Juvenile Justice Reform

This week, I’m excited to report on an uplifting and innovative program in New York City designed to give justice-involved teens a second chance. The program, Stargate Theatre Company, was recently featured on NationSwell.com, so we got in touch with its co-designer, Evan Elkin. Mr. Elkin has extensive experience in juvenile justice and previously served as the director of the Department of Planning and Government Innovation at the Vera Institute of Justice.
On the Stargate Theatre Company, Mr. Elkin writes:

With the rapid advancement of reforms in juvenile justice systems across the United States has come an expanded understanding of what court-involved young people need in order to succeed. Some have described the past decade of juvenile justice reform as a gradual “paradigm shift” away from a largely punitive philosophy to one that places greater emphasis on the innate ability of youth to turn their lives around with the help of their communities and families.
This emerging new sensibility which the researcher Jeffrey Butts has termed “positive youth justice” has challenged long held assumptions about the role of incarceration in changing behavior, about how resiliency and coping with chronic trauma must be considered, how privilege and access to opportunity fit into the picture.
The Stargate Theatre Company is an example of this new paradigm in action through a project I had the privilege of co-designing with NYC’s Manhattan Theatre Club. Stargate is simultaneously a paid job, a work readiness training, a literacy program, a therapeutic experience and, of course, a theatre program for court-involved youth. Stargate begins its second season this summer.

Watch the video from NationSwell.com for more on the Stargate Theatre Company: 

For years, the capacity to detain delinquent juveniles – from 12 to 23 years of age – has been expanded in the Netherlands. However, the tide is changing. In 2007, the Netherlands had 16 active Juvenile Justice Detention Institute (JJI) sites for a population of 16 million. Today, there are just 11 JJI sites in operation and this number will drop further in the next few years.

More important than the number of sites are the number of detention slots: this number decreased from 1,300 in 2007 to 800 today. The decline is expected to continue to just 635 in 2017. One reason for this change may be the tendency for crime rates among youth to drop in the past few years. Moreover, juvenile judges increasingly prefer to impose alternative sanctions like community work assignments and referral to mandated treatment programs.

At the same time, Dutch juvenile detention institutes are reinventing themselves. A major group working on this process is Multidimensional Family Therapy (MDFT) Academy, based in Oegstgeest, the Netherlands. At the recent Linking Systemic Practice and Systemic Research conference in Heidelberg, Germany, Henk Rigter and Kees Mos from MDFT Academy outlined the steps taken by JJIs to accept the family of detainees as being important for achieving good detention and treatment outcomes.

The key message for JJI professionals – guards, social workers running groups of detained youth, psychiatrists and psychologists doing assessments and making treatment decisions, and so on – is to work in a family-friendly way, accepting that family involvement helps the youth to change his or her ways. In what eventually will be a national JJI-staff training program, carried out by MDFT Academy in collaboration with the Academic Workplace Forensic Care for Youth, JJI professionals are tought to motivate family members, win their trust, to establish alliances with family members, to inform them regularly, and to invite parents to key JJI meetings where it is decided how their son or daughter is going to be treated. In every step, the parent is acknowledged. Parents are encouraged to join evenings where special themes are being discussed or when their kids prepare meals or sit together to watch movies.

In this panorama of changing interactions between the institute and family members, JJI’s offer the additional advantage of family (systemic) treatment intended to improve the behavior of the youth, family interactions, and work and school prospects for the youth upon release. This treatment is to be continued on an outpatient basis for a few months after release. One such treatment program is Multidimensional Family Therapy (MDFT). The therapist uses every feasible moment (parents’ visits, furloughs) to hold sessions and increase a youth’s motivation to change. The positive Dutch experience with MDFT matches the outcomes of U.S. trials of MDFT, carried out by the Miami developers of this treatment program (H. Liddle; G. Dakof), as regards to Juvenile Drug Courts and Detention to Community approaches.

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) is seeking applicants for a newly released funding opportunity: the FY2014 Second Chance Act Two-Phase Juvenile Reentry Demonstration Program: Planning and Implementation.

This two-phase grant program will provide up to $750,000 to help state and local governments, as well as federally recognized Indian tribes, plan and implement programs or strategies that achieve the following:

• Support the successful reentry of youth released from confinement.
• Reflect an enhanced emphasis on the adoption, integration, and effective implementation of practices that research has demonstrated improves juvenile reentry outcomes.

Successful applicants will be required to complete two phases of work: a project-planning phase—which must receive OJJDP approval—and a project-implementation phase. The initial award period will be 24 months, with up to six months to complete the planning process.

