Blog: Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment

Please join Reclaiming Futures in celebrating National Drug Facts Week, January 28-February 3.  
National Drug Facts Week is a health observance week for teens that aims to shatter the myths about drugs and drug abuse. Through TV, community-based events, contests and online activities, The National Insitute on Drug Abuse is working to encourage teens to get factual answers from scientific experts about drugs and drug abuse. Here are some ways you can participate:

• Participate in Drug Facts Chat Day on January 31, 2013
• Download the Drug Facts toolkit
• Become a social media partner
• Join a school assembly
• Host an art contest
• Lead a song-writing competition
• Find more ideas online

Juvenile Justice Reform

• Courts making strides in protecting children, vulnerable adults (Lincoln Journal Star)
  Supreme Court Chief Justice Heavican thanked lawmakers for passing legislation last session to enhance the Nebraska Juvenile Service Delivery Project, which is designed to keep children involved in the juvenile justice system from becoming repeat offenders. The project aims to keep children from being jailed while they receive services or treatment.
• Changes made in laws affecting youths (Midland Daily News)
  It’s been years in the making, but now some big changes have been made to laws pertaining to juveniles in court. “The predominant push is the idea that we need to have laws that are geared to juveniles,” Midland County Probate Judge Dorene S. Allen said. “Not use adult laws for juveniles.”
• Almost 50 percent fewer youth arrested in Florida schools (Florida Department of Juvenile Justice)
  The number of youth arrested in Florida’s public schools declined 48 percent in the past eight years, from more than 24,000 to 12,520, according to a study released by the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice. The decline corresponds with a downward trend in juvenile delinquency in all categories across the state.
• Building their future: Youth offenders learn woodworking, life skills in lockup (Waco Tribune-Herald)
  In a small shop building at the state youth lockup in Mart, teenage boys who have gotten into trouble with the law are learning woodworking skills that officials hope can be put to good use for the community.
• Best Of 2012: Juvenile Justice Desk (Youth Radio)
  In 2012, Youth Radio's Juvenile Justice Desk followed some major changes to youth sentencing in California and the nation.

Juvenile Justice Reform

• DJJ Study: Fewer kids Getting Booked at School (The Orlando Sentinel)
  A new Florida study says the number of students arrested at schools was cut in half over the last eight years, which ”correlates” with a decline in juvenile delinquency. The Department of Juvenile Justice report says school arrests fell from from more than 24,189 in the 2004-05 school year to 12,520 last year, a drop of 48 percent. School delinquency arrests fell 36 percent during the same period.
• Juvenile Defendants can Meet Victims, Settle Charges Outside Court (Courier-Journal.com)
  The suspect was caught on camera and admitted he caused about $1,800 worth of damage vandalizing a Louisville business. Instead of handling the 16-year-old defendant’s case in juvenile court, local officials asked the business owner, Keith Bush, if he would take part in a “restorative justice” pilot program designed to repair the harm caused by a crime and find ways to keep offenders from re-offending — instead of seeking only retribution.
• Juvenile-Justice Corrections Program Trains Dogs, Youths (Statesman.com)
  “This is a program where the girls can learn life skills through training these dogs,” said Mike Griffiths, executive director of the Texas Juvenile Justice Department. “It’s a small program that pays big dividends — for the girls and the dogs.” The dividends include allowing the dogs to be trained to erase their bad habits, or to at least teach them how to manage their problems and keep their actions in check, so they might be adopted into new homes, he said.
• Putting a Developmental Approach Into Practice (JJIE.org)
  Having developmental competence means understanding that children and adolescents’ perceptions and behaviors are influenced by biological and psychological factors related to their developmental stage. For adults working with young people, taking a developmental approach could lead to better outcomes for kids.
• Can Forgiveness Play a Role in Criminal Justice? (The New York Times)
  At 2:15 in the afternoon on March 28, 2010, Conor McBride, a tall, sandy-haired 19-year-old wearing jeans, a T-shirt and New Balance sneakers, walked into the Tallahassee Police Department and approached the desk in the main lobby. Gina Maddox, the officer on duty, noticed that he looked upset and asked him how she could help. “You need to arrest me,” McBride answered. “I just shot my fiancée in the head.” When Maddox, taken aback, didn’t respond right away, McBride added, “This is not a joke.”
• Looking Back and Casting Forward: An Emerging Shift for Juvenile Justice in America (Chicago-Bureau.org)
  The close of 2012 focused so narrowly on terrible events and startling numbers – the Newtown massacre, for example, or Chicago’s sharp rise in homicides – some major criminal justice developments were nearly squeezed out of the national conversation.

