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Funding for Training Juvenile Drug Court Teams

Got experience helping juvenile drug courts implement the 16 strategies needed to run an effective drug court? The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) is looking for a provider to "build the capacity of service delivery" for juvenile drug courts nationally "through providing online, Web-based, and face-to-face individual and group training sessions."
Interested in applying? "The provider should have substantial experience conducting assessments of technical assistance needs, developing and conducting training on the [s]trategies, effectively communicating and collaborating with drug courts, and conducting post-training evaluations." Deadline is June 15, 2010. 

The National Reentry Resource Center recently sent out the following announcement for not one but two grant opportunities through the Second Chance Act that apply to juveniles.

It's not news that teens in the juvenile justice system often have trouble in school. But you might be interested in this issue brief from NDTAC*, which summarizes the relevant research on the link between low literacy and delinquency -- and on the probable positive impact that literacy programs have on reducing recidivism. (The research to date, unfortunately, is more suggestive than conclusive.) The brief makes a forceful case for addressing the educational needs of youth in the justice system.
You might also be interested in NDTAC's Transition Toolkit 2.0. Here's what NDTAC says about it:
[The] second edition of NDTAC’s Transition Toolkit brings together strategies, existing practices, and updated resources and documents on transition to enable administrators and service providers to deliver high-quality transition services for children and youth moving into, through, and out of education programs within the juvenile justice system.
Simple communication efforts and the implementation of basic transition processes, such as timely records transfer, can have a dramatic impact on a student’s engagement in school and avoidance of further incarceration. As such, the focus of the Toolkit is on the administrative processes, coordination efforts, and communication practices within the juvenile justice system. The Toolkit offers ideas and tools that administrators can use to improve the basic functioning of their treatment and institution-based programs, with a primary focus on programs related to the educational needs of youth and those who directly provide education services. 

Grants from the Bureau of Justice Assistance are now available to "establish or enhance residential substance abuse treatment programs in correctional facilities that include aftercare and recovery supportive services." Grants may be used to treat teens in juvenile detention.
Here's the official description:
FY 2010 Second Chance Act Reentry Demonstration Program Targeting Offenders with Co-occurring Substance Abuse and Mental Health Disorders Program funds may be used for treating co-occurring substance abuse and mental health disorders in prison programs, jails, and juvenile detention facilities, providing recovery support services, reentry planning and programming, and post-release treatment and aftercare programming in the community.
Application deadline is June 3, 2010. 
(Hat tip to the National Reentry Resource Center.)

[Last December, I posted a bare-bones summary of the groundbreaking "Pathways to Desistance" study on serious juvenile offenders underwritten by the MacArthur Foundation, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), and eight other funders. This is the first in a series of posts by the two researchers overseeing the study that describes their results with more precision and in more detail. --Ed.]
The Pathways to Desistance study is a multi-site, longitudinal study of serious adolescent offenders as they transition from adolescence into early adulthood. Between November, 2000 and January, 2003, 1,354 adjudicated youths from the juvenile and adult court systems in Maricopa County (Phoenix), Arizona (N = 654) and Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania (N = 700) were enrolled in the study. The enrolled youth were at least 14 years old and under 18 years old at the time of their committing offense and were found guilty of a serious offense (predominantly felonies, with a few exceptions for some misdemeanor property offenses, sexual assault, or weapons offenses). These are the types of serious adolescent offenders that often drive debate about how well the juvenile justice system works to control crime and rehabilitate youth. 

Positive Youth Justice Report

According to a new report that my organization, the Coalition for Juvenile Justice (CJJ), just published, the future for youth involved with the justice system could be dramatically improved by applying the principles of positive youth development (PYD) practice to the juvenile justice system and its services.
The report -- Positive Youth Justice: Framing Justice Interventions Using the Concepts of Positive Youth Development, written by Jeffrey A. Butts, Gordon Bazemore and Aundra Saa Meroe -- explores the tremendous potential of helping court-involved youth develop their pro-social strengths and attributes, and increase their abilities to contribute to healthy, safe family and community life.
 
 
 

"Salvation for a race, nation or class must come from within. Freedom is never granted; it is won. Justice is never given; it is exacted and the struggle must be continuous for freedom is never a final fact, but a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels of human, social, economic, political and religious relationship."
~A. Phillip Randolph

This quote comes from a man many of us don't even remember when we think about the history lessons of our childhood.  I was fortunate to have a brilliant friend share this with me some years ago. At the time, I believed we would see significant changes to juvenile and criminal justice policies in the deep rural South simply because the time was right and it was the right thing to do. Yet when the day was over, nothing had changed. She quietly said, "Freedom is never granted; it is won."

All the research and evidence shows that it isn't smart to treat children as adults, especially in the adult criminal justice system. We know that it creates more problems than it solves. We know that it puts these children at great risk, physically and emotionally. Charging, trying and sentencing children as adults destroys the lives of the children involved, and their families, as well as the communities they hail from. The policy affects youth of color disproportionately and continues to erode the frail infrastructures of communities of color. These are facts with well-documented processes and outcomes. Educated people in positions of authority and influence understand this. Why, then, do these policies remain the same?

News - Juvenile Justice System and Alcohol and Drugs

• Teens trapped in prison: "Nearly 10 percent of the inmates in Illinois' juvenile prisons have essentially completed their sentences — in some cases more than a year ago — but are stuck behind bars because they have no place to go, state records show." (Hat tip to the Campaign for Youth Justice.)
• Are teens in the criminal and juvenile justice systems getting younger? No, according to an analysis performed by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. The lead author of the study also teamed up with a professor of womens' studies at the University of Hawai'i to author an op-ed in The New York Times called "The Myth of Mean Girls." (The title says it all.)

I wasn't kidding when I said yesterday that the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) is putting out a lot of grant opportunities for kids in the juvenile justice system.  Here's four more, this time focused on tribal youth:

• Tribal Youth National Mentoring Program (ddl May 17, 2010)
• Child Protection Programs in Tribal Communities (ddl May 27, 2010)
• Tribal Youth Field Initiated Research and Evaluation Programs (ddl May 17, 2010)
• Tribal Youth Program Training and Technical Assistance Program (ddl May 18, 2010)