Juvenile Justice Reform

• New National Poll: Strong Support for Youth Rehabilitation Over Incarceration
  Poll highlights critical and timely information on youth in the justice system, showing overwhelming public support for treatment and rehabilitation of youth over incarceration and automatic prosecution in adult criminal court. This survey, a sample of 1,000 American adults, was commissioned by the Campaign for Youth Justice.
• Sustainability: Impact Beyond Grant Programs
  These slides and guides from Pennsylvania State University are very helpful for juvenile justice programs and prevention work. (Hat tip to Paul Savery)
• Feds Tell California Marijuana Dispensaries to Shut Down
  U.S. attorneys say they will prosecute landlords who rent space to operators of medical marijuana dispensaries. The attorneys said they suspect these dispensaries of using the state’s medical marijuana law to profit from large-scale drug sales.

 
What a Long Way We've Come
Almost exactly three years ago, I was asked if I would be interested in launching, writing, and editing a blog for Reclaiming Futures, focused on juvenile justice reform and adolescent substance abuse treatment.
My answer then: Would I ever!
Seven hundred and eighty-six posts later -- many authored by some of the leading experts in the field -- it's time for me to lay my figurative pen down. (Fortunately, I know I'm leaving the blog in very good hands; you can count on Reclaiming Futures to remain a go-to source for information in the fields of juvenile justice and adolescent substance abuse treatment.)
When I began, hardly anyone else was using blogging or social media to talk about juvenile justice or adolescent treatment. To say that's changed is an understatement. There's been a virtual explosion of skilled and thoughtful people disseminating news, opinion, new research, and best practices (in juvenile justice, anyway; teen treatment has a ways to go).
I think that's great. But it's not enough.

“They can’t do that!”
This quickly became my mantra when I started as a juvenile defender nearly a year ago.
My colleagues heard it so often they joked about recording me and just playing it back while I was observing court proceedings so that I wouldn’t have to speak. Unfamiliar with the differences between how the criminal justice system treats juvenile and adult offenders, I was clearly unprepared for some of the things I witnessed when I first arrived in juvenile court.
You see, juvenile courts are quasi-criminal, meaning many of the aspects I expected to see in a criminal court are present, but the result of juvenile delinquency proceedings is supposed to be more rehabilitative than punitive, and “in the best interest of the child.”
What I learned this to mean is that prosecutors, judges, and a state’sdepartment of juvenile justice have much more latitude to make recommendations for a child’s “best interests.”  Because of this latitude, I have actually heard a judge say, “Don’t even think about requesting bond until you tell us where the weapon is,” at a detention hearing.
What happened to the presumption of innocence, or the right to avoid self-incrimination?  Decidedly, this judge believed it to be in the child’s best interest to explain what had happened, even if doing so would implicate the child’s own involvement.

I'm from a small town in Missouri. It all started when I was 13. I started rebelling, and I ended up stealing my dad's car.
I then got put in juvenile. Two weeks after being on probation for that, I stole another car... I was then placed in a treatment center which did nothing for me.
After I got released from there, I was still on probation. I then started smoking pot, drinking, fighting, and skipping school. So I continuously and gradually got into more trouble.
My juvenile officer had me do the "Scared Straight" program, which also didn't work at all. [The inmates] only made me mad by yelling in my face and telling me that if I didn't stop, I'd be where they were. The more everyone tried to tell me what to do, the more I felt I had to rebel.... I didn't understand why I wouldn't listen to them then, because I didn't want to be locked up, but I definitely didn't want everyone telling me what to do. I thought I was grown... But I know now that I wasn't.
My judge gave me too many chances. Finally, the last time I was in there, she placed me in Division of Youth Services custody. I no longer had a probation officer. I had a service coordinator. I was placed in juvenile [detention] until an opening at a girl's facility was open. A grand total of 7 months.
From there, I went to a girls' group in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. I could not leave there till I completed the program. You had to start as a level 1 and earn your level 4, which was really a blessing in disguise. Ever since my first day there, my life has not been the same.

• Why Are All the Black Kids in Special Ed?
  Minority students (and especially Black students) are disproportionately diagnosed with disabilities and placed in special education or lowest-level courses. The Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia makes the case for seeking a second opinion.
• Lasting Drop in Smoking, Delinquency, Drug Use
  Study shows that tenth-graders in towns using Communities That Care, a prevention system developed by University of Washington researchers, are less likely to have tried drinking or smoking compared with teens living in towns that had not adopted the system. Delinquent behavior, including stealing, vandalism and physical fights, decreased too.
• Kids-for-Cash Sentencing Set for November 4
  Robert J. Powell, the former co-owner of two juvenile detention centers in Pennsylvania who testified he paid kickbacks to two judges, may serve 21 to 27 months in prison for failing to report a felony and abetting tax evasion.

NOTE: Two of the co-authors of this post, Carol A. Schubert M.P.H., and Edward P. Mulvey, Ph.D., will be presenting on other aspects of their research on youth in the juvenile justice system at the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) juvenile justice conference next week.