Juvenile Justice Reform

• Juvenile Injustice (Honolulu Weekly)
  A recent study finds that native Hawaiian youth are twice as likely to end up in the juvenile justice system (JJS) as any other ethnic group. And with youth employment at lower rates in 2011 than at any time during the prior decade, the problem may get worse.
• Local Law Enforcement Officials See Drop in Juvenile Crime (Boston.com)
  From prosecutors to police officers on the street to the state Department of Youth Services, there is consensus that juvenile crime has declined in this region as well as the rest of the Massachusetts. Overall, juvenile crime is down 37 percent in Massachusetts from 2009 to 2011, according to a recent report by Citizens for Juvenile Justice, a research and advocacy group in Boston.
• Juvenile Court Reform in Tennessee (The New York Times)
  The juvenile justice system in the United States is supposed to focus on rehabilitation for young offenders. But for generations, it has largely been a purgatory, failing to protect them or give them the help and counseling they need to become law-abiding adults. Children who end up in juvenile courts often do not get due process protections like written complaints presenting the charges against them, adequate notice about legal proceedings or meaningful assistance of counsel.
• Meetings to be Held on Overrepresentation of Minority Youth in Kansas Criminal Justice System (DodgeGlobe.com)
  The state of Kansas is undertaking a statewide assessment on the extent to which minority youth are over-represented in the juvenile justice system. A series of public meetings will be held so that members of the public can hear the results of the study and to provide feedback to public officials involved in the juvenile justice system in Kansas.
• Durbin Chairs First Hearing on School to Prison Pipeline (DailyHerald.com)
  U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin Wednesday chaired the first federal hearing looking at the relationship between schools and the criminal justice system. The hearing follows a recent change in Illinois law prompted by an attack on an Elgin teacher and subsequent Daily Herald investigation.
• Juvenile Justice: State Sees Decrease in Incarcerated Youth (Amarillo.com)
  How times have changed for the Texas juvenile justice system. Five years ago, the number of youths locked up in state-run detention centers was about 4,700. Since then, the number has steadily dropped, and now it is less than 1,500 — more than a two-thirds reduction.

And this is it, folks, the end of our countdown! We've already shared the top 25, top 20, top 15, and top 10. And now, here are the top 5 blog posts of 2012!
5. Scared Straight Programs Are All Talk
After "Scared Straight" became popular in the 1970s, a number of research reports evaluated children who went through the program compared to control groups and found that many of the youth who attended “scared straight” programs were actually worse off than the youth who had no intervention.
4. Punishment vs. Rehabilitation and the Effects of Trauma on High-Risk Youth
Studies show that 75 percent of youth in the juvenile justice system have experienced traumatic events; 50 percent have endured post-traumatic stress symptoms.

Continuing our countdown of the top blog posts from 2012, here's 15 - 11.
15. Bryan Stevenson at TED2012 on Injustice, Juvenile Justice System, Need for Reform
"How can a judge turn a child into an adult?" That's a question lawyer Bryan Stevenson has spent years asking. 
14. Rethinking Juvenile Justice: Promoting the Health and Well-Being of Crossover Youth
A recent report by the Conrad Hilton Foundation found “membership in the crossover group to be a strong and consistent predictor of less desirable [adult] outcomes,” including heavy use of public services, high likelihood of criminal justice involvement, lower educational attainment, and extremely high use of outpatient mental health treatment.
13. The Relationship Between Substance Abuse and Teen Crime
Consistent and substantial evidence exists that supports the relationship between substance abuse and criminal behaviors in youth.

Juvenile Justice Reform

• The Crime Report's Person of the Year (TheCrimeReport.org)
  A New York University law professor who persuaded the Supreme Court to extend its ban on mandatory sentences of life without parole (LWOP) for juveniles to young people convicted of murder—and thereby dramatically transformed the landscape of juvenile justice—is The Crime Report’s choice for Criminal Justice Person of the Year in 2012.
• Georgia Juvenile Justice Reform Recommendations Would Lock Up Fewer to Save Millions (AJC.com)
  Georgia should save taxpayers tens of millions of dollars a year by diverting some juveniles away from detention facilities and into community-based programs, according to a group tasked with reviewing the state’s criminal justice system. The state’s Special Council on Criminal Justice Reform for Georgians recommends reversing some of the harsher policies of the 1990s on how Georgia punishes its youngest offenders.
• Discussing Juvenile Justice with "Pure Politics" In Kentucky (RightOnCrime.com)
  Last month, Right On Crime’s Jeanette Moll traveled to Kentucky to present research on juvenile justice to stakeholders involved in reforming several aspects of the state juvenile system — including how it handles status offenders. A task force in Kentucky is studying the issue, and it is looking for lessons from Texas’s experience.
• Department of Justice Enters into Agreement to Reform the Juvenile Court of Memphis and Shelby County, Tennessee (Justice.gov)
  The Department of Justice announced that it has entered into a comprehensive memorandum of agreement with the Juvenile Court of Memphis and Shelby County, Tenn., to resolve findings of serious and systemic failures in the juvenile court that violate children’s due process and equal protection rights.
• Improving Juvenile Justice (MiamiHerald.com)
  Florida Department of Juvenile Justice officials and staff are traveling around the state to educate stakeholders and citizens on the reach of its new “Roadmap to System Excellence” plan. What the plan does is sets Florida on a new path in this endlessly fraught area of juvenile delinquency and its prevention. As president/CEO of the Florida Network, I stand with DJJ secretary Wansley Walters and this bold plan.
• Harsher Discipline Often Dispensed to Minority, Disabled Students (NationalJournal.com)
  Students of color and those with disabilities receive harsher punishment in schools, punishments that are often a precursor to their entry into the juvenile justice system, The Washington Post reports. Each year, more than 3 million children are expelled or suspended from schools, according to Civil Rights Data Collection figures released last spring by the Education Department. During analysis of 72,000 schools in the 2009-10 academic year, at least 240,000 students were referred to law enforcement.

