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Due to the connection between ACEs (adverse childhood experiences) and juvenile justice system involvement, it has become increasingly important that the system become more trauma-informed in its processes.

The term ACEs refers to childhood abuse, neglect, and general household dysfunction that negatively affects a child’s development. To improve the treatment of young people impacted by ACEs in the juvenile justice system, there is an ongoing effort to increase knowledge of trauma-informed care and how it can improve systems in health, justice and education.

Communities like ACEs Connection, which work to prevent Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and to change systems to stop traumatizing already traumatized people, are already paving the way to combat this problem in the future.

The latest resource to support these efforts is a new tool created by JBS International and Georgetown University National Technical Assistance Center for Children’s Mental Health. These two organizations came together to build a free online tool called “Trauma Informed Care: Perspectives and Resources” that provides insights and resources for those who want to be more trauma-informed.

The tool includes the following to allow users to take advantage of existing research, knowledge, practices, and approaches that have already shown to be effective in addressing trauma:

• Video interviews of national, state, tribal, and local leaders in many child-serving systems; developers of evidence-based treatments and practices; physicians; researchers; administrators of provider organizations; clinicians; youth and young adults; families; and advocates who share lessons learned and identify remaining gaps.
• Issue briefs that provide an introduction and overview for each of the tool’s eight modules.
• Comprehensive resource lists to support users in understanding how to build trauma-informed systems and organizations.

Explore the eight modules of the tool on the site, which is now live!

For past reporting on ACEs in the juvenile justice system, see the following:

• Study Reveals Stronger Link Between Childhood Trauma and Juvenile Offenders in Florida
• Healing From Trauma: Girls in Juvenile Justice; News Roundup
• End the Culture of Violence and Trauma: The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Wants Your Ideas

The role of family and mentors in any teen’s life contributes to their success and healthy Reclaiming Futures Programfuture. The role of family and mentors for teens in the juvenile justice system or a juvenile correctional facility is even more critical.

Family engagement in the juvenile justice system is not a new concept, but it is a key component to ensuring at-risk teens stay clear of substance abuse and crime. A recent Juvenile Justice Information Exchange article addresses this need in youth detention centers:

“Experts, supported by a small but growing body of research, say fostering family engagement improves incarcerated youths’ behavior, helps families feel more connected, reduces disciplinary incidents and boosts the staff morale.”

“Moreover, strengthening these connections better prepares youths for a return to the community upon release — most return to their family homes — and reduces repeat offenses.”

While the author Gary Gately does identify some successful programs where family involvement and treatment are front and center, he shares that most systems nationally are more focused on punishment, and oftentimes there exists a contentious relationship between family members and juvenile facility staff members.

Reclaiming Futures’ sites work with a wide variety of community members and resources to contribute to youth success as they remain in their community. Led by the community fellow(s), sites link youth to mentors, education, employment, job training, hobbies, sports, volunteer opportunities, faith communities, and other prosocial activities of interest to youth.

As we’ve seen among Reclaiming Futures sites who have achieved success with this strategy, family involvement and mentors should be closely integrated into a teen’s life for optimal results. For example, Reclaiming Futures in Santa Cruz is taking preventative action with a partnership with Hands on Fatherhood, encouraging fathers and father-figures to create meaningful relationships with their kids. Also, Reclaiming Futures in Snohomish County saw success with its Promising Arts in Recovery program, which added a mentorship and creative arts component to treatment, resulting in substance-free teens who become productive members of their communities.

Gately shares some wonderful examples of successful family integration efforts around the country. Those, paired with Reclaiming Futures’ efforts to connect teens with support systems during and after exiting the juvenile justice system, are pioneering the way to a deeper systemic impact that can hopefully lead to communities and facilities committed to full family and community engagement.

In 2002, Connecticut’s contracted rehabilitation programs for juvenile offenders were discontinued, as they were not producing the results necessary to justify their costs.

The lack of the programs’ success was brought to light when a study by the Connecticut Policy and Economic Council, which assessed the return on taxpayer dollars from juvenile justice programs, revealed that recidivism rates among juveniles in the contracted programs were significantly higher than that of a matched sample with no programming. The funding for these programs was cut and reinvested elsewhere.

However, Connecticut has made a complete turnaround in recent years with a 40 percent decrease in arrests, calling for an examination of how they’ve made such staggering improvements.

