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From the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (NCJFCJ):

The Juvenile and Family Law Department of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges is applying for project funding through the Community Policing Development Program operated by the United States Department of Justice. To better inform our application, we are asking juvenile court professionals and related stakeholders to complete this short survey.
 
This survey should take less than five minutes to complete, and no identifying information will be collected. If you know of someone that may be able to inform the survey further, please forward this e-mail along.
 
>>Take the survey.
 
If you have any questions regarding this survey, please contact
Shawn C. Marsh, Ph.D. at smarsh@ncjfcj.org or 775-784-8070.
 

Hat tip to Christa Myers.

 
Adapted from an announcement made by the National Reentry Resource Center - there's a component regarding youth in the justice system:
 

The webinar "Principles of Tribal Reentry" focuses on the essential principles for designing and developing culturally relevant reentry systems supportive of released offenders and the tribal communities to which they return. Presenters will discuss the important components of tribal-based reentry programs and those in non-tribal jurisdictions where American Indian/Alaska Native(AI/AN) offenders may be serving time in an adult or juvenile facility. This free webinar will also discuss important governmental, programmatic, policy and cultural factors affecting AI/AN reentry programs.
 
 
Presenters
Ada Pecos Melton, President & Owner, American Indian Development Associates
Daniel Mittan, Director of Court Services, Choctaw Tribal Court
 
 
When
Tuesday, April 26, 2011 12:00 pm PST / 3 pm EST
 
 
How to Sign Up
Register here.

Last fall, youth in the Juvenile Recovery Court in Clark County, WA, got a chance to tell their stories on film. Six participants received training in "digital storytelling" and, with the help of court staff, and a prevention specialist, they turned their 250-word personal stories into powerful video presentations. Their efforts were given great coverage in the Dec. 27, 2010 issue of The Columbian. 
Below is a joint interview with the three people who made this amazing project happen for these youth: Bradley Finegood, LMHC (at left, above), who coordinates Clark County's Superior Court therapeutic specialty courts; Angela Zahas, a county prevention specialist (far right, above); and Anna Lookingbill, the Juvenile Recovery Court's resource coordinator (see middle, above). 
 
 
Q: What is digital storytelling? How is it different from making a video?
 
Anna:  There's two layers to digital storytelling. The first is the technical component, such as learning the software. (We used low-cost or free software, such as a free audio program called Audacity, and Microsoft's photo editing program.)
 
But there's also a pretty significant component around, "What's the story you want to tell?" How do you tell it in a way that has emotional impact on people? 
 
So when you teach it, it’s a layered thing – there's a technical piece, plus storytelling.
 
Brad: It was a small initial investment that will continue to pay dividends. Once Angela was trained on digital storytelling, it could be replicated. We could train others at a low cost – outside of human capital – for what could be an extremely powerful project. There's no fees we have to pay, no manuals we have to buy – so it just made a lot of sense. It's a long-term buy-in to people’s recovery.
 
On a side note, the kids who went through this started out extremely closed, but they opened up, smiled, they shared – so that’s something priceless when you talk about youth from the juvenile justice side of it. 

One of the reasons that we, as a society, lock up adolescents who commit serious crimes is that we believe it will deter them from committing future crimes. Deterrence is a foundational element in the rationale for, and mission of, the justice system.
Yet we don’t fully understand how deterrence operates for certain types of offenders. In particular, we know very little about how the experience of punishment affects the perceptions of adolescent offenders. Here, we summarize recent research that seeks to shed some light on this issue.
 
Background
There is a vast body of classic criminological literature regarding theories of deterrence (Beccaria, 1764; Zimring and Hawkins, 1973; Andenaes, 1974). Briefly, deterrence is rooted in the belief that when criminal sanctions are perceived to be certain, severe and swift, criminal activity will be reduced because the risk and costs of sanctions will be too high.
 
While deterrence works for society as a whole (general deterrence), we are concerned here with how it works for individuals (specific deterrence), which focuses on preventing individuals from engaging in future crime by making clear the connection between their own criminal activity and negative consequences; the idea being that the individual will refrain from future crime simply because it isn’t worth the risk or the rewards involved.

