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Here's four great resources for finding effective adolescent substance abuse treatment programs (emphasis on residential), plus one on how to train clinicians in evidence-based treatment:

1. How to Find the Best Drug Treatment for Teens: A Guide for Parents -- This guide from TIME magazine is excellent to pass on to parents struggling with their teens' drug and alcohol issues. Among other things, it includes a link to Time to Get Help, an excellent website developed and hosted by The Partnership at Drug-Free.org. (I'm glad TIME got the word about about this -- while Steve Pasierb, CEO of the Partnership, did a post for us about Time to Get Help way back in December, there's no denying that TIME gets a little more traffic than we do. And I was unaware of the next two resources before I read the TIME article.)
2. Questions for Parents to Ask Before Entering a Youth in a Residential Program - these questions were developed by the Federal Trade Commission and apply to all sorts of residential programs, not just alcohol and drug treatment programs.
    
3. Ten Important Questions to Ask Teen Substance Abuse Treatment Program. 
4. Questions for Youth to Ask When Entering a Treatment Program - Imagine a set of questions youth might ask themselves and others before agreeing to enter a residential program. Questions that could help them adjust to treatment faster.  Now, you don't have to imagine, thanks to the Building Bridges Initiative of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).  You can see similar tip sheets for parents and recommendations for treatment providers and adolescent substance abuse policy officials at the state level on how to use and disseminate them here. 
5. Strategies for Training Counselors in Evidence-Based Treatments - What's the most effective way to insure that your clinicians learn to implement evidence-based treatments?  Learn the answer(s) in this article, authored by Steve Martino of Yale University School of Medicine, which appeared in the December 2010 issue of Addiction Science and Clnical Practice. (Hat tip to Paul Savery.)

 
NOTE: This is an updated  version of a post that appeared in February 2011. 

Photo: hometownzero.

Flogging conjures up grotesque images. American slaves flogged by their overseer. Conscripted sailors flogged by their masters. Such an idea wouldn’t get any traction in a civilized society like ours, right? 
Maybe. John Jay College of Criminal Justice Professor Peter Moskos has floated a proposal to replace each year of prison with two lashes. His motives seem pure—he believes the American prison system is completely dysfunctional and that millions, maybe billions, could be saved with this simple change in punishment, with no effect on public safety.
 
Putting aside for a moment the moral baseness of the idea and that pesky Eight Amendment proscription against torture, cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment (flogging has to be four-for-four on that one), let’s consider if it would even work.
 
There is a long and fascinating law and economics literature on the relative merits of severity versus certainty as ways to prevent crime. The idea is straightforward. The main aim of punishment is to set society's costs of incarcerating a criminal in prison equal to the benefits of keeping that person from running amuck on the streets. (Rehabilitation can also correct, but that is a separate issue).
 
Flogging, in this case, is just a different way of meting out a severe punishment that substitutes intensity for duration. The big question, then, is whether criminals will commit new crimes once back on the streets after being flogged --  new crimes that certainly would have been prevented by incarceration in an expensive prison cell.

The requirement that law enforcement must issue Miranda warnings to suspects in custody prior to interrogating them is well-understood and ingrained in our culture. The question of when a suspect is in custody, however, is less straightforward. 
On June 16, 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision in the case of J.D.B. v. North Carolina, holding that law enforcement must consider a suspect’s age in the Miranda custody calculus. As was the reality in almost 20% of its cases this term, the court was split 5-4. The majority, led by Justice Sotomayor saw no reason to ignore the “commonsense reality” that children may feel bound to submit to police questioning when an adult would not. Justice Alito’s dissent was guided by the principle that law enforcement needs the clarity of a bright line rule.  
The majority and dissent did agree on one important point: juveniles are significantly more likely than adults to succumb to the intense pressure of custodial interrogations by making involuntary and false confessions. 
Indeed, Justice Sotomayor noted “the heightened risk of false confessions from youth,” while Justice Alito would “not dispute that many suspects who are under 18 will be more susceptible to police pressure than the average adult.” For a court that so rarely agrees on anything, the recognition that custodial interrogation can cause juveniles to confess at an increased rate should not be overlooked.
Custodial interrogation is a systematic, intense process designed to persuade the accused that it would be in their best interest to confess. The process can be so powerful that, even when the police use these tactics on innocent suspects, it may result in a confession. Studies demonstrate that false confessions play a role in anywhere from 15-25% of wrongful convictions. When parsing the date more closely, it is revealed that false confessions are almost twice as likely when the wrongfully convicted was a teenager or child. 

Federal funding for juvenile justice has been critical in shaping juvenile justice policy and advancing juvenile justice reform in accord with the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act.
And anyone working in the field of juvenile justice knows that federal funds have been cut in the last few years. But it wasn't until I saw "Safeguarding the Future: Strategic Investments to Secure the Safety of America’s Youth, Families and Communities," a new 4-page publication from the Coalition for Juvenile Justice (CJJ), that I realized just how deeply federal assistance had been slashed:

Since FY 2002, federal investments in programs that prevent and reduce delinquency have decreased by 50%. Over that same period, federal spending on policing, prosecution and incarceration has increased by more than 60%.

