The Case for Abolishing Juvenile Prisons; News Roundup

Juvenile Justice Reform

• Community-Based Alternatives for Troubled Youths Gaining Ground (JJIE)
  Lucas County, where incarceration of juveniles has declined steeply in recent years, provides a dramatic example of an emerging trend among jurisdictions nationwide that are moving away from locking up kids.

• Juvenile Justice 40 Years On: Unfinished Business (The Crime Report)
  A report by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency released in April found that racial disparities have increased despite the overall drop in youth incarceration. “While the total number of incarcerated youth has declined in many states, the proportion of youth of color among all youth receiving court dispositions grew substantially” the report states.

• The Case for Abolishing Juvenile Prisons (The Awl)
  Last month, archaeologists identified the first of the fifty-five human bodies recently exhumed at Florida’s Dozier School for Boys—a now-shuttered juvenile prison where, for decades, guards abused children, sometimes to death, despite cyclical scandals and calls for reform spanning almost a hundred years. Dozier represents an atrocious extreme, but the failures of America’s juvenile justice system are widespread.

Jobs, Grants, Events and Webinars

• 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!

Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment and Mental Health

• The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation Awards Reclaiming Futures $2 Million Grant to Expand Substance Use and Mental Health Treatment for At Risk Youth (Reclaiming Futures)
  Reclaiming Futures has been awarded a $2 million grant by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation to advance its public health approach to juvenile justice reform through effective treatment and community engagement. The three-year investment allows Reclaiming Futures to design and pilot an innovative adaptation of Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) for adolescents beginning with five communities around the nation.

• Teen Drug and Alcohol Use Continues to Fall, New Federal Data Show (The Washington Post)
  "The 2013 NSDUH results suggest that the Administration’s efforts to reduce drug and alcohol use among young people is working," the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) said in a press release.

• Reaching Out to Youth in Transition to Improve Their Mental Health (Doctors of BC)
  Doctors of BC has made a number of commitments and recommendations in its new policy paper, Reaching Out: Supporting Youth Mental Health in British Columbia, that aims to raise awareness about mental health among transition age youth (15 - 24 years), their families, and doctors with a particular focus on those youth not already being treated within the mental health system.
• Teen Dealing with Mental Illness Creates Online Community (Today Health Channel)
  For a few hours every day, Bree Carey steps away from her life as a junior at Geneva High School and into the online community she has created for teenagers struggling with mental illness. Carey, 16, has suffered through panic attacks, depression, multiple hospitalizations, and times when she dealt with her pain through cutting herself. When she emerged from the worst of it, she decided to use her experiences to help other teenagers.