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• 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... more »
• New Siblings Brain Study Sheds Light on Addiction
  
  A new study published this week in Science, suggests that addicts have inherited abnormalities in some parts of the brain, which interfere with impulse control. Researchers from the University of Cambridge examined 50 pairs of biological siblings (in which one sibling was addicted to cocaine or amphetamines and the other was not) against a control group of 50 healthy, drug free and non-related... more »
• Tonight on PBS: the Juvenile Justice System and the Need for a Culture of (high)Expectations
  
  Tonight, PBS Newshour is taking a look inside the juvenile justice system with photographer Richard Ross. Over the past five years, Ross traveled to 30 states and interviewed over 1,000 youth in 300 juvenile detention centers. The kids ranged in age from 7 to 24 years old, because states decide how long an adolescent can legally be determined an adolescent. While in detention, many of the... more »
• Keeping Locked-Up Kids and their Families Connected
  
  Arizona’s Legislature recently passed a law charging prison visitors a onetime $25 fee as a way to help close the state’s $1.6 billion budget deficit. Middle Ground Prison Reform, a prison advocacy group, challenged the law in court as a discriminatory tax, but a county judge upheld its constitutionality. Fees like that, slapped on prisoners and their families, couldn’t be more... more »
• Momentum Growing for Juvenile Realignment in California
  
  Consensus is growing in the Capitol that California’s youth correctional facilities need to be closed, with funding and supervision responsibilities realigned to the counties. Building on Past Policy Recommendations In 2008 the Little Hoover Commission recommended that the state's Division of Juvenile Facilities (DJF) close its doors and for California to move towards a county-based... more »

Most Popular

Below are some of the most popular posts from our blog on juvenile justice and adolescent substance abuse treatment. Read more. »

• Addressing Disproportionality in Child Welfare and Juvenile Justice, Part 1
  
  Moving Toward a Better Response to Disproportionality For over two decades, there has been a great deal of concern about disproportionate representation of minority children in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems. Research has confirmed that this disproportionality extends in many jurisdictions across the two systems and across race and ethnicity.   Despite the broad interest... more »
• Beyond "Scared Straight" – Moving to Programs that Actually Work
  
  In the last couple of decades, we've seen an explosion of research that tells us what works in adolescent substance abuse treatment and in helping kids caught in the juvenile justice system turn their lives around. As a result, foundations and lawmakers have raised their expectations: quite rightly, they want to fund "what works." Which is why it's maddening to see "Scared... more »
• Reclaiming Futures Every Day - Other Resources
  
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• Most Effective Juvenile Justice Policy? Practitioners Say It's Drug Treatment
  
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• Michael L. Dennis, Ph.D.
  
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