NCJ Number
193025
Date Published
2001
Length
73 pages
Annotation
This monograph aims to provide community leaders, policymakers, community agencies, government agencies, legislators, service providers, professional organizations, and child advocates with an overview of areas in juvenile justice that require reform and specific recommendations for reform.
Abstract
The recommendations came from a task force established by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in 1999. The task force analysis and recommendations focused on forensic evaluations, competency to stand trial, standards for juvenile detention and confinement facilities, health care in the juvenile justice system, females in the juvenile justice system, and disproportionate minority confinement. It also examined and made recommendations on seclusion and restraint standards in juvenile corrections, meeting the educational needs of youth in juvenile justice facilities, juvenile court waiver, juvenile sex offenders, juvenile capital punishment, drug courts, mental health courts, peer courts, and model programs. The analysis noted that 500,000 youths under age 18 are admitted to local juvenile detention facilities annually, and over 65,000 juveniles are admitted to longterm juvenile correctional facilities. Problems include the risk of assault and suicide, lack of mental health screening, minority overrepresentation at all stages of the juvenile justice system, inadequate attention to specific problems of female juvenile offenders. Recommended actions include increased involvement of mental health professionals at each stage of juvenile processing, national standards for competency to stand trial based on a developmental framework, juvenile detainees’ full access to medically indicated assessment and treatment, guidelines to eliminate racial disparities in confinement, national policies on the use of seclusion and restraint on youths, and increased funding related to alternatives to adjudication. Chapter reference lists (Author abstract modified)