During the fiscal year, OJJDP may make as many as 15 awards under this program. As opposed to previous fiscal years, applicants will apply for a single award that includes both the planning phase and the implementation phase with specific deliverables required during each.

Juvenile Justice Reform

• Juvenile Justice in Illinois: A Data Snapshot [PDF] (Chicago Youth Justice Data Project)
  Nationally, there’s been a steady decrease in the rate of violent crime committed by juveniles over the past fifteen years.
• Webinar | Using Social Impact Bonds to Improve Juvenile Justice Outcomes (NJJN.org) 
  Find out what has been learned about social impact bonds and how they should be structured for best results in our May 27, 2014 webinar, "Using Social Impact Bonds to Improve Juvenile Justice Outcomes," presented by John Roman, Ph.D., a national expert on social impact bonds.
• Removing Youth From the Adult Criminal Justice System: A Win-Win Situation (NCCD.org)
  Incarcerating youth in adult jails and prisons is the most expensive option for the juvenile justice system and unfailingly produces the worst results.
• Local Juvenile Probation GED Program Shows Higher Success Rate (WacoTrib.com)
  McLennan County students who stay at the Bill Logue Juvenile Justice Center for longer than 90 days have a higher chance of graduating with a GED or earning high school credit than the majority of incarcerated students across the country, according to a Southern Education Foundation report.

A moving video on the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange tells the story of a former justice-involved teen. Now a youth justice advocate at the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, Xavier McElrath-Bey had been arrested 19 times by the time he was 13 years old. He grew up in an impoverished area in the South Side of Chicago that was known for its violence, crime, and drugs. His stepfather was abusive, his mother suffered from depression and schizophrenia, and his family was unable to afford basic necessities including gas, electricity and even food, and they were often evicted and forced to move.
Over 250,000 youth are being charged as adults every year. Like Xavier, these are children that have the odds stacked against them to begin with. Most of these youth experience trauma, endure physical abuse, and come from backgrounds with poor education and little opportunity for employment. In addition, these children are disproportionately Latinos and African Americans.
Now an advocate to reform the juvenile justice system, Xavier hopes that through sharing his story, he’ll also change people’s perceptions of formerly incarcerated youth and help them understand that these kids have great potential for positive change.

Juvenile Justice Reform

• Local Teens Work to Restore History (KTSM.com)
  Kids from El Paso gathered to restore the Trinity Community Center as a part of Global Youth Service Day.
• Efforts Underway to Boost Low Juvenile Expungement Numbers (JJIE.org)
  Thousands of young adults in Cook County are missing out on getting a clean start in life by failing to take advantage of the state’s liberal expungement laws for individuals who’ve committed crimes as a juvenile.
• Report Says Prosecution of Minors as Adults Has Poor Outcomes (The Chicago Bureau)
  An independent advocacy non-profit has concluded that a piece of legislation dating to 1982 and dubbed the “automatic transfer law,” which compels children ages of 15 or 16 charged with certain felony offenses to be charged as an adult, has significantly problematic consequences that go beyond discouraging rehabilitation and positive development of those sentenced.
• Models for Juvenile Justice Schools (JJIE.org)
  When 17-year-old Moriah Barrett first entered Camp Scott, a juvenile detention facility in Los Angeles County, Calif., she was already far behind in school credits in completing the 11th grade. Because of her charges, she would be spending the next five months of her life at the all-girls’ facility — finishing high school wasn’t on her mind.
• The Revolving Door: Wyoming Reliance on Jails for Mental Health Services Comes With Consequences (Trib.com)
  In Wyoming as well as around the country, jails and prisons operate as de facto mental health facilities, treating a disproportionately high number of offenders with mental illnesses, substance abuse issues and often both.

Focal Point magazine, produced by the Pathways Research and Training Center (RTC) at Portland State University, recently published a collaborative article [PDF] between current and former Reclaiming Futures staff and partners examining how the Reclaiming Futures model saves money, reduces recidivism and improves abstinence from drug and alcohol abuse.
The article’s introduction is included below:

