Reclaiming Future’s JMATE Updates and Live Blog

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Our friends at Reclaiming Futures have settled in at the Joint Meeting of Adolescent Treatment Effiectiveness (JMATE) and have been live blogging the whole thing on their blog. Read on for all the updates. DAY ONE

JMATE 2012: Ask a Judge: Demystifying Juvenile Court and How Judges and Treatment Providers Can Partner Together Successfully by Liz Wu

Earlier this afternoon, I sat in on a JMATE panel with three judges who discussed how Reclaiming Futures works in their courts and why other courts should consider implementing the model. Judge Capizzi of Dayton, Ohio, began the presentation with the problem: too many teens today are struggling with drugs, alcohol and crime. Eighty percent of the youth Judge Capizzi sees have alcohol or other drug problems and many are self medicating.

New Smartphone App Aims to Prevent Date Rape

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A recently released iPhone app may help teenagers and college students take a stand against sexual violence, according to Nancy Schwatzman founder and executive director of the app's developer, The Line Campaign, Inc. The app, called Circle of 6, uses GPS and text messaging to alert friends to your location if a date goes bad, or worse. “It is clear that there is a real need, and excitement about how young people can harness the technology they are already using,” said Schwartzman in a recent press release for the new iPhone app. More than 19,000 users have downloaded the app since its release last month. Schwartzman said that by the end of the year, she hopes that the application will be downloaded by an additional 10,000 teens and college students. The Circle of 6 application uses a number of pre-installed short message service (SMS) notifications, which are mapped to six friends or family members on a user's smartphone. Using the phone's GPS friends and family can locate the user.

Nationwide Funding for State Pre-K Programs Lowest in a Decade, Report Finds

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For decades, study after study have shown that children who attend pre-kindergarten programs are better prepared for the rest of their education, beginning in kindergarten and lasting all the way to college. They perform better on tests, repeat grades less often and need less special education than kids who did not attend pre-k regardless of socioeconomic status, according to research by The Pew Center on the States. But funding for pre-k programs across the country is steadily declining. In fact, a new report released today by the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) at the Brunswick, N.J. campus of Rutgers University, finds most states aren’t even giving their pre-k programs enough cash to maintain quality standards and calling the “overall picture” of pre-k education “dim.”

The report, “The State of Preschool 2011 Yearbook,” ranks the states on their funding of pre-k programs and their availability to children using 10 benchmarks of quality pre-k standards. Only five state programs met all of NIEER’s 10 benchmarks.

Arkansas Juvenile Justice Reform: A Blueprint for National Success?

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In 1991, The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette published an article on the state’s juvenile justice system bearing the ominous headline “Stacked in centers, youths in trouble fall through the cracks.” The story also featured comments from a consultant, who said  –  two years prior  –  “too many youths who could better be served in community-based treatment were being inappropriately and unnecessarily held in state confinement.”

Over the next seven years, matters only worsened for the state’s juvenile justice system. In 1998, The Democrat-Gazette published a five-part series entitled “Juvenile Justice: The War Within” detailing the failings of the state’s juvenile incarceration sites. Three years after the series was published, two juveniles at the Alexander Youth Services Center – the state’s largest juvenile incarceration facility – committed suicide within a span of six months. A year later, the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice conducted an investigation of the facility, determining that the conditions at Alexander were so substandard that the constitutional rights of detained youth were being violated. By 2007, state officials decided it was time to completely overhaul Arkansas’ juvenile justice system, culminating with the enactment of state Senate Resolution 31, which authorized a comprehensive study with the intent of reducing “reliance on large juvenile correctional facilities” within the state.

About 46,400 immigrants claiming U.S. children deported in six months

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This story originally appeared on iWatchnews.org by the Center for Public Integrity

Immigration officials, advocates clash over policies

A new report is adding fuel to a growing debate over the impact of deportations of illegal immigrants who have roots in communities and U.S.-born children.  Between January and June of 2011, immigration officials deported more than 46,400 people who said they were parents of children who were born in the U.S. and therefore U.S. citizens, according to a new study for Congress prepared by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. No solid information exists to measure what happens to deported parents’ children. Some leave with their parents, others remain here with family members or on their own and some may go into foster care. In 2009, the Department of Homeland Security issued a report with an estimate that about 100,000 parents of U.S. children were deported over the course of a decade between 1998 and 2007. Congress directed ICE to begin tracking numbers to better gauge the extent of this phenomenon.

