Roundup: "Civil War" over DSM-V; Grantwriting Tips from SAMHSA; Crisis in NY Prisons; FL Judges and Lawyers Can't Be Facebook Friends; and More

 Juvenile Justice: Tribal Youth Reports, SAMHSA Grantwriting Tips, and a Brief Reentry Guide

• Two new crime-related reports on Native American communities: the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) reports on its Tribal Youth Program, and the Department of Justice released Jails in Indian Country 2008, which includes coverage of juvenile facilities.
• Want tips on how to address gangs in your community? OJJDP has created an online tool that shares its Comprehensive Gang Model Overview and other useful tools. 
• If you're seeking a grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration (SAMHSA), you'll want to check out the agency's September/October newsletter. On page 15, you'll find tips from a long-time reviewer for the agency on how to write a winning grant proposal. (Hat tip to the Addiction Technology Transfer Center Network.)

• Here's a concise resource on doing juvenile reentry right: Back on Track: Supporting Youth Reentry from Out-of-Home Placement to the Community. (Published by the Youth Reentry Task Force of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Coalition; brought to my attention by Brad Bannister, Clinical Services Program Manager at the North Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.)

 
 Juvenile Justice and Behavioral Health Treatment News

• Editorials in both The Washington Post and The New York Times urged the Senate Judiciary Committee to move forward on the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA) -- which it did, by a 12-7 vote. The bill is expected to be considered by the full Senate in early 2010.
• A review panel in New York concluded that the state's youth prisons are "both extremely expensive and extraordinarily ineffective," according to a New York Times article. It costs roughly $210,000 per year per youth to incarcerate teens there; alternative approaches, including community-based treatment, were recommended. However, New York's Chief Judge, the Honorable Jonathan Lippman, argued in a follow-up editorial that probation departments need more funding if they're going to be expected to supervise teens who were once sent to prison. Furthermore, he thinks the judicial branch should manage juvenile probation.
• Pamela Hyde, formerly Secretary of the New Mexico Human Services Department, was recently confirmed as top administrator at SAMHSA.
• Meanwhile, the deputy director at the Office of National  Drug Control Policy, Thomas McClellan, was the subject of a New York Times profile piece; the fact that he has struggled with the addiction of his two sons, one of whom recently overdosed at age 30, was one of the main reasons he left the well-known Treatment Research Institute. 
• The recession seems to be driving a surge in youth runaways, according to The New York Times.
• The State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) may be a casualty of the fight over health reform. In many states, the government program often pays for adolescent substance abuse treatment, among many other things.
• Poor children are prescribed anti-psychotic drugs at four times the rate of middle-class children; what's more, they receive them for "less severe conditions" than middle-class children do.
• Has the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) "outlived its usefulness?" The American Psychiatric Association has pushed back publication of the latest revision, the DSM-V, to 2013, amid a great deal of acrimony among the editors and others. A  Psychology Today columnist commented recently on the "civil war" over the DSM-V. According to him, one bone of contention is the perceived influence that pharmaceutical companies have on what qualifies as a disorder and makes it into the manual.
• Florida judges and lawyers can't be friends on Facebook, according to a new opinion from Florida's Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee. The concern is that being Facebook friends may imply a conflict of interest.

 
Juvenile Justice in the U.K.

• The U.K. is moving closer to funding some youth services with money from dormant bank accounts.

• The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) recently criticized U.K. youth prisons for using strip-searches, a "nose-grip" restraint, and solitary confinement.

 
Be Inspired: Court-Involved Youth Make a CD; a Kid Once Lost in Foster Care Grows Up to Pass the Bar Exam ...

• Philadelphia's "Diplomas Now" is a comprehensive school-based program that seems to be highly successful with kids who have attendance problems, behavior issues, and course failures. Although fairly new, it's being replicated in multiple sites across the country. It uses a mix of intensive services, activities, and relationships with positive adults to create wraparound services -- wouldn't it be great to do that for youth in the justice system? 
• Kids in foster care succeed all the time, but somehow, this story of a young woman who was in the care of an abusive foster parent from age 6 to 11 really got to me. Now 27, she just passed the bar exam in California. (Hat tip to @policy4results.)
• A San Francisco school for youth mandated from juvenile court ran a two-week program in 2008 in which 12 youth "wrote intense, deeply personal pieces of hip-hop and spoken word, set them to music, produced a studio-quality CD, and performed at a local club," according to an article on the program. You can listen to three of the tracks the youth produced here.