Blog: No bio box

Editor's note: this article originally appeared on Huffington Post and is reprinted with permission.
Numbers are tricky. Studies are done. Reports are written. Statistics released. And then people take the numbers and run with them, waving them like protest placards claiming how the numbers prove or disprove some long held "truth." The Right does it. The Left does it. We all do it. Maybe there's a tiny toggle in the human genome that manipulates us to manipulate the numbers. That's why I've never liked numbers, never trusted them.
 
I saw this all play out in a recent Boston Globe Op-Ed piece about the high rates of recidivism in U.S. prisons. Using the most recent data from the Bureau of Statistics, the numbers roll out: Within six months of being freed 28 percent of former prisoners were arrested for a new crime; three years, 68 percent; five years, 77 percent. Twenty-nine percent of the returnees had been arrested for violent offenses; 38 percent for property crimes; 39 percent for drug offenses; 58 percent for public order crimes. I think everyone would agree that the numbers paint a pretty bleak picture.
 
But this is where the numbers get tricky. The article insists that these statistics prove that efforts at prison reform and rehabilitation don't work. Criminal justice experts have been searching for the "holy grail of rehabilitation" for years -- 40 according to one expert quoted -- and nothing has worked. The article then goes on to suggest that since this holy grail is so elusive, since so many criminals leave prison "only too ready to offend again," we have no option but to continue our present practice of mass incarceration, thus maintaining the U.S.' global position of locking up 25 percent of the world's prison population while being only 5 percent of its general population.

The National Council on Crime and Delinquency recently released the brief “Supervision Strategies for Justice-Involved Youth [PDF],” which reports on improved supervision strategies for young people on probation or parole by juvenile departments to help keep them out of facilities.
The brief is based on a field survey of more than 140 juvenile justice system leaders around the country, and found that the following three supervision strategies are working effectively:

• Systems Are Improving Practice by Reducing Supervision for Youth Who Do Not Need It: The overall approach to supervision relies on risk assessments, screening instruments, and other tools to help systems shift youth to the lowest form of supervision needed to meet their needs and, in some cases, to divert youth from the system entirely;
• Justice Systems Are Working to Reduce Revocations: Juvenile departments are engaging in training with line staff to encourage different responses to behaviors to avoid revocation, clarifying which rules may no longer result in revocation, and problem solving with the youth and families around the right response;
• Systems Are Working to Build Stronger Supervision Partnerships With Families and Service Providers: Strategies include clearly articulating roles for each member of the supervision team in the work and their relationships to each other, shared access to information systems, joint trainings, reliance on models that seek to place families at the center of the process, hiring people to work with families in the system, and developing family orientation programs.

This year two Reclaiming Futures fellows, Judge Anthony Capizzi, Reclaiming Futures Montgomery County Judicial Fellow and Reclaiming Futures Judicial Faculty, and Lilas Rajaee, project director of Reclaiming Futures Denver, have been nominated for the Goldstein Hall of Fame.
The Honorable Judge Stanley M. Goldstein was the first Drug Court judge in the nation. In recognition of Judge Goldstein's example, expertise, and leadership, the National Association of Drug Court Professionals (NADCP) named the Drug Court Hall of Fame in his honor. From the NADCP website:

In 1989, the first Drug Court was established in Miami, Florida, to process criminal cases of substance-abusing offenders through comprehensive supervision, testing, treatment, sanctions and incentives.
Judge Goldstein's untiring efforts epitomize the qualities this award seeks to honor in each of its recipients. NADCP inaugurated the "Stanley M. Goldstein Drug Court Hall of Fame" in January 2003.

Congratulations to Judge Capizzi and Lilas Rajaee for all of your tireless work.

Below you'll find a selection of the latest grants, jobs, webinars and events posted to our Opportunity Board. Please share the Reclaiming Futures Opportunity Board with your colleagues in the juvenile justice, adolescent substance abuse and teen mental health areas. It's free to browse and post!
Webinars

• Using Social Impact Bonds to Improve Juvenile Justice Outcomes: May 27
  
• Webinar to Discuss Cognitive Behavioral Approaches Across Custody Settings: May 28
• Two Tools Every Court Needs to Tell its Story in Two Minutes or Less: June 3

Events

• 2014 Coalition for Juvenile Justice: June 18-21
• Looking Back, Planning Ahead: A Vision for the Next 40 Years in Juvenile Justice: June 18-21
• 2015 National Mentoring Summit: January 28-30

Grants

• Second Chance Act Two-phase Juvenile Reentry Demonstration Program: Ends June 2

Jobs

• Program Director at Phoenix House Academy: New York

For those who were unable to attend the 2014 Leadership Institute, or if you’d simply like to review materials from your time in New Orleans this year, I’m happy to announce that many presentations, videos and handouts are now publicly available.
We’re not just publishing snippets from our keynotes either. This year we’re excited to include the full-length videos from both Gina Castaneda, Santa Cruz County Deputy Probation Officer, and Father Greg Boyle of Homeboy Industries.
Keynote: How One Young Woman Completely Transformed Her Life and the Teachers and Mentors Who Helped Pave the Way presented by Gina Castaneda, Santa Cruz County, CA Deputy Probation Officer

Keynote: Father 'Greg' Joseph Boyle, Founder & Director, Homeboy Industries

Below you'll find a selection of the latest grants, jobs, webinars and events posted to our Opportunity Board. Please share the Reclaiming Futures Opportunity Board with your colleagues in the juvenile justice, adolescent substance abuse and teen mental health areas. It's free to browse and post!
Webinars

• NCJA for a Webinar on Grants Management: May 20
• Using Social Impact Bonds to Improve Juvenile Justice Outcomes: May 27
  
• Webinar to Discuss Cognitive Behavioral Approaches Across Custody Settings: May 28

Events

• 2014 Coalition for Juvenile Justice: June 18-21
• Looking Back, Planning Ahead: A Vision for the Next 40 Years in Juvenile Justice: June 18-21
• 2015 National Mentoring Summit: January 28-30

Grants

• Second Chance Act Two-phase Juvenile Reentry Demonstration Program: Ends June 2

Jobs

• Program Director at Phoenix House Academy: New York

Juvenile Justice Reform

• Mock Court Gets Truant Students Back in the Classroom (JJIE.org)
  "At 7:30 on a Wednesday morning, truancy court is in session in a basement room at City Springs Elementary-Middle School. The judge, retired Baltimore City Juvenile Court Master Joyce T. Mitchell, ponders reasons a steady parade of students give for their truancy or tardiness."
• Double Charged: The True Cost of Juvenile Justice (Marketplace.org)
  Double Charged is a special investigation into the U.S. Juvenile Justice system, produced by Youth Radio. This is part one of a two-part series.
• OP-ED: The Uneasy Transition from Juvenile Hall to Life on the Outside (JJIE.org)
  "Exhilaration jolted through my body when I stepped back onto the grounds of Central Juvenile Hall for the first time since my release. I finally knew what it felt like to come back as a free man and not as a detained juvenile. I cherished how different it felt."
• New York City Teens Get a Second Chance Through Theater (ReclaimingFutures.org)
  "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."

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.