Roundup: Possible Nominee for OJJDP Chief; Chicago's Unusual Anti-Violence Plan; Heritage Foundation Study Challenges Juvenile LWOP Stats

Juvenile Justice Reform and Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment News

• The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) may soon have a nominee to be its top administrator. According to Youth Today, there's a new frontrunner: former juvenile court judge Karen Baynes, who's currently at the Carl  Vinson Institute for Government at the University of Georgia.
• The Annie E. Casey Foundation recently released a report on its Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI), entitled:  Two Decades of JDAI: From Demonstration Project to National Standard - you can find it on the National Juvenile Justice Network (NJJN) website.

• Do your local adolescent substance abuse providers want to implement tested techniques to connect more kids to treatment, but need some help making the case to upper management?  Then check out this case study from the Network for the Improvement of Addiction Treatment (NIATx). The agency in question is not solely focused on adults, but the benefits -- reducing client no-shows and significantly improving the agency's bottom line -- are broadly applicable.
• Judging from this editorial from Voices for Alabama's Children, Alabama's legislature has taken significant steps to reform its juvenile justice system, diverting non-violent offenders to treatment and rehabilitation. 
• The Heritage Foundation recently released a report challenging frequently used statistics on the number of juveniles in the United States sentenced to Life Without Parole (LWOP), arguing the numbers are actually much lower. In an editorial on the Criminal Justice blog at Change.org, Matt Kelley acknowledges that the Heritage Foundation's numbers may be accurate -- 1,291 people committed to life without parole in the U.S. for crimes committed before turning 18 -- but do nothing to change the fact that the United States grossly oversentences juveniles to life without parole. (The total number of individuals sentenced in the rest of the world to LWOP for crimes committed when juveniles comes to 12.)
• UPDATE: Don't miss our top 10 posts related to the juvenile justice system and adolescent substance abuse treatment, or our post on 8 great resources to improve adolescent substance abuse treatment -- both collected from our first year of publication.

 
Public Policy News - Marijuana

• The Obama's announcement this week that it will not prosecute users and distributers of medical marijuana, in an effort to concentrate on more serious crimes, marked a significant shift in federal policy. In related news, a national poll showed that an astonishing 44% of Americans (an all-time high) support marijuana legalization -- and 53% of adults in the Western United States want to legalize it in order to generate tax revenue, according to Join Together.

 
Preventing and Reducing Violent and Risky Behavior Among Teens and Children - Research Updates

• According to Prevention Action, new research in Washington, D.C. is raising questions about the effectiveness of Strengthening Families, the well-known intervention to reduce anti-social behavior among high-risk young people.  Meanwhile, an Irish study of the Incredible Years parenting skills program to reduce antisocial behavior in very young children gives more evidence that the program can be effective outside the U.S.
• A new plan from the organization Fight Crime: Invest in Kids released a brief but thorough plan to reduce school and youth violence (tip of the hat to the National Juvenile Justice Network (NJJN)).
• When parents expect their kids to engage in risky behavior, they're more likely to do so, according to Join Together.
• Research in action: Chicago's public schools has embarked on an ambitious, groundbreaking youth violence prevention program in the wake of the beating death of 16-year-old Derrion Albert: it uses statistics and probability to focus resources on the kids who are at highest risk of violence.

 
Working with Teens - Resources

• The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) has developed a video and other resources for teens on the dangers of abusing prescription drugs.
• Want to give parents a handbook for dealing with their teen children? Here's one, endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics called Navigating the Teen Years: a Parent's Handbook for Raising Healthy Teens. (Hat tip to the Addiction Technology Transfer Centers (ATTC) Network.)