In Texas, Youth Reported with Mental Health Problems Grows Substantially

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More than half the juveniles in Texas detention facilities in 2012 had mental health issues, according to a recent Associated Press (AP) report based on figures released by the state’s justice officials in February. Over the last three years, officials state the number of juvenile detainees with “intensive need” for mental health treatment has ballooned by 113 percent. Official Texas Juvenile Justice Department numbers indicate 56 percent of the state’s approximately 1,000 detained juveniles had mental illness diagnoses in 2012, compared to 39 percent in 2007. In addition to the mental health findings, the AP report revealed that:

54 percent of young people in detention were confirmed to be gang members;
Of the 1,400 young people in the Texas Juvenile Justice Department’s custody, at least 1,100 — representing about 80 percent of the state’s underage inmates — had substance abuse issues; and
More than half of the state’s juvenile department inmates had been diagnosed with a conduct disorder.

Facing Budget Cuts, Virginia Mulls Sending Special Needs Youth to Maximum Security Facilities

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Plans to house young people with special needs at a maximum security juvenile correctional center have drawn criticisms in Virginia, reports NBC affiliate WWBT. Beaumont Maximum Security Juvenile Correctional Center in Powhatan, Va., is scheduled to become the new home for several special needs young people who are currently housed at the Oak Ridge Juvenile Correctional Center in Chesterfield, Va. Facility officials believe an initial cost of $40,000 will be needed to renovate a wing designed specifically to hold special needs young people at the center; the youth being transferred range in ages from 12 to 20, with WWBT reporting that virtually all of the new residents are operating on “4th grade” levels. In 2011, a Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice report said such a move was “not viable,” citing concerns about how effectively low-functioning young people could be treated at the facility. Center officials, however, told WWBT that young people with special needs would not be housed alongside the rest of the facility’s maximum security population when the proposed transition takes place later this spring.

Study Asks, Which Onset Behaviors Best Predict Juvenile Delinquency?

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A new study in the Journal of Criminal Justice  examined the relationship between onset juvenile antisocial behavior and career delinquency, with researchers citing arrests and other police contacts as the most likely indicators of future criminality for adolescents. Researchers analyzed 252 young people -- 152 boys and 100 girls -- in juvenile placement in Pennsylvania. Measuring three types of “antisocial onsets” -- onset of law violations and rule-breaking, onset of arrest or other police contacts and onset of referral to juvenile courts -- researchers conducted various “head-to-head” tests to determine which type of onset behavior was most consistently associated with long-term delinquency. Using self-reports, researchers collected onset behavior data, additionally assessing young people for psychopathy with the Youth Psychopathic Traits Inventory (YPI) instrument. Among the subjects, researchers indicated that 130 young people -- a little more than half the entire population studied -- reported diagnoses of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or conduct disorder (CD).

Study Argues Early Exposure To Lead May be Factor In Juvenile Crime

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A new study published in the International Journal of Liability and Scientific Enquiry explores an unexpected factor as a possible contributor to juvenile delinquency: early childhood exposure to lead. According to the study, early exposure to high lead levels can result in an array of developmental problems, from behavioral issues to lowered intelligence to hearing impairment. “Very small amounts of lead are associated with toxicity,” Summer Miller, a researcher from the Southern University Law Center, is quoted in a press release. “It has been reported that levels as low as 10 micrograms per deciliter show enough lead exposure to diagnose lead poisoning.”

She states that lead poisoning has a “progressive effect over time,” and since symptoms of toxicity include typical ailments like chest pains and headaches, high exposure detections generally go unnoticed. As a result, greater education regarding toxic metals and their potential effects on the nervous systems of children are necessary, she believes.

Looking Back and Casting Forward: An Emerging Shift for Juvenile Justice in America

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This story produced by the Chicago Bureau. The close of 2012 focused so narrowly on terrible events and startling numbers - the Newtown massacre, for example, or Chicago’s sharp rise in homicides - some major criminal justice developments were nearly squeezed out of the national conversation. Take the statements made just over a week ago by Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who vowed to take on the tricky issue of the skewed racial picture in the county’s corrections and justice system, including within the juvenile justice system. Speaking to a group of reporters, the news – including a statement that she will “work with the actors in the public safety arena” to lessen the overall corrections population and push alternatives to locking up non-violent offenders – the story got little more than a day’s play on the airwaves and in other media. Always outspoken, the board president served many years as an alderman fighting for various social justice causes, including race and drug issues (she at one point challenged the validity of any national “war on drugs”).

