Blog: Adolescent Mental Health

Juvenile Justice Reform

• Why So Many Hawaiian, Samoan And Filipino Youth In Justice System? (Honolulu Civil Beat)
  Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander and mixed-race youth are disproportionately represented in Hawaii's juvenile justice system, a recent study concludes. The statewide analysis found that Hawaiian, Samoan and Filipino youth "fare worse than Caucasians at the stages of arrest," a pattern that continues as the young people move through detention, probation and protective services.
• More Juvenile Offenders Put Through Diversion Programs, Less Locked Up (CourierPostOnline.com)
  Fewer young people in New Jersey are being locked up for offenses they commit, so states a report issued Wednesday by Newak-based children’s advocacy group Advocates for Children of New Jersey. The “Kids Count Special Report: Juvenile Justice” states that last year, the state incarcerated nearly 7,000 fewer juveniles than it did prior to the start of an initiative to bring down the what ACNJ deemed to be over use of juvenile detention.
• Minorities Prevalent in Juvenile Justice System (KIMT.com)
  In Minnesota, juveniles who are minorities are three times as likely to be arrested than young people who are white. A report from the Minnesota Office of Justice Programs compares rates of minority youth in the state's juvenile justice system to those of white youth. The report finds that youth of color are more than one and a half times more likely to be securely detained than white youth.
• 'A Door to Anywhere': Juvenile Justice Center Aims to Get Kids on the Right Track (TheDailyCourier.com)
  "When the juvenile court system started in Chicago 110 years ago, they realized that there's hope for children," Arizona Supreme Court Justice Robert Brutinel told an audience of 300 at a ribbon-cutting ceremony Friday for the new Yavapai County Juvenile Justice Center in Prescott.
• Study Reveals Disparities in Juvenile Justice (New America Media)
  Youth-of-color are disparately represented at all stages of justice-system processing in Minnesota, according to a report from the Minnesota Department of Public Safety Office of Justice Programs. The OJP report compares rates of involvement of youth-of-color at key stages of Minnesota’s juvenile justice system to those of white youth.

Juvenile Justice Reform

• Youth Crime's Decline (NewsObserver.com)
  The new approach to juvenile crime hasn’t just worked. It has worked spectacularly. A report last Sunday by The News & Observer’s Thomasi McDonald said that the number of young people under 16 charged with violent crimes has dropped by nearly 37 percent. The arrests in that same age group for property crimes are down 40 percent.
• Georgia Considers Juvenile Justice Reforms (The Augusta Chronicle)
  After overhauling its adult criminal justice system to provide alternative sentences for nonviolent offenders and reduce skyrocketing prison costs, the state of Georgia is turning its attention to the juvenile justice system.
• DJJ Launches Roadmap to System Excellence (Florida Department of Juvenile Justice)
  The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) invited the people of Florida today to participate in a conversation about the Roadmap to System Excellence. The Roadmap builds on reforms already underway at DJJ and guides Florida on the path to becoming the national model for juvenile justice administration.
• Should 24-Year-Old Offenders be Considered Juveniles? (JJIE.org)
  When the National Partnership for Juvenile Services annual symposium opened in Las Vegas, Jason Bowser, a youth service director from Columbus, Ind., told an executive committee that one of the standing committees was focusing on the question of “What is a juvenile?”
• Counties Push to Bypass State Youth Lockups (Statesman.com)
  Counties in Texas might soon be allowed to incarcerate all their teenage lawbreakers locally rather than send them to state-run lockups that have been plagued by violence, high recidivism rates and gang activity in recent years, officials confirmed Wednesday.
• Juvenile Justice and the Campaign (TheCrimeReport.org)
  California's second largest county is coping with widespread gang violence and prescription drug abuse among youth. But as election day nears, juvenile justice remains a whisper in a monsoon of economic rhetoric.
• [Opinion] Adolescents in Grown-Up Jails (The New York Times)
  The practice of confining young people to adult jails and prisons is both counterproductive and inhumane. Adolescents who are locked up with adults are more likely to be raped, battered or driven to suicide than young people who are handled through the juvenile justice system. After the trauma of doing hard, adult time, young people often return home as damaged individuals who are more likely to commit violent crimes and end up back inside.
• Florida To Completely Privatize Juvenile Correctional Facilities (HuffingtonPost.com)
  In an effort to reduce costs, Florida's state-run residential programs for juveniles will soon be completely privatized. The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice announced Monday that the state will relinquish control of the five remaining public youth residential centers by October 2013.
• Dog Trainer Teaches Empathy at Tehama Juvenile Hall (Redding.com)
  When dog trainer Gary Watts faces a group of kids detained in juvenile hall, he's focused on his mission. With a Labrador retriever named Abby in tow, he puts her through her paces and methodically demonstrates the fine points of canine obedience.

 
Juvenile Justice Reform

• DJJ Offenders Meet Their Victims In New BARJ Program (WLTX.com)
  Tuesday there was a ribbon cutting ceremony at the Department of Juvenile Justice's Broad River Road complex in South Carolina as officials announced the implementation of a program called Balanced and Restorative Justice, or BARJ. The program allows young offenders to collaborate with their parents, the victim and officers to come up with solutions to their crimes.
• New Term for U.S. Supreme Court Prompts Reflection on Children's Rights (Juvenile Law Center)
  Since 1917, the first Monday in October has been the official opening day of the annual term of the United States Supreme Court. For the first time in many years, there are no cases currently set for review that raise large questions about children’s status under the Constitution. So … it seems like a good time to pause and reflect on how children and youth have fared in recent years.
• Feds End Monitoring of Juvenile Justice Spending (OnlineAthens.com)
  The Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice has satisfied federal auditors that it no longer requires intensive monitoring, members of the state agency’s board learned Thursday. The monitoring began last winter when officials from the U.S. Department of Education issued citations to the state agency for how it was handling $3.3 million in federal funds earmarked for schooling children in detention.
• [OPINION] Florida is Poorly Equipped to Deal with Juveniles Accused of Murder (Jacksonville.com)
  The twists and turns in the case of 13-year-old Cristian Fernandez show how ill-equipped Florida is to deal with juveniles in such cases. A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in an Alabama case leaves the young man facing charges for murder for which there are no applicable penalties.

