Re-Examining Juvenile Incarceration; News Roundup

Juvenile Justice Reform

• Re-Examining Juvenile Incarceration  (The PEW Charitable Trusts)
  Pew's Public Safety Performance Project demonstrates how alternatives to juvenile incarceration may produce better results and be a better investment for taxpayers.
• OP-ED:  Community Engagement as a Key to Juvenile Justice Reform (Juvenile Justice Information Exchange)
  Juliana Stratton, Executive Director of Cook County Justice for Children in Chicago, asserts the importance of community engagement, and its impact on youth, families and public safety - as well as its ultimate ability to create alternatives to detention. Stratton suggests ways counties might foster community collaboration and create valuable dialogue.
• Pound Puppies Help Troubled Youth Get Back on Track (Florida Today)
  Be sure to check out this heartening collaboration between Brevard Regional Juvenile Detention Center and the nonprofit rescue, The Pixel Fund. Christine Edwards writes about Teens Assisting Puppies (TAPS), and how the program teaches compassion and responsibility to detained youth, as well as rehabilitates abandoned and abused puppies, making them more likely to find their forever homes - often with the later released youth who rehabilitated and cared for them.

Jobs, Grants, Events and Webinars

• Please share the Reclaiming Futures Opportunity Board with your colleagues in the juvenile justice, adolescent substance abuse and teen mental health areas. We encourage you to browse, and to post!

Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment and Mental Health

• Pot vs. Booze: No Choice at All! (Phoenix House)
  The founder of Phoenix House, Dr. Mitchell S. Rosenthal, provides perspective on the booze/pot debate, and argues that we endanger youth by endorsing one over the other, and that both should be discouraged for the sake of long-term well-being.
• Why are teens oblivious to the pile of dirty clothes on the bedroom floor? (Washington Post)
  Check out this discussion and video of recent research on the teen brain, featuring neuroscientist Frances Jensen.
• Alvarez proposes steering minor drug offenders to treatment (Chicago Tribune)
  Cook County state's attorney Anita Alvarez critiques current ways the county  handles low-level drug cases, and suggests a new policy that will align Cook County with efforts across the country to reform how drug abuse is handled.