Training and Technology

By Kathy M. Brame
Training Manager, Academy for Staff Development
Virginia Department of Corrections

December/January 2012, Corrections Today

Implementing Evidence-Based Practices and Measuring Success

Dean Aufderheide, Ph.D.
Director of Mental Health Services
Florida Department of Corrections

Lorelei Ammons, Psy.D.
Mental Health Program Administrator
Kansas Department of Corrections
October/November 2011, Corrections Today

Editor's Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily the American Correctional Assocation.

There is no doubt that self-injurious behaviors appear to be on the rise in the U.S. In the early 1980s, the rate was about 400 per 100,000 citizens.1 Within two decades, the rate had more than doubled to about 1,000 per 100,000.2 Individuals most likely to engage in self-injurious behaviors were identified as those with serious emotional disturbance or with a severe and persistent mental illness. It is not surprising, therefore, that since the percentage of prison offenders with serious mental illness has tripled in the past three decades to about 15 to 20 percent today, self-injurious behaviors occur with greater frequency among mentally ill offenders than those with no mental illness.3

The Problem of Self-Injurious Behaviors
In the past several years, the management of self-injurious offenders has emerged as a critical concern within the correctional mental health field and has developed into a problematic public safety/public health issue in communities throughout America. Every day, every hour, offenders in America's prisons and jails cut themselves with sharp objects, insert paperclips in their abdomens, swallow harmful substances and objects, and bang their heads against the wall. These self-destructive behaviors often occur with conscious, nonsuicidal intent and are collectively categorized under a variety of labels, such as self-injurious behavior, deliberate self-harm, self-inflicted violence, parasuicide, self-mutilation, etc. While only a small percentage (two-three percent) of the offender population repetitively engages in these deliberate self-harm behaviors, they frustrate staff, disrupt institutional operations and incur significant medical costs.


Identifying Critical Issues
In tackling the challenges associated with self-injurious behaviors, researchers and clinicians have begun to identify and address the salient issues facing correctional systems in order to gain an improved outcome for offenders as well as correctional facilities. Critical concerns that have been identified include the need to standardize the nomenclature describing the spectrum of self-injurious behaviors; standardize a classification system for distinguishing the behaviors that would fall into the "self-injurious" behavior category; understand the etiology and identify motivational factors; establish uniformity in training and programming that emphasizes interdisciplinary communication, collaboration, control and care; and develop core competencies for mental health staff in the identification, assessment, and evidence-based treatment of self-injurious behaviors. It is imperative, therefore, that the mental health leadership develops a national strategy for establishing a collaborative and integrated approach for the management of offenders that engage in deliberate self-harm behaviors.

Classification of Self-Injurious Behaviors
Understanding the different etiologies of self-injurious behavior is a "must" first step for correctional organizations. In order to develop an appropriate classification system, each self-harming behavior occurrence should be evaluated to ascertain motivation, lethality and modes of intent (e.g. tension reduction, instrumental, mood alteration, suicide, etc.). Additional information may include demographic information, disciplinary history, housing assignment at the time of the self-injury, diagnostic history, costs of off-site associated medical treatments (such as emergency room treatment, outpatient hospital procedures, or inpatient hospitalizations), mental health history, history of medical problems, results of a suicidal risk assessment and any other pertinent historical information. Targeted analysis of the data could be utilized to create profiles for self-injurious behaviors (self-injury profiles) and to link evidence-based treatments with the etiologies and core issues surrounding the behaviors.

Multidisciplinary Treatment Planning
In managing and treating self-injurious offenders, holding a multidisciplinary treatment planning meeting should occur after the behavioral cause is established and classified, relative to the self-injurious behavior. Multidisciplinary treatment planning should involve as many correctional interdisciplinary staff (e.g. administration, operations, medical, dietary, chaplaincy service, activity director, volunteers, employment specialists, etc.) as necessary to collaboratively support the treatment team's goals. Behavioral management plans may also be considered and can be an effective tool for a select subset of self-injurious offenders; if implemented, however, the plan must be very carefully supervised by mental health staff. Ultimately, it is the responsibility of the treatment team to establish a management and treatment plan that appropriately balances risk needs, staff resources and environmental logistics.

Evidence-Based Treatment
When the treatment goals have been established for a self-injurious offender, the mental health team may choose from a variety of treatment techniques. Forensic-focused dialectical behavioral therapy models, nonviolent crisis intervention, trauma-informed care programs, as well as other manual-guided cognitive-behavioral therapy programs are some examples of evidence-based practices. Integrating interventions focusing individually on trauma, stress, addictions, criminal thinking and serious mental illnesses into one intervention or, "poly-programming," can have a synergistic effect that achieves successful outcomes in managing offenders that engage in serial self-injurious behaviors. Before deciding on treatment programming, however, it is crucial to ensure the therapeutic outcomes are measurable to determine management and treatment effectiveness.

