Blog: No bio box

How do you reduce school violence?
It's easy: you get serious about restorative justice.
At least that's the conclusion I draw from an excellent report, "Improving School Climate: Findings from Schools Implementing Restorative Justice."  The report, from the International Institute for Restorative Practices (IIRP), provides intriguing data from six U.S. schools and four Canadian and British schools showing significant drops in school suspensions and "behavioral incidents."  
*Image by spunkinator from Flickr (CC License).

Training

• Trying to engage your community? You might be interested in this training on asset-based community development, to be held September 10-12, 2009, in Chicago.

News

• Here's another way of looking at a report we posted about last week from the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA): 95.6% - an estimated $357.4 billion -- of federal and state substance abuse spending in 2005 went to dealing with the costs of addiction, rather than treatment or prevention. Guess what would be cheaper ...

The Reclaiming Futures site in Orange/Chatham Counties, North Carolina received some welcome press yesterday from the Herald-Sun newspaper.
The story's available only if you're a subscriber to the paper, so here's a summary: it succinctly described the local site's efforts to coordinate alcohol and substance abuse treatment for kids in the justice system and included a call to community members to spend time with teens and help connect them to positive activites.
Quoted in the article were Reclaiming Futures Fellows Judge Beverly Scarlett, Billie Guthrie (project director), and Peggy Hamlett (chief juvenile court counselor). Congratulations to the whole team!

A few weeks back, I posted a "parents' bill of rights" from Texas, so it's only fitting that I also post a strength-based bill of rights for youth in the justice system (see p. 3 of the linked document) created by Laura Nissen, the National Director of Reclaiming Futures.
Now there's a model bill of rights for children in the justice system from the Center for Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University, and a list of states introducing it as legislation this year: California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York. 

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) has announced two more grants related to youth mentoring. Their deadlines are almost upon us, so here's the details:

Upcoming Trainings, Conferences & a Call for Conference Proposals

• The National Association of Youth Courts -- youth courts, teen courts, student courts, and peer courts -- will hold a regional training in Salt Lake City, UT, June 7-9, 2009.
• Chestnut Health Systems is holding a train-the-trainer GAIN training July 21-24, 2009, in Normal, IL.
• The United States Department of Education is holding its Safe and Drug-Free Schools Conference in August 3-5 in National Harbor, MD.
• Presentation proposals for the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's (OJJDP) Ensuring Safe and Fair Treatment of Youth in the Juvenile Justice System conference are due June 5, 2009, according to the National Juvenile Justice Network (NJJN). 

News Updates

• The Harlem's Children's Zone (featured in Paul Tough's book, "Whatever it Takes") hasn't just produced good results, it's produced amazing results, according to this editorial by David Brooks in The New York Times. The Harvard economist who evaluated the charter schools in the Zone, wrote, “The results changed my life as a researcher because I am no longer interested in marginal changes.”

The National Council of La Raza (NCLR) and the Campaign for Youth Justice (CFYJ) just released a new report entitled America's Invisible Children: Latino Youth and the Failure of Justice.
The report examines the most recent information available about Latino youth in the justice system, with a particular focus on youth tried as adults. The report finds that Latino youth are treated more harshly by the justice system than white youth, for similar offenses, at all stages in the justice system -- and it has recommendations for policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels. 
Representatives from the NCLR and CFYJ will discuss this report on Latino teens and the justice system and take questions from the public in a podcast to be held on Thursday, May 21st, airing at 4:30pm EST/ 1:30 pm PST. 

It's getting a little late to post about our Reclaiming Futures Leadership Institute, but I wanted to make sure to mention a great lunchtime performance. In the past, we've sometimes been able to include youth in our conferences; though that wasn't possible this year, we were honored to see a local youth jazz band, the Trendsetters (seen at left) perform -- they even got some of us dancing! (Photo courtesy of Cheryl Reed; click on photo to see larger version.) Though it doesn't do justice to these talented young men, you can also see a video of these teens performing on the streets of New Orleans. (It's a pretty horrible video, actually; unfortunately, they're not yet on YouTube.)

Perhaps, like me, you didn't know that there's a genetic variation associated with impulsivity, low self-control, binge drinking, and substance use. Apparently, 40% of the population has it. (Imagine you're a teenager with that gene ... perhaps you'd be even more prone to risky behavior than most?)
Well, a new study supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) has shown that providing an evidence-based prevention program focusing on parenting skills has a huge impact in helping teens with this gene avoid alcohol and drug use and stay safe.