A recent article in the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange emphasized the following as significant developments that have gotten the state this far:

• Connecticut changed the policy that processed 16- and 17-year-olds through adult court. Now they fall within the jurisdiction of the juvenile court system. While this “Raise the Age” reform was expected to double juvenile court intake, intakes are actually lower.
• Connecticut invested in juvenile probation officers and boasts some of the lowest officer/client ratios in the country. Officers are also afforded tremendous training in motivational interviewing, family engagement, adolescent development and more.
• A Connecticut-specific risk/needs assessment instrument was created, normed and validated, and is regularly updated and refined, as is the process the assessment tool is used with.
• An automated case plan helps focus officers and clients alike on specific goals and ensures appropriate treatment.
• Data systems were developed to carefully monitor outcomes.
• Connecticut, in subscribing to the Result-Based Accountability tenets, asks and answers quantitatively on a quarterly basis: How much is being done, how well is it being done and is anyone better off?

Note: Read the full article on JJIE for further details on Connecticut’s past and future plans to continue improving its juvenile justice system.

Below you’ll find a selection of the latest grants, jobs, webinars and events posted to our Opportunity Board. Please share the Reclaiming Futures Opportunity Board with your colleagues in the juvenile justice, adolescent substance abuse and teen mental health areas. It’s free to browse and post!
Webinars

• November 14: Exercising Judicial Leadership on the Deinstitutionalization of Status Offenders

Events

• National Federation of Families for Children’s Mental Health Annual Conference: Nov. 21-23
• 2015 National Mentoring Summit: Jan. 28-30

Grants

• 2014 Request for Proposals Reclaiming Futures: Ends Nov. 13
• New Opportunity for Jurisdictions Seeking to Improve Outcomes for Dual Status Youth: Ends Nov. 14

Juvenile Justice Reform

• Researcher: Juvenile justice Should Focus on Reform, Not Punishment (JournalStar.com)
  Punishment-based juvenile justice programs aren’t as effective at reforming delinquent youngsters as those that work to identify and mitigate factors that trigger their delinquent behavior, a renowned juvenile justice researcher said Wednesday.

• Jail Reform Coalition Seeks Justice System Change (The Californian)
  Louisiana native Helen Rucker, of Seaside, recalled with clarity her years living under "separate but equal" standards, also known as Jim Crow laws. Now, with black and Latino men incarcerated in droves in California, the system has simply created a new set of Jim Crow standards, she said.

• Pipeline to Prison: How the Juvenile Justice System Fails Special Education Students (JJIE)
  A special education student, Jennings qualified for extra help in school. Those services should have carried over to the justice system, but Jennings said he never even attended class while in jail. Now 20, he is still unable to read or write.
• New Nonprofit Will Aid Children in Adult Prisons (NonprofitQuarterly.org)
  According to the Equal Justice Initiative, nearly 10,000 children across the country have been sentenced as adults and are serving time in adult prisons. Pennsylvania, which has the highest number of incarcerated children serving life sentences and no minimum age to try a child as an adult, is now also home to the Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project (YSRP), a new nonprofit dedicated to aiding Philadelphia’s children who have been prosecuted and are carrying out their sentences in the adult criminal justice system.

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. It’s free to browse and post!

Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment and Mental Health

• Researchers Examine Rates of Suicidal Thoughts Among First-time Offenders (UTSA.edu)
  Researchers at UTSA and the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) are approaching data obtained from mental health screenings of offenders in the juvenile justice system in a new way, especially as it pertains to Hispanic youth.

• Help, Not Incarceration (The Epoch Times)
  The latest statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) estimate that more than 1.26 million mentally ill adults are detained in the country’s jails and prisons. Some cities are trying to change this statistic through programs that offer some of these nonviolent offenders a way out of incarceration, and a chance to improve their lives.

• Teen Outreach Program Helps Roanoke Teens Avoid Common Pitfalls of Adolescence (WDBJ7)
  The Teen Outreach Program matches teens with volunteer opportunities to help build self-esteem, and avoid problems like teen pregnancy and substance abuse.

• The Impact of Hurricane Sandy on Mental Health: What More We Could Have Done (Huffington Post)
  "Superstorm Sandy," as it was called, rained vast devastation along the northeastern coast of the United States. Mental health problems (as well as the abuse of alcohol and drugs) in the wake of a disaster are well known. This is because disaster, however generated, threatens to undermine both the physical and emotional underpinnings of a community. Perhaps some of the greatest knowledge about disaster mental health was sadly gained after the attacks of 9/11 (1).

Download the Request for Proposals - Reclaiming Futures New Sites PDF

Now is your opportunity to bring Reclaiming Futures to your community? A recent grant from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation will fund two new Reclaiming Futures sites, and the request for proposals is available here.

Racial disparity is a longstanding issue in the juvenile justice system. Since 2000, there have been countless studies reporting staggering differences in the treatment of juvenile offenders by race. Using comprehensive data from Kidsdata.org, The Chronicle of Social Change recently examined the racial breakdown of juvenile felony arrest rates across California from 1998 – 2012:

Key findings:

• In 2007, 50.9 per 1,000 African-American youths were arrested for juvenile felonies, compared to the Latino rate of 15.5 and the white rate of 10.4.
• In 2012, the juvenile felony arrest rate (per 1,000) for African American youths was 34.2, compared to the Latino rate of 9.1 and the white rate of 6.1.

