Award Dinner Honors Piper Kerman; News Roundup

Juvenile Justice Reform

• 2014 Justice Trailblazer Award Dinner Honoring Piper Kerman, author of Orange is the New Black (John Jay College of Criminal Justice)
  Piper Kerman is the author of the highly acclaimed memoir Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison, which was adapted into an original television series for Netflix.
• Illinois Takes Huge Step in Juvenile Justice Reform (HuffingtonPost.com)
  Chicago police began turning 17-year-olds over to the juvenile courts last week, under a new Illinois law that sets the bar for felony prosecution at 18.
• OP-ED: Separating the Sheep and the Wolves (JJIE.org)
  "The problem with zero tolerance is in its application, not the concept. The use of zero tolerance is analogous to the Overbreadth Doctrine applied in free speech cases—a law intended to prohibit harmful speech that includes language so broad that it also prohibits protected speech is unconstitutional."

Jobs, Grants, Events and Webinars

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Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment and Mental Health

• The Collateral Damage of a Teenager (New York Magazine)
  When prospective mothers and fathers imagine the joys of parenthood, they seldom imagine the adolescent years, which Nora Ephron famously opined could only be survived by acquiring a dog (“so that someone in the house is happy to see you”).
• Bullies and Victims at Risk of Mental Health Illnesses (CounselHeal.com)
  or young children and adolescents, bullying can be a norm at school. Children who face bullying can suffer mental health illnesses especially if they do not seek help. Not only are victims of bullying at risk, a new study is reporting that bullies are also at risk of developing mental health issues.
• Chiara de Blasio Tells All. Should Your Teen? (The Wall Street Journal)
  Chiara de Blasio helped get her dad elected mayor of New York, flaunting quirky head gear and joking from the podium on primary night. But on Christmas Eve, the 19-year-old did something else: She bared her soul on YouTube about her history of depression and substance abuse. The idea, she said, was to urge others to get help.
• In Annual Speech, Vermont Governor Shifts Focus to Drug Abuse (The New York Times)
  In a sign of how drastic the epidemic of drug addiction here has become, Gov. Peter Shumlin on Wednesday devoted his entire State of the State Message to what he said was “a full-blown heroin crisis” gripping Vermont.

David Backes writes the Friday news roundup for Reclaiming Futures and contributes articles about juvenile justice reform and adolescent substance abuse treatment to ReclaimingFutures.org. He has a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Santa Clara University. David works as an account executive for Prichard Communications.