The general adolescent population is estimated to have a rate of 9% to 21% in occurrence of diagnosable psychiatric disorders. In comparison, researchers have established that the juvenile offender population has a disproportionately high rate of mental health problems, with estimates suggesting it is as high as 50% to 70%. Additionally, a majority of the diagnosable youth in the juvenile system have a co-occurring substance-use disorder.
Many initiatives dealing with mental health problems in juvenile offenders have treated them as a criminogenic risk factor; positing that, if these problems are addressed, youth’s risk for repeat offenses will decrease and their involvement in pro-social activity will increase. It is important that mental health problems be addressed for these youth,  but we require a better understanding of the role mental health problems play for offending to better inform program development.
Demonstrations that youth with mental health problems have an increased risk for criminal involvement proves an association, but not a definite cause or explanation about the means by which mental disorders elevate criminal risk. It is possible that there is a deeper root cause in the relationship between the two and that having a better understanding of this association can help determine the most effective treatment options.
There is not much data regarding whether and/or how mental health problems relate to continued offending or adjustment problems in adolescent offenders. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship among certain mental health problems (affective, anxiety, ADHD, and substance use disorders), criminogenic risk, and outcomes (such as re-arrest) in a sample of serious adolescent offenders.
This investigation used data from a longitudinal study of serious adolescent offenders (The Pathways to Desistance Study). The sample of serious adolescent offenders included 949 individuals (84% male; 78% minority) with a mean age sixteen. 57.7% of the sample met the criteria for at least one of the assessed MPHs. The study investigated three questions:

If you're lucky enough to attend the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's (OJJDP) conference on juvenlie justice in Maryland next week, October 12-14, 2011, then you might just be lucky enough to win a free iPad.
Make sure you stop by the Reclaiming Futures booth (#209) in the exhibition hall at the conference, where we'll be showing off our blog (ahem) and answering your questions about Reclaiming Futures. We'll be there:
Tues 10/11 - 10/11 1pm-6pm
Wed 10/12  - 7:30am-6pm
Thur 10/13   - 7:30am-6pm
Leave your business card with us to subscribe to our e-newsletter -- (and what the heck - you may as well sign up all your co-workers and friends, if they're willing) -- and you'll be entered in a drawing to win a free iPad! (If you're already a subscriber, your entry will still count in the drawing.)
 
Photo: mikepetrucci under Creative Commons license/edits Benjamin Chambers

The complete program/agenda for the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention's 2011 conference is now available (just follow the link).  For those of you who can attend in person in Maryland next week, it looks like a fantastic, jam-packed event. (Be sure to pass on what you learn to those of us who can't go!)
The main conference runs October 12-14, 2011. The agenda's enormous, and I haven't had time to read it thoroughly yet, so what follows are just a few things that jumped out at me that you might want to catch (remember, all sessions are first-come, first-serve!). Only in a few cases have I reproduced the session description - for those you're interested in, see the full program (use the "find" function to find things quickly).
NOTE: I've also hyperlinked individuals who have written blog posts or webinars for Reclaiming Futures - click through to learn more about each one.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Development of the Adolescent Brain: These Are Not Miniature Adults
Randy Muck, Advocates for Youth and Family Behavioral Health Treatment, LLC
Moderator: Gwendolyn Williams, OJJDP
Serious Adolescent Offenders Moving Into Adulthood: Life events and the Role of Deterrence
Edward P. Mulvey, Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
Thomas Loughran, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Maryland
Joseph J. Cocozza, National Center for Mental Health and Juvenile Justice
Moderator/Presenter: Carol A. Schubert, Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine

Reclaiming Futures will be hosting an all-day workshop on October 10, 2011 at the the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) pre-conference next week, the Monday before the full juvenile justice conference gets underway. 
 
Best of all - we'll be livecasting it: you can watch it right here on our blog. The workshop is called, "Reclaiming Futures and Juvenile Drug Courts." It kicks off at 8:30 am EST, and finished up at 4:45 pm EST.
 
To sit in, tune in on Monday, October 10, right here at www.reclaimingfutures.org.
 
At the end of the day, participants will be able to:
•    Define and describe the increasing challenge of substance abuse (and other behavioral health issues) for juvenile offenders.
•    Define and describe Reclaiming Futures as a standard of care to address this challenge.
•    Begin the process of assessing readiness and preparing to retool local juvenile justice responses to substance abuse and delinquency.
•    Take steps to assess community recovery capital and increase direct community engagement options at the local level.  
Can't tune in for the whole thing? Here's our agenda:

Imagine a group of young girls who suffer from depression, severe neglect, sexual and physical abuse and are in the care of a government agency. 
Now imagine that these girls’ caretakers have little or no experience working with children, little or no familiarity with the medical and mental health needs of emotionally and physically battered girls, little or no support for formalized training on child development and no supervision by professionals with child-specific experience either. Then consider extremely limited resources for the care, health services and education of these particularly vulnerable and needy children. 
This scenario sounds like it would lead straight to public calls for vastly improved child protection and investigations into government agencies’ poor management and improper use of taxpayers’ dollars. Unfortunately, it accurately describes legislation that was rushed through by the 2011 Florida Legislature (Senate Bill 2112) and signed into law.