission by building the capacity of states, state and local courts, units of local government, and Indian tribal governments to develop and establish juvenile drug courts for substance abusing juvenile offenders.
The deadline is May 16, 2012, so apply today! We look forward to working with you!
News Roundup: Jobs, Funding, Events and Webinars in Juvenile Justice Reform and Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment
The Reclaiming Futures news roundup today focuses on jobs, funding opportunities and events for those working in the juvenile justice, adolescent substance abuse and teen mental health areas.
The listings below are from the new Reclaiming Futures Opportunity Board. Please share it with your colleagues. It's free to browse and post!
Jobs (with closing dates when applicable)
Mentor
HOPI Substance Abuse Prevention Center
Kykotsmovi
AZ
4/13/2012
Funding Opportunity: Become a Reclaiming Futures Site!
We are excited to announce that the DOJ, OJP and OJJDP are seeking applications for $1.325 million in funding (over 4 years) to spread and implement the Reclaiming Futures model! More specifically, grants will be given to build the capacity of states, courts, local governments and Indian tribal governments to develop and establish Reclaiming Futures' juvenile drug courts.
From the request for proposals:
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Office of Justice Programs (OJP), Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) is pleased to announce that it is seeking applications for funding under the FY 2012 Juvenile Drug Courts/Reclaiming Futures program. This program furthers the Department’s mission by building the capacity of states, state and local courts, units of local government, and Indian tribal governments to develop and establish juvenile drug courts for substance abusing juvenile offenders.
For more information and to apply, please click here. The deadline to apply is May 16, 2012, at 11:59 ET. Best of luck!
Jurisdictions Sought for Technical Assistance for Youth and Families in Multiple Systems
Calling all juvenile justice and child welfare specialists! JuvJust recently announced a great opportunity:
The Robert F. Kennedy Children’s Action Corps will support the participation of four jurisdictions in the Juvenile Justice and Child Welfare System Integration Technical Assistance Initiative. The jurisdictions, which will be competitively selected, will receive technical assistance and consultation during a 12-month period to improve outcomes for families with youth in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems.
The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation are jointly sponsoring this project. This initiative is part of a broader partnership between OJJDP and the MacArthur Foundation to improve outcomes for youth involved in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems.
Applications are due March 9, 2012.
OJJDP Seeking Probation Agencies for Youth Mental Health Screening Project
The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention is seeking state-level probation agencies in adolescent mental health screening and risk/needs assessment areas.
From JuvJust:
The National Youth Screening and Assessment Project will support the participation of two state-level juvenile probation agencies in the Mental Health Screening and Risk/Needs Assessment in Juvenile Justice Demonstration Project. The probation agencies, which will be selected through a competitive process, will participate in the evaluation of an empirically informed approach to case planning. The project will evaluate and improve probation agencies’ decision-making skills when processing youth in the juvenile justice system, thereby reducing costs, improving resource allocation, and reducing further delinquency.
Sponsored by the OJJDP and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, this initiative is part of a broader partnership to improve outcomes for youth involved in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems.
Applications are due February 27, 2012.
Obama intends to nominate ONDCP deputy director and more: news roundup
Juvenile Justice Reform
- Obama announces intent to nominate new deputy director for ONDCP
Join Together:
President Obama this past week announced his intent to nominate Michael P. Botticelli as Deputy Director, Office of National Drug Control Policy. - Kanawha to institute juvenile drug court
Charleston Daily Mail:
West Virginia’s Kanawha County aims to curb drug abuse soon after it starts by instituting a juvenile drug court program. - Five questions with Mike Dansereau, formerly with the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice
Ledger Enquirer:
In this interview, Mike Dansereau explains the differences between the adult and juvenile courts and what he would like to change in the juvenile system. - Iowa County sets aside $600k for juvenile justice system
The Daily Iowan:
Johnson County officials said they're worried minority youth are running into legal issues at a higher rate than their white peers. The county has set aside $600,000 for the Juvenile Justice and Youth Development Program and is now accepting applications for projects to use that money. - Richmond making fixes to juvenile detention center
Richmond Times-Dispatch:
Richmond officials say the city's juvenile detention center will be repaired and its staff fully retrained by April to fix the problems that led the state to put the troubled facility on probation for the second time in three years. - OP-ED:The true cost of high school dropouts
New York Times:
When the costs of investment to produce a new graduate are taken into account, there is a return of $1.45 to $3.55 for every dollar of investment, depending upon the educational intervention strategy. Under this estimate, each new graduate confers a net benefit to taxpayers of about $127,000 over the graduate’s lifetime. - Opinion: Police need better access to juvenile records
Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel:
Rep. John Richards and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett make a case for allowing police officers to access juvenile probation information when they encounter young suspects on the street. - The price of prisons: What incarceration costs taxpayers
Vera Institute of Justice:
The full report provides the taxpayer cost of incarcerating a sentenced adult offender to state prison in 40 states, presents the methodology, and concludes with recommendations about steps policy makers can take to safely rein in these costs. - Department of Juvenile Justice representatives address YDC upheaval
The Augusta Chronicle:
A representative from the Department of Juvenile Justice was in Augusta for the District Five Quarterly Breakfast meeting Saturday to speak about the changes and upheaval at the Augusta Youth Development Campus. - Youth Fair aims to keep kids out of trouble
NWF Daily News:
Local juvenile assistance organizations gathered at the mail to share information with teens and concerned parents on a variety of local programs at the Okaloosa County Juvenile Justice Council’s Youth Fair. - Editorial: Ensuring teen offenders can’t be rehabilitated
Washington Post:
The Washington Post Editorial Board takes a stance against two juvenile justice reform proposals championed by Virginia Governor Robert F. McDonnell.
Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment
- The prescription drug epidemic: a federal judge’s perspective
Join Together:
Pills are the new drug of choice for kids. A recent survey revealed that young people 12 and older are abusing prescription drugs at greater rates than cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens, and methamphetamine combined. Only marijuana abuse is more common. And, most troubling, every day approximately 7,000 young people abuse a prescription narcotic for the first time.
HHS Calls for Comments on Essential Health Benefits Package under the Affordable Care Act
In December, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a bulletin outlining proposed policies that will give states more flexibility and freedom to implement the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Under the proposed policies, states will have the ability to individually determine the list of services that make up the Essential Health Benefits Package under the ACA. These will be used to determine insurance coverage in future state insurance plans. HHS is currently accepting comments from the public on the plan until Tuesday, January 31, 2012, at EssentialHealthBenefits@cms.hhs.gov.
From the Bulletin:
Essential Health Benefits
The Affordable Care Act ensures Americans have access to quality, affordable health insurance. To achieve this goal, the law ensures health plans offered in the individual and small group markets, both inside and outside of the Affordable Insurance Exchanges (Exchanges), offer a comprehensive package of items and services, known as “essential health benefits.” Essential health benefits must include items and services within at least the following 10 categories:
- Ambulatory patient services
- Emergency services
- Hospitalization
- Maternity and newborn care
- Mental health and substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment
- Prescription drugs
- Rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices
- Laboratory services
- Preventive and wellness services and chronic disease management, and
- Pediatric services, including oral and vision care
Youth sex offenders must register for 25 years and more: news roundup
Juvenile Justice Reform
- Federal ruling: Youth sex offenders must report for 25 years
San Francisco Chronicle:
Juveniles convicted of serious sex crimes in federal court can be required to register as sex offenders for at least 25 years, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.
- DOJ, MacArthur Foundation provide $2 million for juvenile justice reform
OJJDP and the MacArthur Foundation each will provide a total of $1 million over two years to four organizations who will in turn offer states and local governments training and technical assistance to improve mental health services for youth, reduce racial and ethnic disparities in the juvenile justice system and better coordinate treatment and services for youth involved in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems.
- Juvenile violence in Baltimore continues to decline
Baltimore Sun:
Violence against juveniles has declined significantly in Baltimore in recent years as juvenile arrests have dropped and student graduations increased — a trend that the city schools chief said stills lags behind perceptions of the city's young people.
- Police to get access to juvenile probation records
Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel:
Milwaukee police officers will now be able to quickly find out if a juvenile they are stopping is on probation under a new agreement between the city and Milwaukee County.
- Paying a price, long after the crime
New York Times:
In 2010, the Chicago Public Schools declined to hire Darrell Langdon for a job as a boiler-room engineer, because he had been convicted of possessing a half-gram of cocaine in 1985, a felony for which he received probation. It didn’t matter that Mr. Langdon, a single parent of two sons, had been clean since 1988 and hadn’t run into further trouble with the law. Only after The Chicago Tribune wrote about his case did the school system reverse its decision and offer him the job.
- Local Boys & Girls Clubs receive $600k to help juvenile offenders
Ventura County Star:
The Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Oxnard and Port Hueneme aims to reduce repeat crimes among juvenile offenders in Ventura County by merging two pilot projects into a new program. The nonprofit received $609,232 from the Department of Justice to create RAMP, a Reentry Aftercare Mentoring Program, which will provide mentoring to incarcerated teens in the group’s Juvenile Justice Facility program so they are prepared to reenter the community and avoid committing further crimes.
- Kansas juvenile inmates lack vocational training
The Topeka Capital-Journal:
A joint legislative committee recommended expansion of vocational training for juveniles in state custody and action to prevent mixing violent and nonviolent offenders in community residential facilities.