Behavioral health care organizations -- including adolescent substance abuse treatment agencies -- face huge changes as health reform takes hold. How do you build a strong, vital organization that provides the best quality care?
We've built a conference around that very question: the 2011 NIATx Summit and SAAS National Conference, with the theme of "Revolutionary Strategies for Leaders." It'll be held July 20-13, 2011, in Boston, MA. (Don't know NIATx or SAAS? Scroll down for more info.)
Who should attend? CEOs, senior managers, and change leaders from behavioral health organizations who are focused on leadership, process improvement, and technology.

Seems like youth violence -- and ways to address it -- is all over the news right now.

1. Research: Children Exposed to or Victims of Violence More Likely to Become Violent.
2. Evidence-Based Practices for Children Exposed to Violence: A Selection from Federal Databases.
   This publication from the U.S. Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services "summarizes findings from federal reviews of research studies and program evaluations to help communities improve outcomes for children exposed to violence. It cites evidence-based practices that practitioners and policymakers can use to implement prevention services and activities for these children." (H/t to www.findyouthinfo.gov.)

Of the 38 youth in long-term recovery who attended The Young People’s Networking Dialogue on Recovery in December 2010, some began their path to recovery through formal treatment, some via the criminal justice system, some had their family, some had their faith, some had their school, and some had all of it. But there was one single unifying thread woven through each story shared that day as a key to sustaining their recovery: positive peer pressure. 
In her new book, Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World, Tina Rosenberg takes peer pressure -- usually regarded as a negative thing -- and documents many instances throughout recent history when it has been used as a force for good. The influence young people have on each other is undeniable, and obviously peer pressure is viewed as a cause for many of the alcohol and drug problems in our society. But after personally witnessing thousands of youth use positive peer pressure on one another to stay clean and sober, I am left wondering why we can’t harness this powerful force for good. 

Some of you may have heard this disturbing account of a drug court in Glynn County, Georiga, aired recently on "This American Life."
Usually, a drug court may take a year, possible two years, to complete.  For 24-year-old Lindsey Dills, who was 18 when she entered the Glynn County juvenile drug court, she won't be done with it until 10-1/2 years later, counting time behind bars and probation. 
Now, the show makes it clear that this particular Georgia drug court is commonly thought to be run counter to generally-accepted principles of drug court.
But I thought it would be a good time to mention the so-called :"16 strategies" for juvenile drug courts.  (Follow the link for a monograph from the Department of Justice, explaining the details.)
Here they are:

Research has shown that punishment alone is not the most effective way to to help a young person change his or her behavior -- the primary goal of juvenile drug courts, and, indeed, juvenile probation generally. Instead, a combination of punishment, or sanctions, with incentives, is most effective.
But if you want to act on this information, you're likely to have a number of questions. Here's just a few of the questions that commonly arise:

1. Is there a ready-made list of sanctions and incentives we could use?
2. Should we start out giving a strong sanction to get the offender’s attention, or should we build up to that?
3. Are we coddling offenders by giving them incentives?
4. Does it matter how long you wait after the behavior is detected to give a sanction or incentive?

And that's just the beginning.  To help you make sense of the options -- and to give you several lists of ideas for your own graduated sanctions and incentives grid -- I'm posting a number of resources here.
From NCJFCJ (and shared with permission):

• "Making Sense of Incentives and Sanctions in Working with the Substance Abusing Offender," by Susan Yeres, Ed.D., Betty Gurnell, M.Ed., Meg Holmberg, MSW. (This excellent guide is where I got the four questions above -- download it to see eight more common questions, and  answers to all 12.)
• Need ideas for incentives and sanctions? Then try the NCJFCJ's "laundry list." 
• How can you afford to pay for incentives? What if the teen doesn't react the way we thought he or she would? You can find answers to these and other questions in the NCJFCJ's frequently asked questions document.

If your team is working on implementing incentives and sanctions together, you'll probably want these as well, also from the NCJFCJ: