Juvenile Justice Reform

The Reclaiming Futures blog turns one year old today!
To celebrate a great first year of sharing news, conversation, and resources related to juvenile justice reform, adolescent substance abuse, and (of course) Reclaiming Futures, I've pulled together a list of our top 10 most popular stories.
Today, I'll post five of them, in reverse order of popularity:
#10. Six Tips for Engaging Families in Juvenile Justice System Reform and Advocacy - Involving families is always a struggle for juvenile justice systems. So in this post, Grace Bauer, Field Organizer for the Campaign for Youth Justice, tells you how you can get it done. 

On October 1, 2009,the Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center launched the National Reentry Resource Center—an unprecedented initiative to advance the safe and successful return of individuals from correctional facilities to their communities.
 
What is the CSG Justice Center?

The CSG Justice Center is a national nonprofit organization that serves policymakers at the local, state, and federal levels from all branches of government. It provides practical, nonpartisan advice and consensus-driven strategies--informed by available evidence--to increase public safety and strengthen communities.
 
The National Reentry Resource Center will continue the CSG Justice Center's commitment to collaboration and will draw on the experience and expertise of its many valued partner organizations, as well as its own work in the field. Among CSG's past contributions is the 2005 landmark report of its Reentry Policy Council—the result of work by 100 of the most respected workforce, health, housing, public safety, family, community, and victim experts in the country.

Juvenile Justice Reform Stories

• Wyoming begins making progress on juvenile justice reform.
• Reclaiming Futures in action: a teen mom in our site in Dayton, Ohio, gets off drugs and alcohol and sets her sights on a brighter future. (Don't miss this earlier post on the juvenile drug court there.)
• A U.K. study recommends widespread use of restorative justice practices with juvenile offenders to cut recidivism rates, based on success seen in Northern Ireland.
• A Florida program is fast-tracking the court cases of teens who reoffend most often, mirroring some "frequent flyer" programs that have been tried out for adult chronic offenders in other cities. No mention in the article of alcohol and drug treatment, mental health treatment, or other services for teens in the program. (Hat tip to @justicestudies.)

What is "Anti-Oppressive Practice"?

It's an emerging framework to advance attention to diversity and social justice in the way community systems and services operate.
In this free webinar, Dr. Laura Nissen and Dr. Ann Curry-Stevens will explain the evolution of cultural competence frameworks and their impact on the fields of substance abuse treatment, justice and others.
The presenters will identify how concepts of oppression, privilege and disparities impact the way in which services are constructed and successes are measured. And finally, the presenters will identify selected tools to increase anti-oppressive practice specific to the Reclaiming Futures initiative.

New federal funding has been awarded to expand the Reclaiming Futures model into three more juvenile drug courts across the country over the next four years.
The nearly $3.7 million federal investment was announced by The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). RWJF is providing approximately $1 million in additional technical assistance to implement the Reclaiming Futures model.

[Full disclosure: I used to work for Multnomah County’s Department of Community Justice (DCJ), where the study Jason writes about below was done. I'd be very interested in posting about data and studies done on youth in the juvenile justice system in other jurisdictions. --Ed.]

Diverting Youth with Low-Level Offenses Reduced Crime

New research out of Multnomah County’s Department of Community Justice (DCJ) shows that most young people who are kept out of the formal juvenile justice system do not reoffend. Among 271 young people, nearly eight out of ten who received no formal supervision did not reoffend within a year.
 
Of this group, two years out, 75 percent had not been referred by police or the district attorney for a criminal offense. When they did reoffend, it was for less serious offenses most of the time.  

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.

[This topic of this column is so critical to reform of the juvenile justice system, we've reprinted it in its entirety from the Criminal Justice blog of Change.org with their kind permission. It originally appeared under the title, "Fixing the Information Mismatch in Juvenile Justice." --Ed.]
In 2007. I met a soft-spoken young man whom we will call “Ivan.” Almost everyday, he wore a large sweatshirt with cats and dogs on it. When I asked him if he liked animals, his face lit up and he told me that his dream was to become a veterinarian. He really loved taking care of animals, he said, and he was especially good with dogs. 
I knew Ivan because he was in the Bronx Family Court on a delinquency proceeding for allegedly throwing water on his teacher’s laptop at school. Ivan said it was an accident, although his teacher didn’t think so.
 
While awaiting a finding in his case, Ivan was successfully attending Saturday community service events, he was going to his counseling appointments, and he was present at school when his probation officer checked on him. Unfortunately, Ivan’s mom didn’t quite have her act together, so Ivan would find himself breaking up fights between her and her boyfriend, or taking care of her when she was too high to do it herself. Eventually, the court recognized that Ivan’s mom was not in a position to mother him as required by law. Without other family members or friends to take him in, Ivan was put into a juvenile jail to await the finding in his case.

Ever wonder what juvenile justice reform and adolescent substance abuse treatment will look like in 2014?
We do.
That's why a group of Reclaiming Futures' leaders and allies took time out a couple of weeks ago to ponder how things would look in the juvenile justice system, the adolescent treatment system, within Reclaiming Futures, and in the world at large five years from now (follow the link for more info).  Here's a fun, 88-second video recapping our meeting:

What Will Reclaiming Futures Look Like in 2014?

No one knows, of course, not for certain. But a group of people passionately interested in juvenile justice reform and improving adolescent substance abuse treatment -- many of whom were involved in the creation and implementation of Reclaiming Futures -- met recently in Washington, D.C. to make some educated guesses about what's in store.
They also offered their hopes and opinions about what it should look like in five years.