Why focus on the juvenile justice system? Despite the fact that most juvenile justice-involved young people are not being treated for substance abuse and mental health needs, the juvenile justice system is still the single largest referral source for adolescent treatment and this system is where young people in trouble often first come to our attention. Young people involved in the juvenile justice system often are challenged with substance use issues.
Nationally, about half of young people in the juvenile justice system have drug related problems. In fact, four of five young people in the juvenile justice system are under the influence of alcohol or drugs while breaking the law; test positive for drugs; are arrested for committing an alcohol or drug offense; admit having substance abuse and addiction problems; or share some combination of these characteristics.
Additionally, many young people in the juvenile justice system have a co-occurring disorder (both substance abuse and mental health). Yet in spite of research that shows treatment helps reduce recidivism and saves money, juvenile courts usually are not set up to detect and treat substance abuse or to provide mental health and other important services.
Instead, most of the young people in the juvenile justice system who need treatment for drugs, alcohol, and mental health problems are not getting it. Fewer than one in twelve young people who need such supports actually receive treatment of any kind. For those who receive treatment, less than half are retained for 90 days as recommended by research. Many communities are not using evidence-based treatments that have been tested in the field for many years.
Young people need different care than adults: care that addresses adolescent development and brain science, and that utilizes support from families and community. Too many juvenile courts mirror a more punitive approach appropriate to adult criminal court rather than the rehabilitative civil court envisioned when the juvenile court was first established in the late nineteeth century.

The good news is that there's already a solution to the issues outlined above: Reclaiming Futures! We know from our evaluations that the Reclaiming Futures model helps teens overcome the cycle of drugs, alcohol and crime by addressing their co-occurring needs. Again from the article, "The Reclaiming Futures JTDC model has potential to increase drug and alcohol abstinence, reduce young people’s illegal activity, and reduce the cost of crime to society." 
Learn more about the Reclaiming Futures model here >>
For the rest of the article, jump to page 18 in the linked PDF for our Reclaiming Futures article, or scroll through the whole magazine for more great articles about co-occurring substance abuse and mental health issues facing teens and young adults.

Juvenile Justice Reform

• PACE Embracing the Needs of Girls, Looks to Expand Beyond Florida (JJIE.org)
  PACE Center for Girls was called "the most effective program in the nation for keeping adolescent girls out of the juvenile justice system” by the Annie E. Casey Foundation in its 2008 Kids Count report.
• Inside Calif. Juvenile Hall, Rare Glimpse at Solitary Confinement Cells (The Center for Investigative Reporting)
  Although solitary confinement for extended periods is considered one of the most psychologically damaging forms of punishment – particularly for teenagers – no one knows how many juveniles are held alone in cells in California.
• Juvenile Justice System Not Meeting Educational Needs, Report Says (Education Week)
  Many of the teenagers who enter juvenile-justice systems with anger problems, learning disabilities, and academic challenges receive little or no special help for those issues, and consequently fall further behind in school, a report released Thursday concludes.

As we reported earlier in April, James Bell, founding Executive Director of the W. Haywood Burns Institute presented at the Portland State University School of Social Work’s annual Charles Shireman Memorial Lecture on April 17, 2014.
His presentation, “Reclaiming Childhood,” was a call to action for communities to begin looking at child well-being as the preferred child safety strategy. Mr. Bell urged the audience to remember that the ills of humanity are best healed by more humanity. Additional key points made by Mr. Bell include:
Moving Beyond Trauma Informed
There is a need for systems to move beyond trauma informed and become trauma responsive. Many service providers are trauma informed, but becoming trauma responsive would help improve safety, trust and collaboration.
Shifting Service Paradigms
When the risk to public safety is low, a youth’s need for services should not lead to their secure confinement. Focus instead on child wellbeing as a child safety strategy means assessing life outcomes as the measure of success. One strategy to move toward this paradigm shift would be for the juvenile justice system to refuse to accept referrals from schools and/or mental health providers and hold those systems accountable for finding appropriate responses for youth with a low risk to public safety, but a high need for services.
A big thank you to Mr. Bell for all of his great work in juvenile justice reform.

Juvenile Justice Reform

• Study Looks at Kids Who Do Time For Offenses That Aren’t Crimes (The Washington Post)
  The Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) has an interesting report out on the detainment and incarceration of juveniles for “status offenses,” or offenses that wouldn’t be crimes if the juveniles were adults.
• Florida Law, Used in Jacksonville, 'Violates International Human Rights Obligations,' Rights Group Declares (The Florida Times-Union)
  Nearly 40 percent of juveniles prosecuted as adults in Florida in the past five years were charged with property crimes rather than violent offenses, according to a report released Thursday by the international rights group Human Rights Watch.
• A House Divided No More: Common Cause for Juvenile Justice Advocates, Victim Advocates, and Communities (NJJN.org)
  Our juvenile justice system fails everyone—it fails youth because it rarely holds them accountable with age-appropriate responses known to be effective at changing behavior, and it fails to provide victims of crime with adequate support services that can help them return to healthy, productive lives.
• Fed Gov’t Sues Ohio Juvenile System (Sandusky Register)
  The U.S. Department of Justice and Ohio officials have reached an agreement that will reduce the amount of time spent in isolation by young people in state juvenile correctional facilities.