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I’m heading to the airport … along with representatives from every Reclaiming Futures community. We’re meeting in New Orleans (see photo at left) this week for our bi-annual Leadership Institute. 
These meetings mark times for both reflection and growth. Anyone who’s been part of the initiative from the beginning can’t help but burst with pride to see what’s been sustained; challenged to see the losses; and deeply humbled by how much remains to be done.
 
But Reclaiming Futures is not only still here, we’re still growing. We’re now an unprecedented size -- 23 communities representing 15 states and tribes, and excited to welcome three new sites to the RF family this fall.
 
Our Leadership Institute will feature two keynote speakers who will surely inspire and fuel us for the significant challenges and opportunities ahead: Marian Wright Edelman and Shay Bilchik. Both are visionaries and accomplished change agents by any measure. 

[The following post is courtesy of Ashley Nellis, Ph.D., Research Analyst at The Sentencing Project. -Ed.]
 
Despite the federal mandate to address it, minority overrepresentation has persisted in nearly every state’s juvenile justice system for decades. Racial and ethnic disparities often mount as youth move through the system, from referral to secure confinement.  To demonstrate, note that African American youth represent 15% of the general population, yet they represent 28% of youth arrests, nearly 40% of those in juvenile residential placement, and as much as 58% of those entering adult prison.[1]

If it were up to you, what would you have the Obama Administration do in its next 100 days to help teens in the juvenile justice system struggling with alcohol and drug issues? 
You can submit your answers, using stories (100 words or less), pictures, and videos (no more than 2 minutes), to the Annie E. Casey Foundation's "100 Days/100 Voices" campaign beginning April 30th. (Follow the link for info on how to participate.)
While the Casey Foundation's campaign has a broader focus, this is your chance to speak out on behalf of kids in the justice system caught in the cycle of drugs, alcohol, and crime -- and their families. 

Duke University has just launched a great website that allows policymakers and others to get information about teen alcohol and drug use in North Carolina.  It pulls from multiple public information sources about teen arrests for possession by drug, emergency room visits, and much more. County data can be compared to state data, data can be examined by county on a map of North Carolina ... and that's just the start.
The amount of information and possible permutations to explore on the Substance Abuse Among North Carolina Adolescents site are both impressive. Every state should have a tool like this.
Know of others? Let me know!
UPDATE: I've been informed that Duke created the website in partnership with the Center for Youth, Family, Community Partnerships at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, with a grant from the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT).Additional partners are listed on the splash page.

We in the youth services field should never let our desire to be "evidence-based" turn us into a "faith-based" movement. When we're searching for the most effective ways to help young people avoid trouble with drugs and stay out of the justice system, we should be agnostics — even the most attractive new answer should never stop us from asking important questions.

Below are four lessons in reforming the juvenile justice system that I gleaned from a recent interview with Bart Lubow, Director of the Programs for High Risk Youth at the Annie E. Casey Foundation (pictured below). He’s best known for his pioneering work leading the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI), which helps jurisdictions safely reduce unnecessary reliance on juvenile  detention and stimulate other reforms, notably reducing disproportionate minority confinement. --Ed.


Lesson #1: Be Specific About What You’re Changing
"The biggest reason why system reform efforts fail is that they don’t provide system players with an alternative set of policies and programs. Instead, they provide a lot of vague talk, such as, 'We’ve gotta collaborate,' or 'We’ve got to be different,' etc.  Without providing the guts of the new, re-engineered system, the status quo prevails. Though people are often critical of initiatives that are relatively prescriptive in terms of laying out the elements of the system reform, it’s a naïve proposition to expect the status quo to be overcome without a lot of operational detail. There can be lots of room for local adaptation, but within a fairly prescriptive framework."

Imagine: what if New York's Twin Towers had been filled with teens 15-19 years old? And what if they fell not once, but every year?

That horrific scenario -- minus the World Trade Center -- may be happening already.

Whoa. Here's news from Changing the Court that drug courts are being challenged in Maryland on the basis that they're unconstitutional.

Thanks to Join Together, we've got information about two new grants available from the federal Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT): 

1. Family-Centered Substance Abuse Treatment Grants - These focus on treating adolescents in a holistic way. They are designed to "provide substance-abuse services to adolescents, their families/primary caregivers and older transition-age youth and where appropriate, any significant others/mentors or other appropriate adults." Grantees will be trained in and implement the Adolescent Community Reinforcement Approach (A-CRA) and the Assertive Continuing Care (ACC) protocol. Deadline April 24th.
2. Even more funds are available for the Offender Reentry Program grants, which seek to "expand and/or enhance substance abuse treatment and related recovery and reentry services to sentenced juvenile and adult offenders returning to the community from incarceration for criminal/juvenile offenses." Deadline May 21st.