Reducing Juvenile Justice Contact Among Multi-System Involved Youth

• In Event: Juveniles and Mental Illness

Abstract

As part of an effort to reduce the number of juveniles referred for adjudication, local Iowa county-level officials from juvenile justice, mental health, and local service providers collaborated to create a program designed to divert multi-system involved youth away from further justice system involvement or over-utilizing emergency psychiatric services. A multi-disciplinary collaboration of stake-holders worked together to realign existing community resources to provide immediate emergency substance use or mental health services to youth in crisis who were at risk of justice involvement. The project’s goal was to reduce the number inpatient commitments and judicial referrals for these children while also utilizing less invasive strategies to respond to the needs of multi-system involved youth and their families. While actively involving mental health service providers, crisis intervention providers, residential housing providers, hospitals, school-based remedial service providers, juvenile justice workers, and substance abuse prevention providers, project staff was able to serve 154 multi-system involved youth from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds. Project participants showed reduced psychiatric hospitalizations, reduced residential placements, reduced justice system contact, and reduced detention rates by the end of the program.

Author

• Monic P. Behnken, Iowa State University