Termaine and Elijah: Two Troubled Teens and the Promise of Intensive, At-Home Family-Focused Treatment

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Over the past three decades, adolescent development scholars, criminologists and mental health practitioners have achieved a breakthrough – or rather two breakthroughs. They have developed two different approaches to the care and supervision of troubled and delinquent children that consistently work better and cost less than correctional confinement and other commonplace services. One approach, which involves intensive and highly-regimented family therapy delivered to young people in their own homes, has been rigorously tested in scientific evaluations and repeatedly yielded substantial and statistically significant reductions in recidivism and treatment/confinement costs. The second – known as wraparound – targets youth with serious emotional disturbances, and it assembles a team of caring adults to devise an appropriate mix of community-based services in lieu of placing the child into a residential facility. Numerous studies show that wraparound, too, improves behavioral health and reduces involvement in the justice system – and does so at a fraction of the cost of confinement or residential treatment.

New Guide to Program Evaluation Released

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The Vera Institute has released a guide to help organizations interested in creating or strengthening a research base for their work. Although written primarily for juvenile justice initiatives, the guide may be helpful for other youth-serving programs as well.

John Lash

OP-ED: How to Make Money Selling Drugs

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The nation loves an entrepreneur, or at least a good story about one. There is something about the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality, the lure of taking big risks for big rewards, and the dream of working for ourselves that is attractive, especially in a world where most of us find ourselves working for someone else in a less than ideal setting, and doing work that isn’t particularly rewarding either financially or personally. One subset of the entrepreneurial storyline involves crime, especially drug dealing. This is even more appealing to those who lack the connections, education, money and other kinds of support that make more mainstream ventures possible. For kids growing up in a lot of neighborhoods in this country the drug dealer may be the only example of someone working their way to a better life they see.

Miller v. Alabama: One Year Later

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Last year, the Supreme Court declared mandatory life without parole sentences for juveniles to be unconstitutional. A year after the landmark ruling, how have the nation’s juvenile justice systems been impacted?

Supreme Court Sends Affirmative Action Case Back to Lower Court

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The Supreme Court issued its long-awaited ruling Monday in Fisher v. University of Texas, a case with broad implications on the use of affirmative action policies in college admissions processes. In a 7-1 ruling, the Supreme Court vacated and remanded an earlier Court of Appeals judgment after affirming the limited use of racially-based factors in university admissions. The case involves Abigail Fisher, a white Sugar Land, Texas, resident whose 2008, University of Texas application was rejected. Fisher, then a high school senior, later sued the university, claiming her application was denied because of the university’s use of affirmative action policies. Although the ruling says the policies must be strictly reviewed, the ruling does not forbid universities from using affirmative action policies.