OBJECTIVES This study examined the utility of screening adjudicated juvenile offenders for mental health symptoms at intake to the State of Washington Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration. The authors assessed the ability of a screening measure, the Massachusetts Youth Screening Inventory, second edition (MAYSI-2), to identify youths with mental health problems and co-occurring substance use ...

Despite increasing interest in the mental health needs of children involved in the juvenile justice system, relatively little is known about the base rates of specific mental disorders in this population due to the absence of any national prevalence data. In 1992, two reviews of the existing empirical literature (Otto, Greenstein, Johnson, Friedman, 1992; Wierson, Forehand, & Frame, 1992) both ...

Drug and juvenile justice involved youths show remarkably high rates of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/sexually transmitted disease (STD) risk behaviors. However, existing interventions aimed at reducing adolescent HIV risk behavior have rarely targeted these vulnerable young adolescents, and many approaches focus on individual-level change without attention to family or contextual influenc...

Background The population in juvenile justice institutions is heterogeneous, as juveniles display a large variety of individual, psychological and social problems. This variety of risk factors and personal characteristics complicates treatment planning. Insight into subgroups and specific profiles of problems in serious juvenile offenders is helpful in identifying important treatment indicators...

OBJECTIVE This study examines the effects of the Availability, Responsiveness, and Continuity (ARC) organizational intervention strategy on caseworker turnover, climate, and culture in a child welfare and juvenile justice system. METHOD Using a pre-post, randomized blocks, true experimental design, 10 urban and 16 rural case management teams were randomly assigned to either the ARC organizati...

BACKGROUND Inhalant use is among the most pernicious and poorly understood forms of adolescent substance use. Many youth in the juvenile justice system have used inhalants, but little is known about inhalant use disorders (IUDs) in antisocial youth populations. The purpose of this study was to examine the prevalence, clinical features, and latent structure of DSM-IV IUDs in a state population o...

Recent empirical research has shown that juveniles do not achieve complete psycho-social maturity until post-adolescence and that processing juveniles as adults in the criminal justice system can be associated with elevated rates of criminal recidivism. In response to these as well as other concerns, a number of states have recently raised their legal ages of majority in the hopes of reducing j...

Addressing the mental health needs of youth in the juvenile justice system is a key imperative for all stakeholders interested in preventing and reducing juvenile delinquency. Despite the substantially higher rates of mental health disorders among these youth, services and approaches are fraught with barriers including inadequate assessment, fragmentation, and deficit-based intervention. Compre...

The rehabilitation potential of mentally ill juvenile offenders should be at the forefront of the forensic mental health debate, because these youths mature into adults who may continue to have mental disorders and to offend. In view of this concern, the importance of using juvenile detention facilities as vehicles for youth reform cannot be overstated. Juvenile justice reform is a relatively r...