- Black males need school to stay out of jail
Hartford Courant:
A few years ago, the national dropout rate for African American males was 70 percent. Today, the high school graduation rate for black boys is about 50 percent. Stan Simpson says, "It is no urban legend that many for-profit prison systems base their population projections on third- and fourth-grade reading scores."
Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment
- Bath salts linked to child abuse
Midland Daily News:
The latest Kids Count in Michigan report shows a strong link between the number of child abuse and neglect cases and poverty, and a local judge points to another local factor not uncovered in the study -- the designer drug called bath salts.
After a decade of expensive reforms, California's youth detention centers could close
Henry Hernandez served half of his two years in the custody of the Department of Juvenile Justice at the Preston Youth Correctional Facility. The initial intake dorm he stayed in was overcrowded with more than 60 youth from rival gangs fighting everyday, he said. Fights of more than five guys at a time broke out almost every week. The guards would use pepper spray or gas bombs to get things under control.
“There would be so much tension,” Hernandez said.
Pictures of kids in cages at what was then called California Youth Authority facilities adorned the front pages of California newspapers in the early 2000s. Media stories in the first half of that decade charged the Youth Authority with a range of abuses, including unlicensed medical and mental health treatment, and extreme use of force and solitary confinement.
Reforms to the juvenile justice system then reduced the population of the Youth Authority, now called the Division of Juvenile Justice, by 88% over the past decade.
Today, DJJ handles less than one percent of the 225,000 youths arrested in California each year.
Almost all the youth left in DJJ, about 1,200 people, are serious violent juvenile offenders or serious sex offenders, according to DJJ reports.
Last Thursday Gov Brown suggested eliminating DJJ altogether in his proposed budget plan. If the Legislature passes the plan the responsibility for these youth would shift back to the counties.
But even if the budget doesn’t pass as proposed there is a possibility that DJJ will close, and these serious juvenile offenders will be sent to state prison with adults.
Kate Middleton’s new cause: addiction & recovery, plus more -- news roundup
- Behind California’s Governor’s plan to close state’s juvenile justice system
The Bay Citizen:
For the second time in one year, Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed permanently closing the Division of Juvenile Justice, a move that would make California the first state in the nation to eliminate its youth prison system and shift responsibility for the most dangerous young offenders to counties. - Kate Middleton’s new cause: addiction and recovery
LA Times:
Eight months after wedding England's Prince William, Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge (formerly Kate Middleton), has revealed she will become a patron of the British charity Action on Addiction, which supports research, prevention and treatment of addiction, support for addicts' families and the education and training of those working in the field. - Data: OJJDP releases delinquency cases in juvenile court fact sheet
This new fact sheet from the OJJDP presents statistics on delinquency cases processed between 1985 and 2008 by U.S. courts with juvenile jurisdiction for public order, person and property offenses and drug law violations. - Funding Award: Everychild gives $1 million to juvenile justice center
Centinela Youth Services, Inc. has been named the recipient of the $1 million 2012 Everychild Foundation grant. The funds will launch and sustain a restorative justice center across the street from three Los Angeles juvenile courts over a three-year period.
- Delayed by months, suicide-proof beds still not in cells at youth prison
An Illinois youth prison still does not have suicide-proof beds in rooms where kids on suicide watch are held. The installation has been plagued by delays. - Some juvenile cases to revert to youth court after adult court sets penalty
A new law in Ohio will send juveniles convicted of a non-mandatory offense in adult court to juvenile court before any adult sentence is served. This will allow the juvenile court another opportunity to determine whether the offender can be rehabilitated in the juvenile system. - Assaults, crowding plague Maryland’s youth detention facility
Price George’s County youth detention facility remains plagued by assaults, security lapses, crowding and understaffing, according to a new report. - Georgia lawmaker makes juvenile justice reform top priority
Rep. Wendall Willard, R-Sandy Springs, said one of his priorities for the session is to reform the state’s juvenile justice system. “Our juvenile code has not been really updated in 40 years,” Willard said. “I think we maybe lock them up too quickly instead of trying to find ways in the community to address problems they’re facing.” - Op-ed: Keep teens out of adult criminal court
Chicago Times: Illinois needs to change the law so that children and teenagers cannot be charged as adults when the only evidence against them is an unreliable, uncorroborated confession. And when DNA evidence is available, it should be tested before any juvenile is transferred to adult court.
Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment
- Scarcity of ADHD drugs points to larger problem
LA Times:
In what the National Institute on Drug Abuse calls a "cause for alarm," abuse of prescription stimulants is also becoming more prevalent in high school. An institute survey of 45,000 students found abuse of stimulants had increased among high school seniors, from 6.6% to 8.2%, just in the last two years.
