Roundup: OJJDP Offers Mentoring Monies for Juvenile Reentry; and More

• The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) is offering more funds to support mentoring for teens in the justice system. Through the Second Chance Act Mentoring Initiative, they're calling for proposals to support youth reentering their communities after incarceration. Deadline is April 27th, 2010. 

 

News and Research about the Juvenile Justice System

• California's voters will decide whether or not to legalize pot next November. Meanwhile, "fake weed," or K2 -- which is currently legal in all states except Kansas and which we mentioned on this blog a couple of weeks ago -- received more attention this week from CNN. It's not clear from the coverage how commonly synthetic marijuana is actually used among teens.
• Data from the MacArthur Foundation's Models for Change study, "Pathways to Desistance," provides further evidence that placing teens in institutional care (i.e., by incarcerating them or placing them in a residential facility) does not reduce recidivism -- in fact, it even increases recidivism for "low-level" offenders. Not only that, but "most youth with serious felony offenses ceased to re-offend after their contact with the system, regardless of the intervention."  (Hat tip to the National Juvenile Justice Network.)

• You may be familiar with Laurence Steinberg, the Temple University researcher whose research on adolescent development played an influential part in the Supreme Court's 2005 decision to eliminate the death penalty for juveniles. Now you can learn more about his research in a brief interview published in the APA Monitor from the American Psychological Association (APA). In another recent APA publication, Steinberg and four colleagues address an apparent contradiction in adolescent development: "How can adolescents not be be fully responsible for criminal behavior, yet be emotionally mature enough to terminate a pregnancy?" (Hat tip to the Coalition for Juvenile Justice.)
• Should teens who share nude pictures of themselves with a boyfriend of girlfriend by cellphone be put on sex offender registries? Across the country, states are rethinking sex offender laws for youths who engage in "sexting."  
• Sure, teens should be in school. But a new curfew law being considered in Richmond, CA goes too far in penalizing truant kids, according to the Burns Institute.
• Evaluators have found that the Juvenile Breaking the Cycle (JBTC) program is effective at addressing recidivism and they recommend that it be replicated. JBTC is an intervention "designed to provide criminal justice system monitoring and individualized treatment and services to substance-using youth ... assessed as high recidivism risks following an initial police encounter." (Hat tip to @portprevent.)
• Think it's all the parents' fault that they don't show up when their kids have a court hearing? Check out this post on involving parents in schools, and what schools can do better - are its lessons applicable to the juvenile justice system? 

 
Resources and Conferences

• Interested in youth courts? The first global youth justice conference is scheduled for June 14-17, 2010, in Provincetown, MA. 
• Want a guide that explains addictions treatment for families? Check out What is Tx? from SAMHSA. It's focused  on adults, but still useful families of teens in treatment.
• The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) recently released a great fact sheet on girls' delinquency. 
• The Sentencing Project just launched its Race & Justice Clearinghouse online. Here's how they describe the project: "[A] resource for information, analysis, and commentary on race and ethnicity as they interact with the criminal justice and juvenile justice systems ... The Clearinghouse contains information and tools for policymakers, practitioners, and advocates to understand racial disparities so they can be addressed, and make the criminal justice system more fair and effective." Check it out. (Hat tip to the W. Haywood Burns Institute.)