Juvenile Treatment Drug Court

An estimated 130 young people arrested each year in Ventura County, California, are diagnosed with substance abuse or co-occurring mental illness problems. But there is good news for these teens and their families.
Ventura County's juvenile drug court is turning young lives around with the help of Reclaiming Futures.
Our team recently worked with "JM" to access appropriate treatment and connect to a support system beyond treatment.   

Consistent and substantial evidence exists that supports the relationship between substance abuse and criminal behaviors in youth.[1] Youthful offenders demonstrate elevated rates of substance abuse in comparison to non-offending youth. [2] Substance abuse often increases recidivism and reflects a deeper involvement in the juvenile justice system.[3] Drug and alcohol use also increases the likelihood that a youthful offender will have prolonged interaction with the juvenile justice system. [4] In addition, substance abuse produces antisocial behavior in youth.[5] Severe substance abuse is associated with increased rates of offending and more serious offenses.[6] Furthermore, the younger the child is at the onset of substance use usually reflects greater probabilities for severe and chronic offending.[7]
For example, in 2010, the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission found that twenty-five percent of all the juveniles referred were “frequent drug users.”[8] In 2009, forty-seven percent of children committed to the Texas Youth Commission were chemically dependent.[9] Less than half of these chemically dependent children received any type of substance abuse treatment. [10] The development of effective substance abuse treatment programs for juvenile offenders should be considered a “vital component” for overall rehabilitation efforts.[11]

Juvenile Justice Reform

• Teens Get a Second Chance (SouthBendTribune.com)
  It is not mission impossible for the Juvenile Justice Center teens enrolled in the first year "Mission Possible" program at the South Bend Kroc Center. According to the Childrens and Youth Ministries Manager Jacqueline Davis, the mission is to try to give struggling teens a new direction.
• Federal Grant to Help Study Minorities in Juvenile Justice (WyandotteDailyNews.com)
  U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom reported that a $400,000 federal grant to the Kansas Juvenile Justice Authority will help evaluate disproportionate minority contact in the juvenile justice system.
• ROCA Selected for New Social Investment Program (Chelsea Record)
  Massachusetts will be the first state to implement the ‘pay for success’ model of social financing through a Juvenile Justice contract and ROCA of Chelsea will help lead the effort with two Social Innovation Financing (SIF) contracted partners.
• New Texas Juvenile Justice Priorities Could be in Jeopardy (PublicNewsService.org)
  Recent improvements to the long-troubled juvenile justice system in Texas are already in jeopardy, if a just-released survey of officials in 73 county youth probation departments is any indication.
• Feds: Mississippi County Runs 'School-to-Prison Pipeline' (CNN.com)
  Officials in Lauderdale County, Mississippi, have operated "a school-to-prison pipeline" that violates the constitutional rights of juveniles by incarcerating them for alleged school disciplinary infractions, some as minor as defiance, the U.S. Department of Justice said Friday.
• Memphis Begins Reforms of Beleaguered Juvenile Court (TheCommercialAppeal.com)
  Shelby County, Tennessee court officials say they will move the juvenile defense system from Juvenile Court oversight and place it under the office in charge of defending adults.
• Juvenile Justice Sets up Tip Line (The Augusta Chronical)
  The Atlanta, Georgia De­part­ment of Juvenile Jus­tice has a new investigative tool: a Web site where people can report suspicious activities at the state’s youth detention centers and court-services offices.

Juvenile Justice Reform

• Opinion: A Broken Juvenile Justice System (The Baltimore Sun)
  Youthful offenders at Baltimore Detention Center won't be better off if the state builds a new $70 million juvenile jail; the whole policy of charging minors as adults needs rethinking.
• Times Editorial: Voters buy into Need for New Juvenile-Justice Center (The Seattle Times)
  Voters rightly grasped that this proposal was not about new jail beds, but about a critical investment in a public service. The alternative, sinking an estimated $40 million into repairing the current buildings, was not the answer.
• Despite Supreme Court Ruling, Many Minors May Stay in Prison for Life (ProPublica)
  Under the Supreme Court's ruling, minors can still get life without parole sentences — just not automatically after a conviction; instead a judge will need to decide, taking into account the minor's youth.

The Office of Justice Programs, in collaboration with the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), the National Institute of Justice, and the Bureau of Justice Assistance, has released the fact sheet, “Drug Courts.”
This fact sheet examines adult and juvenile drug court program models and OJP’s support of adult and juvenile drug courts. It also provides facts, research findings, and additional resources regarding drug courts.
The fact sheet is available online.
Resources:
Read the fact sheet, at https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/238527.pdf.

This afternoon we heard about an upcoming evaluation of six Reclaiming Futures juvenile drug courts. Bridget Ruiz, a technical expert on adolescents from JBS International, chaired the session and opened the panel presentation with a discussion of the history of juvenile drug courts and Reclaiming Futures and also outlined the important elements of each approach.
“Evidence shows that combining the two models has been effective in helping young people, “ said Ruiz, who formerly was an associate professor at the University of Arizona.
Erika Ostlie, a senior policy associate at Carnevale Associates, gave an overview of an upcoming evaluation supported by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) of six federally funded Reclaiming Futures sites.

A Superior Court in Washington, D.C., is redirecting minors with mental health problems from the juvenile system to treatment and rehabilitation. JM-4, a former juvenile mental health division court, is led by Magistrate Judge Joan Goldfrank, who is known for listening to families and dispensing wisdom and services to kids.
“The message I want to give them is that they are supported,” Goldfrank told the Washington Post. “The whole point of juvenile justice is rehabilitation. How could we not do it on the kids’ side?”
JM-4 is one of a dozen courts in the country that aims to help young people with mental health issues without incarcerating them.
From the Washington Post:

Tina Rosenberg, writing in the New York Times' online Opinionator column in a piece published last week, voiced support for the Youth Court of the District of Columbia, while also dissecting public misconceptions surrounding it:

While most commenters praised youth courts for taking a humane approach, reader Beliavsky from Boston wrote, "Letting young criminals (excuse me, 'troubled youths’) be judged by other young criminals does not seem right to me. There should be a real, non-criminal, adult, judge." 
Beliavsky is assuming that Youth Court is the soft option. It’s often not so.  As reader Andrew Rasmussen of New York said:  "The appropriate comparison would be kids who do something and are taken home by the cops to their parents."

Rosenberg contends the DC Youth Court is about more than just bypassing a broken system:

There is evidence that youth courts do more than simply divert teenagers from juvenile justice: they actively create pro-social behavior.  The Urban Institute study  found a clue:  the courts that give the most autonomy to the teenagers themselves work best ... Youth court is one of the few places where teenagers hear disapproval of their behavior from people whose respect they crave the most: their peers.

You can read the entire post here.

 
Incentives and Sanctions in Juvenile Drug Courts
 
Effective incentives and sanctions are essential tools in motivating youth to change their behavior. What can we learn from behavioral research and what can we learn from the experience of others? This two-part highly interactive online workshop will help you discover and put into practice the key components of a system of incentives and sanctions that can help bring about and sustain behavior change.
 
Part I:              June 28, 2011 – 1:30 - 2:30 p.m. (EST)
Part II:             July 6, 2011 – 1:30 - 2:30 p.m. (EST)

[Testimony given April 2011 by John Roman, Ph.D., before the Council of the District of Columbia Committee on Human Services. Reprinted with permission from The Urban Institute. -Ed.]
Good morning. My name is John Roman and I am a senior fellow in the Justice Policy Center at the Urban Institute, where I have studied innovative crime and justice policies and programs for more than a decade. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today about integrating innovative practices to better serve juveniles involved with the justice system and to improve public safety.
Using Lessons from Recent Innovations to Create a Holistic Approach to Intervening with Juveniles
Over the last decade, across the United States, there has been tremendous interest in reforming juvenile and criminal justice systems to both improve their performance and to improve public safety by reducing crime and delinquency among adjudicated youth. What I would like to describe today is how those innovative practices—the Reclaiming Futures initiative, drugs courts and other alternatives to commitment, and Project HOPE—might be integrated to maximize their effectiveness and minimize costs.
In the first phase of Reclaiming Futures, begun in 2002, multidisciplinary teams in ten communities worked collaboratively to enhance the availability and quality of substance abuse interventions for youth involved with the juvenile justice system. All ten projects relied on judicial leadership, court/community collaborations, interorganizational performance management, enhanced treatment quality, and multiagency partnerships to improve their systems of care for youthful offenders with substance abuse problems.