Blog: Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment

Resiliency is a measure of a person’s ability to flexibly adapt their behaviors to fit the surroundings in which they find themselves. Low resiliency during childhood has been linked to later alcohol/drug problems during the teenage years. A new study has examined brain function and connectivity to assess linkages between resiliency and working memory, finding that higher resiliency may be protective against later alcohol/drug use.
Results will be published in the August 2012 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research and are currently available at Early View.
“Research in the 1980’s found that lower resiliency in children between three to four years old was related to subsequent adolescent drug usage,” said Barbara J. Weiland, a researcher at The University of Michigan and corresponding author for the study. “We subsequently found that low resiliency measured in preschoolers was associated with onset of alcohol use by age 14 and of drunkenness by age 17.”

Juvenile Justice Reform

• Juvenile Justice: They're Just Kids (Hartford Courant)
  Teenagers under age 18 who are charged with misdemeanors can no longer be tried as adults in Connecticut. This overdue new law reflects a more nuanced societal understanding of adolescent development and psychology.
• Gov. Deal Wants Review of Juvenile Justice System (The Augusta Chronicle)
  Gov. Nathan Deal urged judges, prosecutors, sheriffs and legislators serving on a criminal-justice reform commission Monday to consider every part of the juvenile justice system for overhaul.
• CT Law Treating 17-Year-Olds as Children in Court Goes Into Effect (EastHampton-PortlandPatch)
  From now on, 17-year-olds arrested for non-felony crimes will be able to take advantage of more state rehabilitation programs rather than jail.
• Opinion: N.J. Sets a Progressive Example for Juvenile Justice Reform (NJ.com)
  "As a juvenile justice advocate and student of legal history, it appears to me that the court’s holding seems obvious, but juvenile law reform has not gone far enough. The same rationale differentiating youth from adults when considering the harshest sentences also underpins other compelling legal questions," says Matthew M. House.
• New Law Channeling Older Teens Into Juvenile Court (Hartford Courant)
  New "raise the age'' legislation introduced 17-year-olds into the juvenile court system for the first time on July 1, and by Tuesday, there were 25 of the older kids sitting in detention centers across the state.

Juvenile Justice Reform

• Bradley County: Juvenile Court, Schools Join to Help Families (TimesFreePress.com)
  From campus courts to an elementary-level class at the county's Juvenile Justice Center, the goal is to keep kids from growing up and entering the adult justice system, officials said Tuesday.
• Juveniles In Court: New Chief Judge Relies On 'Holistic' Nursing Approach (Hartford Courant)
  Appointed last month as Connecticut's chief administrative judge of juvenile matters, Wolven, whose five-year term will begin in September, said she sees the courts taking the same [holistic] approach when it comes to juvenile offenders.
• Making an Impression in the Courtroom (JuvenileJusticeBlog.web.unc.edu)
  The senior administrative support specialist in the Pima County Public Defender’s Office maintains a clothes closet for defendants. Inside are more than 60 pairs of men’s and women’s shoes and dozens of slacks, blouses, dress shirts, suit coats and ties. [Vicki Broom] goes to the jail every week to measure defendants heading for trial. If she’s lucky, she’ll be able to find enough outfits to mix and match for the entire trial.

New federal dollars will pay for a $1.29 million, multi-year evaluation in six juvenile drug courts implementing Reclaiming Futures, a national program that improves drug and alcohol treatment for teens in trouble with the law. This evaluation, the first of its kind, will examine the impact, processes and cost-effectiveness of Juvenile Drug Courts implementing the Reclaiming Futures model. Funded by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention through an interagency agreement with the Library of Congress, this evaluation will be conducted by the University of Arizona's Southwest Institute for Research on Women (SIROW).
"We know from a 2006 evaluation by the Urban Institute that Reclaiming Futures improves the lives of young people by changing the juvenile justice system for the better," says Susan Richardson, national executive director of Reclaiming Futures. "This new research will look at specific outcomes, such as recidivism, relapse rates, and costs." 

The Journal of Adolescent Health recently published a study in its June issue titled, Mental Health Disorders and Long-term Opioid Use Among Adolescents and Young Adults With Chronic Pain. This study concluded that adolescences and young adults with preexisting mental health conditions are 2.4 times more likely to be prescribed opioids over extended periods of time for chronic pain. The most common documented chronic pain complaints included back pain, neck pain, headache and arthritis or joint pain.

Researchers from Seattle Children’s Research Institute and the University of Washington looked at 13 to 24 year-olds across the West, Midwest and Southwest United States to examine the association between long-term opioid use and mental health disorders. They found that older male youth who live in low-income communities with fewer residents who attended college, were even more likely to use opioids for extended periods.

Juvenile Justice Reform

• High court ruling on juvenile life sentences means a chance at freedom (Orlando Sentenial)
  In more than two-dozen states, lawyers can now ask for new sentences. And judges will have discretion to look beyond the crime at other factors such as a prisoner's age at the time of the offense, the person's background and perhaps evidence that an inmate has changed while incarcerated.
• RExO Grants: Reduce Recidivism and Build Lives (Huffington Post)
  This month, the Department of Labor announced grants of nearly $50 million to 25 organizations under two different grant programs that serve juveniles under our Re-Integration of Ex-Offenders initiative.
• Juvenile Justice: A Move Away From Detention For Some (NorthEscambia.com)
  Florida law enforcement and criminal justice officials say the use of civil citations for troubled youth, rather than a lock-up, is slashing costs, and giving kids a better chance of a turn-around, and they want the practice to become more widespread.
• L.A. School Police, District Agree to Rethink Court Citations of Students (Juvenile Justice Information Exchange)
  In the wake of critical news reports, Los Angeles school police and administrators have agreed to rethink enforcement tactics that have led to thousands of court citations yearly for young students in low-income, mostly minority neighborhoods.
• Officials: Mentally ill children who don't get help can end up in criminal justice system (CrownPointCommunity.com)
  To child welfare advocates, the plights of families with mentally ill children demonstrate the state's failure to protect its most vulnerable children. Parents, judges, prosecutors, and other officials in Indiana say there is a multi-agency failure to provide mental health services to the children who need it most.
• Juvenile justice changes cutting costs (Herald Tribune Politics)
  Florida law enforcement and criminal justice officials say the use of civil citations for troubled youth, rather than a lock-up, is slashing costs, and giving kids a better chance of a turn-around, and they want the practice to become more widespread.

Juvenile Justice Reform

• $15 million complex 
to open in August, avoids jail-like setting (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)  The new facility is a reflection of a collaborative effort among police, schools and the court that has made Clayton a national model for keeping kids out of jail.
• Illinois lawmakers raise high school drop out age (wrex.com) Belvidere Superintendent Michael Houselog says he wants to see kids in schools, and that the district is working to accomplish that goal. Guilford High School rising senior Max James says students will pick school over breaking the law.
• At-risk youths achieve in San Angelo, Texas (gosanangelo.com)  A $154,000 grant was awarded to the Tom Green County Juvenile Justice Department earlier this year to address the needs of children ages 6 through 13. The goal was to identify problems in school or the household before students ended up on juvenile probation.

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.

Larry Henry of Substance Abuse 411 talks with National Executive Director Susan Richardson about how Reclaiming Futures can help in your community.

In this podcast, Larry asks Susan Richardson about the Reclaiming Futures model and how it unites juvenile courts, probation, adolescent substance abuse treatment, and the community to reclaim youth.
Substance Abuse 411 was created because of Larry's personal family experience with substance abuse and the search for answers to so many unanswered questions.
Together, they discuss ways to improve drug and alcohol treatment and connect teens to positive activities and caring adults.