After Edits, “Bully” Receives Lower Rating from MPAA

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A wider (and younger) audience will be allowed to see the documentary “Bully” in theaters thanks to a new edit of the film that received a “PG-13” rating. The film was initially rated “R” by the Motion Picture Association of America’s (MPAA) ratings board meaning anyone under 17-years-old must be accompanied by an adult, Reuters reports. The new rating lowers that to 13-years-old. Lee Hirsch, director of the anti-bully film, cut three scenes because of language but left in a key scene for which he lobbied hard. "I'm just glad that we held strong.

Republican Debates Light on Questions About Children’s Issues, Report Finds

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To date, the Republican presidential candidates have fought their way through 20 debates, collectively fielding 1,037 questions across a broad range of topics. But a new report by Voices for America’s Children shows only a tiny percentage of questions—fewer than 2 percent—focused on child policy issues such as education, child health or child poverty. “While children represent 24 percent of the population and 100 percent of our future,” Bill Bentley, president and CEO of Voices for America’s Children, said in a press release, “questions about their future constituted less than 2 percent of all questions raised in those debates. America’s more than 74 million children can’t vote, but they should be heard, especially in a time of widespread hardship for families.”

The report notes the candidates themselves were more likely to raise children’s issues in their responses than the moderators were in their questions. Only 17 questions addressing education, child health, welfare and poverty were asked of the candidates.

Justice Department Expands Youth Violence Prevention Program

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WASHINGTON - U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced this week that the Justice Department will expand to 10 – from six – the number of cities participating in the National Forum on Youth Violence Prevention. The planned expansion comes as the original participants continue to struggle through breaking down walls among government agencies and with community-based groups. The National Forum, established 18 months ago, is designed to allow the cities involved to fashion their individual crime prevention programs that emphasize more comprehensive approaches across government agencies. An initial evaluation by Temple University and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York found that all six cities showed some “positive indicators” of the initiative but there were no “profound perceptions” among local residents of a reduction in juvenile violence. Representatives of the six cities – Chicago, Boston, Detroit, Memphis and Salinas and San Jose, Calif.

Autism Spectrum Disorder Rates Increasing, CDC Report Finds

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According to new Centers for Disease Control data, the prevalence rates for autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in children has increased, with an estimated one in 88 eight-year-olds in the United States currently diagnosed with an ASD such as autism or Asperger’s syndrome. In a Surveillance Summary published last week in the Morbidity and Mortality Report, the CDC notes a 23 percent jump in autism spectrum disorder diagnoses from 2006 to 2008, with an estimated 78 percent increase in cases from 2002 to 2008. According to the findings, the diagnosis rates between black and Hispanic children and whites are closing, with African-American children being diagnosed at a rate of 10.2 cases per 1,000 compared to 12 cases per 1,000 for Caucasian children. The new data reports that 7.9 in 1,000 Hispanic children may be affected by disorders such as autism, Asperger’s syndrome or Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS ). According to the findings, boys are five times more likely than girls to be diagnosed with autism or Asperger’s syndrome.

Young Inmates Doing Thyme in the Prison Garden

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On a football-field-sized stretch of land beside the Walton County Jail in tiny Monroe, Ga., a tractor tiller turned weed-choked rows of red clay slowly, methodically, unleashing the earthy smell of hope and the clean, blank slate of spring. At the edge of the field, a group of men in black-and-white striped uniforms awaited instructions with a guard under an evergreen, its shade a promise of future luxury when the sure-to-be-blazing sun of a Southern summer makes working in the elements more of a challenge than on this crisp, cloudy morning. A 22-year-old young man in the group breathed an audible sigh of relief when he saw DeDe Harris, the executive director of Walton Wellness and the heart and soul of this garden. She called his name, Jaylen, in recognition, and asked him how he was doing. He replied, "Better, now," while smiling at her.