While there is still a large gap between African-American, Latino and white youths, the 2012 statistics do show improvement in that the arrest rates for all youth have declined.

Using the interactive tools on Kidsdata.org, you can search results for each county in California.

Note: Every other week, The Chronicle of Social Change examines a new aspect of health and well being of children in California using information from Kidsdata.org.

Graph from kidsdata.org website

Juvenile Justice Reform

• Cultivating Better Futures for Troubled Bronx Youths (JJIE)
  They could have been locked up for offenses ranging from theft to assault to armed robbery. Instead, they planted vegetables at an urban farm, painted a mural to honor a community activist, staged a youth talent show, organized “safe parties” for teens at a local community center – away from the gunfire and stabbings outside.

• Focus on the Figures: Juvenile Felony Arrests, by Race (Chronicle of Social Change)
  Every other week, The Chronicle of Social Change will feature one key indicator from Kidsdata, which offers comprehensive data about the health and well being of children across California. In this installment, we examine the racial breakdown of juvenile felony arrest rate in California, perhaps the most diverse state in the union.

• 10-Year-Old Murder Defendant Shows Failure of U.S. Juvenile Justice System (Daily Beast)
  On Monday, prosecutors there charged a ten-year old boy as an adult for the murder of an elderly woman under the care of his grandfather—making him one of the youngest Americans ever to face a criminal homicide conviction.
• New Juvenile Court Judge Looks for “Balance” (Memphis Flyer)
  Citing the Tennessee Code Annotated, Title 37, Section 1, from which Juvenile Court derives its authority, Michael defined that role as one of providing “care and protection [and] wholesome moral, mental, and physical development’ of juveniles, while, “consistent with the protection of the public interest,” removing “from children committing delinquent acts the taint of criminality and the consequences of criminal behavior and substituting therefore a program of training, treatment, and rehabilitation.”

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. It’s free to browse and post!

Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment and Mental Health

• Link Between Underage Substance Use and Problems in Adulthood (SAMHSA)
  Children and adolescents who use alcohol and drugs at an early age are more likely to face problems with substance use as adults, according to a new SAMHSA Treatment Episode Data Set (TEDS) Report.

• Proposal Would Rewrite Utah Drug Laws in a Major Way (Fox 13)
  “This is not final, but the bottom line is we need to find ways to get more drug possession offenders out of prison into community treatment programs that are appropriate and will address their specific needs,” said Ron Gordon, the executive director of CCJJ.

• Indiana Project Screenings Show Need for More Mental Health Services in Youth Detention (IUSM Newsroom)
  Indiana is at the forefront of providing mental health screening and services to juvenile offenders, but more efforts are needed to improve the services provided to detained youths, according to Indiana University School of Medicine research findings published in the October issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

A recent report by William & Mary Assistant Professor Tracy Sohoni called “The Effect of Collateral Consequence Laws on State Rates of Returns to Prisons” examined whether collateral consequence laws effectively prevent crime or simply make it more difficult for past offenders to successfully re-enter society.

Collateral consequence laws are legal sanctions and restrictions imposed upon people because of their criminal record, and Tracy Sohoni believes they are doing more harm than good.

The report states about 70,000 people are released from prisons annually and roughly two-thirds are rearrested within three years of release. Sohoni hypothesizes that this is due to the restrictions brought on by the laws, which can make it difficult for past offenders to get welfare, vote, obtain a drivers license, and find stable housing and employment.

“Ex-convicts need structural opportunities. They need jobs,” Sohoni said. “A lot of offenders come out and want to live a productive life but a lot of them find the opportunities just aren’t there.”

The research did not find statically significant relationships between collateral consequence laws and state returns to prison, but in specific cases where more data was available, Sohoni did link increases in rates of returns to prison to the restriction in question. Such was the case with her evaluation of restricted access to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).

The report highlights that collateral consequence laws have often been called “invisible punishments” because they aren’t broadly publicized or well known—something that is beginning to change. In 2012, Congress directed the National Institute of Justice to collect and study collateral consequences in all U.S. jurisdictions, and the ABA Criminal Justice Section was appointed to do the necessary research and analysis to create a new online database.

Sohoni, as reported by the Chicago Bureau, acknowledged that the lack of wide data at this time and other factors make it impossible to draw absolute conclusions on the direct impact these laws have. However, the results can still serve as support for those advocating for “less severe punishments, a rollback of the harsh laws from 20 and 30 years ago and the relaxation of laws that haunt inmates after release, often precluding them from re-entering society in any meaningful way.”