Blog: Research Updates

Can puppets keep kids out of the juvenile justice system? Surprisingly, the answer is "yes."
Because “early onset aggression in children as young as age 3 is the single most-important predictor of later delinquency, substance abuse and violence," Professor Carolyn Webster-Stratton at the University of Washington developed the curriculum, "The Incredible Years," part of which involves using puppets to communicate with young, at-risk children.

• Charging families for detained children? That's what San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom is proposing, along with a host of other fees, to balance the city budget. Although the fees would be waived for foster children and families making 30% or less of the local median income, the proposal has come under serious fire from the City Supervisor.
• Three youth in the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice facility have swine flu, and 18 other youth and two staff members are showing flu symptoms as well. Does your facility have a plan for what it would do in a similar situation? June 21st UPDATE: six youth at a Louisiana juvenile justice facility have come down with the flu. It's not clear if they're suffering from swine flu, but officials took the precaution of suspending weekend visitation to prevent the flu from spreading.

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.

Here's several useful tools and resources on best practices in juvenile justice, mental health, substance abuse treatment, and juvenile brain research:

• A brief but useful overview of best practices in juvenile justice from The Future of Children, covering model programs in prevention, community-based interventions, and institutional settings. Aimed at state-wide reform. (This link courtesy of Youth Today.)(Related post: Effective Practice in Juvenile Justice - and More: Roundup)
  

• An excellent guide to using adolescent brain research to advocate for juvenile justice reform from the National Juvenile Justice Network (courtesy of Free Efren). 

• New Jersey's Office of the Child Advocate just released a great report on the state's successful detention reform efforts. For a truly compelling graph showing how juvenile arrests in New Jersey kept dropping even as use of detention was reduced, see the new (and interesting in its own right) Policy for Results website, an initiative of the Center for the Study of Social Policy that focuses on "better results for kids and families through research-informed policy."

• A new Iowa State University study shows that $1 invested in prevention saves $10, according to JoinTogether.
• JoinTogether also reports on a study from the Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment that treatment providers can cut up to 6 hours of paperwork per client, without compromising quality of care. Interestingly enough, the researchers teamed up with the director of the Delaware agency overseeing alcohol and drug treatment to survey and work with all substance abuse treatment programs statewide on reducing their paperwork burden. The six-month effort yielded significant positive results - not least an improved relationship between providers and the state.

In my work with juvenile justice agencies and drug treatment professionals, I still hear people call cannabis (or marijuana) a "gateway" drug. This is one of those notions that just won't go away despite the availability of good information that disproves it. 

According to data culled by the Center for Substance Abuse Research (CESAR) from the University of Michigan's ongoing Monitoring the Future study, high school seniors are now about as likely to smoke marijuana as cigarettes: 19.4% reported using marijuana in the last 30 days, vs. the 20.4% lof seniors who reported smoking cigarettes. 
Both cigarette use and marijuana use by seniors have been declining since 1997 -- but cigarette use has dropped much more quickly. 
This is the first time since the early 1980s that cigarette and marijuana use have paralleled each other so closely. (Click on the image for a closer look at the numbers.)

In December, I posted about an overview of the work of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency's (OJJDP) Girls Study Group.
Now, OJJDP has released the first of the Group's detailed reports on best practices with adolescent girls in the justice system.