What happens to juvenile offenders during and after their incarceration is the focus of The California Endowment’s Healthy Returns Initiative (HRI), which is working with five county probation departments to improve access to health and mental health services for adolescents in detention facilities and to ensure continuity of care upon their release.
addressing critical mental health needs
According to national estimates, as many as 70 percent of adolescents in juvenile justice systems struggle with mental health or co-occurring disorders, 20 percent have a serious mental disorder, and at least 10 percent have a serious medical condition. Many have come through the foster care system, and as a population are among the most at-risk with the least access to services.
“Kids in the juvenile justice system have lots and lots of potential that’s often restricted by their behavioral and emotional problems,” says Gwen Foster, senior program officer who oversees The Endowment’s statewide grant-making in the area of mental health and manages the Healthy Returns Initiative. “Although being held in juvenile detention facilities is a negative experience, it also affords opportunities to provide services for youths in detention and when they return to the community.”
“The probation system has to balance dual roles of law enforcement and human services provider,” Foster explains. “Probation leaders acknowledge that it’s difficult to maintain a high priority on services for juveniles in a policy environment that prioritizes crime suppression.”
The Initiative is working closely with probation departments to forge partnerships with county mental health departments, community-based health care providers, schools, and family members. Launched in 2005, the $6.5 million project provides four-year planning and implementation grants designed to strengthen the capacity of probation departments in Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Ventura, Humboldt, and Los Angeles counties.
The five counties were selected based on criteria that included the probation department’s interest and readiness to address health and behavioral health issues, and willingness of probation department leadership, juvenile court judges and boards of supervisors to support the Initiative’s goals. The five counties also reflect diversity among California’s rural and urban communities, and among racial, ethnic and cultural populations that are frequently disproportionately involved in the juvenile justice system.
preliminary evaluation results positive
Barry Krisberg, president of the nonprofit National Council on
Crime and Delinquency (NCCD) and a highly regarded researcher
on juvenile justice, is overseeing evaluation of the Healthy Returns
Initiative’s processes and outcomes.
“There’s been much talk about the growing number of mentally challenged youths going into the juvenile justice system, but not a lot of action,” observes Krisberg. “The Endowment has set out to change the paradigm, to make the system—traditionally focused on punishment—consider mental health issues front and center. A key ingredient is not just to provide mental health services for youths who are locked up, but to see it as a community and family enterprise that is ongoing.”
Now roughly halfway into the project evaluation, Krisberg says the system seems to be “getting it.” Preliminary results are encouraging and include a substantial increase in the capacity of juvenile hall counselors and probation officers to recognize and address mental disorders and other health problems; increased efforts to enlist families and community-based resources in case planning and follow-up services; increased collaboration among public agencies; and a pushing of boundaries for how to finance new aftercare models.
initiative's broad scope includes systems of change
In addition to the county-level projects, serving more than 400 detainees a year, the Healthy Returns Initiative supports technical assistance and professional development for grantees and annual convenings to share best practices and lessons learned. HRI also seeks to increase access to mental health services for underserved populations by taking the care to where the people are—in this case, by providing services to youths in juvenile hall, where the prevalence of mental health and substance abuse issues is estimated to be about 60 percent. The Initiative is also testing the theory that increased access in non-mental health settings will reduce stigma as a barrier to service delivery.
Ultimately, the Initiative aims to identify and advocate for public policies that will sustain access to health and mental health services. To that end, The Endowment has partnered with David Steinhert, director of the Juvenile Justice Program of the California-based nonprofit research and policy institute Commonweal, a leading voice for innovation and change in the juvenile justice system. Steinhart will manage the “California Juvenile Justice—Mental Health Policy Project,” focusing on policy issues of joint concern that can help HRI counties sustain their programs and help other counties replicate these programs.
“Aftercare has been an area of abysmal performance in the juvenile justice system,” says Steinhart, even though it is crucial for the “crossover caseload” of youths who are in the juvenile justice system and also have mental health issues. “We need to focus on helping kids get the mental health services they need, both during and after the time they spend in a state or local secure facility.”
The Healthy Returns Initiative, with its effective multipronged approach, is already drawing national attention. NCCD’s Barry Krisberg staffs a blue-ribbon state panel on juvenile justice in Florida that is looking to The Endowment’s efforts in California as a model. “The real contribution of The Endowment is to bring to the justice system a public health perspective that stresses interagency collaboration, which is the opposite of how prisons usually work,” says Krisberg. “I don’t know of anyone else in the country doing anything like this.”
for more information
National Council on Crime and Delinquency
www.nccd-crc.org
Commonweal
www.commonweal.org
Healthy Returns Initiative Strengthens Mental Health Services in the Juvenile Justice System
“The California Endowment has set out to change the paradigm, making the system - traditionally focused on punishment - consider mental health issues front and center.”
— Barry Krisberg,
National Council on Crime and Delinquency
Focus On Barry Krisberg
Barry Krisberg has been with the Oakland-based National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD) for more than 30 years, and its president for the past 14 years. A national expert on juvenile justice issues, Krisberg has “made a career out of listening to troubled young people”—a compassionate attitude that has roots in his own childhood.
“When I was growing up in Brooklyn, my dad owned the proverbial corner candy store. The local gangsters used to hang out there and they were nice to me and my family. So,” he says with a smile, “I didn’t start out with a very moralistic view of criminals.”
Krisberg went on to earn a master’s degree in criminology and a doctorate in sociology, both from the University of Pennsylvania. He moved out West in 1971 to teach at U.C. Berkeley and held a number of education posts before joining NCCD in 1993. Today, Krisberg is back on college campuses, committed to getting the next generation involved in criminal justice reform.
As the father of two sons, now 26 and 30, Krisberg has more than an academic interest in the subject. “I’ve experienced up close and personal the challenges of raising young men in this society. When I give talks I ask the audience, ‘Who has teenagers?’ And I say to them, ‘Then you have a vested interest in the juvenile justice system.’”
In addition to its important work promoting positive change in the juvenile and criminal justice fields, the NCCD has established a national media awards program to recognize and encourage thoughtful and balanced approaches to these themes in literature, film and television. Krisberg strongly believes that “the way to reach the public is through the media.” He vividly recalls the impact of a 1970s Archie Bunker episode in which a parolee comes to work in Archie’s house; and, more recently, of Bebe Moore Campbell’s 72 Hour Hold, “a novel worth a thousand research studies.”