Are Infants that Grow Up in Recession-Ravaged Homes Likelier to Become Delinquents?

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A study recently published in the Archives of General Psychiatry suggests that children adversely affected by economic downturns as infants may be likelier to engage in delinquent behaviors and substance abuse when they are older adolescents and young adults. Culling data from 1997’s National Longitudinal Study of Youth, researchers at the State University of New York’s Upstate Medical University examined a nationally representative sample of almost 9,000 young people born between 1980 and 1984. According to the study, infants exposed to a 1 percent deviation from regional unemployment rate average were found to have greater odds of using marijuana, smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol, as well as a greater likelihood than their cohorts of being arrested, affiliating with gangs or engaging in both petty or major theft. Researchers sought to examine the potential consequences of the 1980 and 1981 to 1982 recessions on adolescents, in particular the possibility that living in an economically-disadvantaged home during the timeframe was likelier to produce a young person involved in substance abuse or criminal activity. In late 1982, the national unemployment rate stood at 10.8 percent - the highest such rate in the United States since the Great Depression.

Childhood Trauma Threatens National Well-Being: DOJ Task Force

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WASHINGTON, D.C. - Two out of three children in the United States experience or witness violence, crime or abuse while growing up, a public health crisis that harms their emotional, physical and intellectual development and makes them more likely to perpetrate the same trauma upon their own children, a national task force appointed by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said this week. The long-term well-being of the country is at stake unless federal and local governments and their communities act to reduce the incidence and impact of such trauma upon young Americans, the National Task Force on Children Exposed to Violence concluded in its final report. The report detailed 56 policy recommendations for reducing such exposure to trauma and treating its fallout. Such exposure could occur anywhere, the report said: at home, at school, in the community and on the Internet. “There is a moral component to this question,” Holder said at a public meeting of the federal interagency Coordinating Council for Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, which approved the report’s release.

Does Decriminalization Work? Dramatic Decrease in California Marijuana Arrests Has Some Analysts Saying Yes

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Marijuana possession arrests in California plummeted by 86 percent following the passage of a law decriminalizing possession of small amounts of the drug, according to recently-released data from the Criminal Justice Statistics Center. Arrests fell from 54,900 in 2010 to just 7,800 in 2011. Mike Males, of the Center on Juvenile & Criminal Justice, said the law may “prove much more effective in reducing simple marijuana arrests than Proposition 19, or Washington’s and Oregon’s marijuana legalization initiatives passed this year.” Nationwide, he said, the current trend toward legalization might cut total marijuana arrests by half. In California, felony arrests for marijuana sales and manufacturing dropped from 16,600 in 2010 to 14,100 in 2011, a decrease of 17 percent for adults and 10 percent for young people. Additionally, from 2010 to 2011, the total number of marijuana arrests in the state plummeted by 70 percent.

New Report: Minors in ‘Solitary’ Hallucinate, Harm Themselves

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Some minors locked up alone for all but a couple of hours to protect them from adults, other threats

A new report on solitary confinement of minors includes harrowing descriptions of the psychological and physical impact ‘solitary’ has on young people, as well as surprising revelations about why some authorities resort to isolating juveniles. In “Growing Up Locked Down,” the groups Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union report that a substantial number of detained juveniles minors are placed in solitary confinement as punishment, or as part of their rehabilitation plans – or even for their own protection. Some custodians, researchers found, say they put juveniles who are in adult lockups into solitary confinement as a way to protect them from attacks by adult inmates. Some minors interviewed said they were segregated in juvenile facilities for the same reason – to protect them from threats – and let out only for a couple of hours a day. Released in October, the report is based on research and interviews conducted in local and state detention facilities in Florida, Colorado, Michigan, New York and Pennsylvania.

National Academies Report Says Teen Neurology Should Shape Juvenile Justice Reform Efforts

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A new report from the National Research Council suggests that juvenile justice reform efforts should be grounded in the emerging understanding of adolescent development. “Evidence of significant changes in brain structure and function during adolescence strongly suggests that these cognitive tendencies characteristic of adolescents are associated with biological immaturity of the brain and with an imbalance among developing brain systems," the report says.