| Abstract: | A significant number of youth and young adults who use drugs have fallen through the cracks of our juvenile and adult justice systems in terms of receiving any meaningful services. The situation is due to a number of factors, including the reliance on adolescent self reporting utilized by most of the research, the failure of justice and other systems to routinely assess youth for either current drug use or indicia of drug use (e.g., "resiliency" or "protective" factors), and confidentiality and other restrictions pertaining to access to juvenile justice system information. Yet, retrospective reviews of drug use patterns for adults in the criminal justice system make it clear that drug use is beginning for most of these offenders during adolescence or before. This article urges (1) juvenile courts to develop mechanisms for systematically screening youth who come into the system for drug use and/or propensities for drug use and (2) adult courts to embark on similar strategies and to develop adolescent tracks that would be geared to providing the services these youth (despite their chronological age) need and would otherwise not receive in the adult system. |