As many in the juvenile justice community sadly know, a focus on diagnosing and treating mental health and substance abuse problems in detained juveniles developed relatively late nationally. This is particularly true in the State of Idaho, which did not have systematic, routine mental health and substance abuse screening occurring in its 12 juvenile detention centers (JDCs) until 2008. Since the inception of the Clinical Services Program (CSP), a collaborative effort funded by the Idaho Department of Juvenile Corrections and the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, Idaho has made dramatic strides in screening for mental health and substance abuse problems in juveniles entering its JDCs, and recommending and (and sometimes coordinating) treatment for these juveniles upon their return to their communities.
Starting in 2008, my colleagues and I at Boise State University’s Center for Health Policy have performed annual, multimodal assessments of the CSP. One of the main components of our evaluation has involved documenting the prevalence of mental health and substance abuse problems. What we’ve found is that juveniles entering Idaho’s JDCs should be considered to have at least one of these types of problems unless demonstrated otherwise; in other words, having a mental health or substance abuse problem, or both types of problems, is the rule rather than the exception to it.

In partnership with several juvenile justice advocates around the country, Cathryn Crawford, a national expert in juvenile and criminal justice, has edited a new book entitled "Promise Unfulfilled: Juvenile Justice in America" (IDEA 2012).
Through a combination of original and reprinted articles written by academics, lawyers, and advocates, “Promise Unfulfilled” addresses the problems with designing and implementing effective systems to deal with children in conflict with the law, and it describes various challenges children in the juvenile justice system face and offers suggestions for reform.
The authors include James Bell, Founder and Director of the W. Haywood Burns Institute, who wrote on the over-incarceration of youth of color; Jacqueline Bullard, an appellate defender in Illinois, who wrote on best interest versus expressed interest representation of minors in delinquency court; and Neelum Arya (Barry Law, Campaign for Youth Justice) who wrote on state legislative victories from 2005-2010 in the area of removing youth from the adult criminal justice system. I have a chapter that is adapted from my article, Culture Clash: The Challenge of Lawyering Across Difference in Juvenile Court, 62 Rutgers L. Rev. 959 (2010). There are also chapters on the school-to-prison pipeline, addressing the mental health needs of juveniles, and best practices for working with girls in the delinquency system.

Juvenile Justice Reform

• Studying the gap between boys and girls inside the department of juvenile services (WYPR Public Radio) Maryland Morning Radio talks with Juvenile Justice Monitoring Unit head Nick Moroney about how things have –- or haven’t -– changed for girls in the juvenile justice system.
• Young people in trouble with the law receive diplomas a in Stockton, Calif. (Central Stockton News 10) “Rehabilitation is the primary objective of our juvenile justice program and a high school education is the foundation for building a successful life,” said Matthew Cate, Chaderjian Youth Correctional Facility Secretary.
• Juvenile justice increasing safety and saving money in Delaware (Delaware Online) Delaware has improved its juvenile justice system in recent years, helping more young people return to their families and learn to stay out of trouble, according to a report released June 12.
• Program fosters trust between youth and police (Post-Gazette) Pittsburgh encourages honest dialogue in meetings between police officers and teenagers in an effort to reduce the number of young people of color caught up in the system.
• Connecticut's Juvenile Review Board tries to keep young people out of court system (Middletown Press) Connecticut Juvenile Review Board members, drawn from local youth-oriented nonprofits and service agencies, are empowered to take cases of first-time offenders referred from juvenile court. As a test, the group is also taking students referred by a local middle school.
• Program works to keep kids out of juvenile justice and child welfare systems (PostCrescent.com) Leaders of a national project, sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation and Robert F. Kennedy Children’s Action Corps, selected Outagamie County, Wisconsin as one of four counties in the nation to receive aid and technical assistance to prevent children from entering both the juvenile justice and child welfare systems.

On May 9, 2012, the OJJDP and SAMHSA will observe National Children's Mental Health Awareness Day to promote recovery and resilience for young people in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems. The two agencies will support efforts to help the public recognize signs of chlid trauma, promote treatment for children's traumatic experiences and promote trauma-informed social services and supports. 
Why is this important?
As we learned at this year's JMATE conference, childhood mental health problems increase the risk of substance use and addiction (because many teens are self-medicating) and substance use increases the risk of developing mental health problems. Trauma (especially when experienced at a young age) severely affects a child's ability to cope and affects brain size (NOT intelligence). And 92% of incarcerated kids have experienced one or more traumas during their childhood.
To learn more about National Children's Mental Health Awareness Day and to plan an activity, visit www.samhsa.gov/children.

In Washington D.C., juveniles charged with certain offenses (including some misdemeanors and non-violent, low-level felonies) and diagnosed with a mental illness, can apply to be diverted to a specialized mental health court.
There, under the guidance of Judge Joan Goldfrank, youths are held accountable for their specific problem behavior—such as school attendance, substance abuse, or avoiding mental health treatment.
Early results are encouraging: out of the 56 enrolled in 2011, only eight were subsequently re-arrested. This rate, 14 percent, is far lower than the average re-arrest rates out of D.C.’s general juvenile courts, which hovers around forty percent.

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