Unsurprisingly, states are feeling the effects, particularly in a time when local resources are scarce to make up the difference. CJJ points out that it's critical to invest in programs that address and prevent delinquency, and that doing so pays off later on. In fact, CJJ puts a number on it:

Beginning July 1, Georgia’s juvenile court judges will face a new, unprecedented set of challenges.  That’s the first day Georgia will no longer operate under an agreement that allows for the transfer of delinquent juveniles and runaways between the states.
Georgia is the only state in the nation that has not already adopted or is not set to adopt the Interstate Compact for Juveniles (ICJ), an update of a previous compact established in 1955.  Currently, Georgia functions under the 1955 compact.  The Interstate Commission for Juveniles, the governing body of the ICJ, gave Georgia three extensions to pass legislation so the state could enter the new compact (in 2008, 2009 and 2010).  Since the Legislature failed to enact the needed legislation in 2011, Georgia will not be given any more extensions, officials at the compact say.
The compact provides a framework that allows the seamless transition of juveniles from one state to another.  Without the compact, Georgia’s juvenile judges are left “scratching their heads,” Judge Mary Carden, a juvenile judge in the state, said.  “Nobody knows what’s going to happen.”

What's one of the biggest drivers pushing kids into the juvenile justice system these days? Schools.
Schools often suspend or expel youth who misbehave, ostensibly to maintain order. Unfortunately, an analysis of 30 years of data on middle school expulsions and suspensions issued last year by the Southern Poverty Law Center found that the sanctions were unfair and ineffective.
So what can be done? For one thing, schools can partner with juvenile courts to reduce the number of unnecessary referrals to juvenile court (follow the link for a great 2010 presentation for the Connecticut Juvenile Justice Alliance given by Judges Steven Teske and Brian Huff on how they accomplished this in their jurisdictions).
But restorative justice offers another useful solution. Recent research done on a few schools in the U.S., Britain, and Canada suggests that adopting restorative justice techniques in the classroom can reduce suspensions and expulsions significantly. 

Good news! A few weeks ago, I asked you to submit comments to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) in support of including adolescents in the state block grant guidelines for substance abuse treatment and mental health treatment.
(If you recall, SAMHSA had specified youth as a priority population. We were concerned, based on early comments, that they might be removed from the final guidelines. So far, that hasn't happened.)
It turns out all of those comments made a difference: according to the Federal Register:

772 comments from 522 individuals or organizations were received. The comments were (1) Supportive of the changes proposed to the FY 2012–2013 Block Grant Application, (2) requested clarification regarding certain areas or (3) requested specific changes to the Block Grant Application.

Among the items that SAMHSA received comments on, one of the most common was:

Commending SAMHSA on including adolescents as a target group that States can include in their needs assessment and State Plan.

So, great work! However, from what I hear, the process of finalizing the guidelines is still fluid, so SAMHSA may ask for comments. Stay tuned!

The girl is maybe 15 years old. She is standing in the back of a building, or maybe it’s an alley way.  She has her arms wrapped around her body and her teeth are chattering.  When the officer approaches and tells her to leave the alley way she shakes her head and refuses.  The officer moves in closer and reiterates his order to leave. Suddenly the girl is lunging at him, screaming, “Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me! Get away from me!”  She is pushing her hands out at him, then pointing her finger at the officer, ordering him to keep his distance. We hear the officer say, “Whoa, hold on there. You listen to me young lady, I’ll arrest your ass if you don’t settle down. You want that? You want to go to jail?”
Officers watching this scene unfold during Strategies for Youth trainings often express their discomfort by laughing at the girl’s sudden, and seemingly unprovoked transformation into an accuser.  “She’s acting like my wife,” one will say and the ensuing chuckles help dissolve the tension in the classroom.
When asked to proffer a diagnosis of what mental health problem the girl is experiencing, the male officers typically call out, “Psychotic,” “Schizophrenic,”  “Bipolar,” or they just shake their heads.   When asked, what they would  do with a girl behaving like this, most officers express the belief that they would arrest her for disorderly conduct, at the very least.
If there are any women officers in the room, they generally won’t volunteer their diagnosis. But when asked, they’ll uniformly say, “She has PTSD [post traumatic stress disorder]” or they’ll speculate, “The girl’s probably been raped.”

Does it really matter if we screen and assess teens for alcohol and drug problems?  Most adults, after all, started experimenting with alcohol or other drugs before they turned 21 -- and if they didn't, they almost certainly knew a lot of kids who did. And most of them (though not all) survived into adulthood.
So what's the big deal if we turn a blind eye to identify teen drinking or drugging?  Federally-funded research shows why it's a big deal from a public health standpoint:
 
(Click the image for a larger view.) It's taken from an excellent presentation, "Characteristics, Needs and Strengths of Substance Using Youth by Level of Involvement in the Juvenile Justice System," given by Dr. Michael Dennis, Senior Research Psychologist at Chestnut Health Systems, at the Reclaiming Futures Leadership Institute held in Miami last month. I'll be posting more slides from his presentation soon - stay tuned!
Here's Dr. Dennis' notes on the slide (emphasis added):
This figure shows ... the prevalence of these past year substance use and problems in the height of the graph by age along the bottom.
1- Substance use disorders typically [surface] during adolescence and young adulthood. In fact, 90% of all adults with dependence started using under the age of 18, half under the age of 15. Moreover, 90% met criteria for abuse or dependence by age 20 – thus it is primarily an adolescent onset disorder.
2- After several decades, the rates of abuse and dependence do decrease as people go into remission, incarceration or die. Epidemiological studies of people with lifetime substance dependence suggest that 58% eventually enter sustained recovery (i.e., no symptoms for the past year) -- a rate that is considerably better than the 39% average rate of recovery across psychiatric disorders (Kessler, 1994; see also Dawson, 1996; Robins & Regier, 1991).
3 – Notice how the rates of no use go up with age.
 
One caveat: remember that most youth in the juvenile justice system (at intake, detention, or in secure placement) don't have an alcohol and drug disorder -- though many do.  For more information, check out this post: How Prevalent are Substance Abuse and Mental Health Issues in Juvenile Justice? The Answer May Surprise You. 
Related post: Adolescents: What's the Difference Between Assessing "Risk" and "Need"?