Juvenile Justice Reform

• State Turns Attention to Juvenile Justice Reforms (AJC.com)
  A special state council in Atlanta will recommend repairs for a juvenile justice system that spends $91,000 a year for each bed in its state detention centers. Council members point to the enormous expense of incarcerating young offenders in a state “youth development campus,” or YDC, while producing poor results, as evidence that the system isn’t working.
• Juvenile Judge: My Court Was Inundated With Non-Dangerous Kids Arrested Because They ‘Make Adults Mad’ (ThinkProgress.org)
  The United States is not just the number one jailer in the world. It also incarcerates juveniles at a rate that eclipses every other country. Evidence has long been building that schools use the correctional system as a misplaced mechanism for discipline, with children being sent to detention facilities for offenses as minor as wearing the wrong color socks to school.
• Arrests, Juvenile Detention, and High School Dropouts in Chicago (ChicagoMag.com)
  Descriptively, our data reveal that of the Chicago public school students who steered clear of the juvenile justice system, 64 percent went on to graduate high school. In contrast, a mere 26 percent of arrested students graduated high school. Of those young adults without a criminal record who graduated high school or obtained a GED, 35 percent enrolled in a 4-year college. Yet for arrestees, 16 percent subsequently enrolled in a 4-year college.
• York Co. South Carolina Juvenile Justice Kids Collecting Food for Hungry (HeraldOnline.com)
  For the first time this year, DJJ is collecting nonperishable canned goods to distribute to four York County, South Carolina charities for the holidays. The drive, which started Nov. 1, ends Friday. Aiming to become part of a “community of givers,” DJJ teamed up with the county solicitor’s office, Coca Cola and Best Buy to find a “creative” way to bolster donations that are common this time of year, said Amahl Bennett, DJJ director.
• Governor Wants To Merge Juvenile Justice & Corrections (KCUR.org)
  Kansas Governor Sam Brownback wants to merge the state's Juvenile Justice Authority with the Department of Corrections. The governor says he’ll propose an executive reorganization order in the coming legislative session to merge the two agencies.
• New Ga. Juvenile Justice Chief Focuses on Problems (SFGate.com)
  When five young men slipped out of a juvenile detention center a month and a half ago in Augusta, stealing a car and leading police on a chase, it was just the latest in a string of setbacks for officials trying to turn around Georgia's system for young criminals.
• Strengthening Florida's Juvenile Justice System (TBO.com)
  There is a lot to like about the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice's new "Roadmap to System Excellence," the topic of town hall meetings last week in Hillsborough and Pinellas Counties. Members of the Florida Juvenile Justice Association, who deliver services across Florida, ranging from prevention through reentry and everything in between, know that with every well-intentioned plan, the devil is often in the details.

On December 10, 2012, the North Carolina Department of Public Safety announced new investments in a public-private partnership with the Duke Endowment and the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust to reform the state's juvenile justice system. Together the foundations are contributing $888,000 to bring Reclaiming Futures to six additional communities in North Carolina.

On December 11, 2012, Reclaiming Futures announced a $5.27 million award from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention to improve drug and alcohol treatment for teens in trouble with the law in the following communities: 

• Lucas County, Ohio
• Forsyth County, N.C. 
• Duval County, Fla.

The funding will also provide training and technical assistance for the existing six federally-funded Reclaiming Futures sites in addition to these three new communities.
Reclaiming Futures brings together judges, probation officers, treatment providers, families and community members to focus on three common goals for teens: more treatment, better treatment and community connections beyond treatment, in 37 sites across 18 states.