Collaborative Leadership
With mental health staff guiding the multidisciplinary treatment teams and integrating evidence-based practices in self-injury risk intervention and reduction programs, it is essential that leaders in correctional mental health establish strong, collaborative relationships with their correctional leadership. By strengthening shared responsibilities and embracing the principles of risk, need and responsivity, mental health professionals can lead the way in attaining improved outcomes with this difficult subpopulation of offenders. Accordingly, the following broad-spectrum goals are recommended to the mental health leadership:4

• Goal 1: Promote awareness that self-injury in correctional settings is a public safety/public
  health problem that is preventable;

• Goal 2: Standardize the nomenclature used to describe the spectrum of self-injury phenomena
  and develop a uniform classification system;

• Goal 3: Develop evidence-based programming for the identification, assessment and treatment
  of self-injurious behaviors;

• Goal 4: Promote efforts to reduce access to means and methods of self-injury;

• Goal 5: Develop and promote core competencies for effective clinical and professional practice;

• Goal 6: Implement training for interdisciplinary staff for recognition of offenders at risk for self
  injurious behaviors; and

• Goal 7: Promote and support empirical research on self-injurious behaviors that occur in
  correctional settings.

Working with correctional officials and other stakeholders, the mental health leadership can use these goals as a framework to develop a national strategy for collaborative programming and management of self-injurious behaviors in correctional settings.

ENDNOTES

1. Pattison, E.M. and J. Kahan. 1983. The deliberate self-harm syndrome. American Journal of Psychiatry, 140(7): 867-72.

2. Favazza, A.R. 1998. The coming of age of self-mutilation. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 186(5): 259-68.

3. Treatment Advocacy Center. April 2009. Treatment advocacy center briefing paper: Jails and prisons. Arlington, Va.: Treatment Advocacy Center. Retrieved from http://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/resources/consequences-of-lack-of-treatment/jail/1371.

4. Fagan, T., S. Helfand, J. Cox and D. Aufderheide. 2010. Self-injurious behavior in correctional settings. Journal of Correctional Health Care, 16:48-66.

Lessons Learned in Preparing for Disaster
James M. LeBlanc
Secretary
Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections

August/September 2011, Corrections Today

Editor's Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily the American Correctional Association.

In corrections, a disaster is only a phone call away. When the phone rings, it doesn't matter if staff
are reporting to you that the emergency at hand is caused by an offender's poor decision-making, an unforeseen medical emergency, an industrial or nuclear situation or a natural force, the agency must have a plan of action prepared, practiced and ready to implement. It is practical for every agency to have an emergency preparedness plan in place, but being prepared to execute the plan is what makes the plan viable.

Louisiana's Department of Corrections has survived a unique array of disaster situations; situations that may not have been well-scripted in our plans when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita visited Louisiana's coast in 2005 and our plans were called to action for the first time on a statewide level. Until that point, the department had implemented existing plans in controlled situations and with only minimal experience with mass evacuations, mass feeding and working hand-in-hand with other agencies and the community. However, since that time, we have become an experienced resource to our state and our corrections colleagues across the nation.

Katrina taught us a great deal about rescue missions and the importance of having a central depository for information during an emergency. It was during that experience that the incident management center concept really came to fruition and we learned that having the right individuals in a central location taking information, coordinating communications and making decisions made executing plans on the ground more efficient. Since that time, we have learned that plan development requires that these plans be tested and continually updated as lessons are learned and resources change. Louisiana has had many opportunities to do just that through Hurricane Gustav in August 2008, Hurricane Ike in September 2008, the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in April 2010 and recently, the risk of massive flooding from the high waters rushing through the Mississippi River basin. On May 9, 2011, we implemented a plan that evacuated and returned 2,090 maximum-security offenders from the Louisiana State Penitentiary. It was an evacuation that had never, in the history of this department, been conducted and we were able to accomplish the moves in five strategically planned days.

Even today, with all the experience we have under our belt, we are conducting after-action reviews of our plans and modifying them using the lessons most recently learned. As the waters of the Mississippi River are receding and the threat has diminished, we can safely say we are even more prepared.
We know from these experiences that the training and expertise of our staff make the corrections field a valuable resource to other agencies. As a result, the Louisiana Department of Corrections is well-represented in the state's Homeland Security operations with a chair in the governor's Unified Command. As a key player at Louisiana's Governor's Office of Homeland Security, we are able to educate other agencies on the needs and role of corrections and build relationships to ensure mutual support. This has also helped us connect to local Homeland Security directors to build local relationships for area-specific incidents. Likewise, we are able to offer services and experiences to other agencies that they may not have otherwise known existed.

We have learned many lessons through our experiences, including that the entire state benefits when there is an orchestrated response. I believe that practice doesn't make perfect, but provides the opportunity to find plan flaws and make revisions, and supports efficient implementation. We learned from Katrina that assisting in the evacuation of local offenders in advance when there is a threat is far more effective and less costly than operating a rescue mission for more than 7,000 offenders. We could not have anticipated that our search experiences would prove valuable to recovering displaced caskets or that our training would lead us to assist with a devastated criminal justice system that had limited resources for making arrests and displaced court operations. Hurricane Rita taught us that we can free up emergency response workers for other duties by filling sandbags for the community using offender labor. Hurricanes Gustav and Ike taught us that providing support to our local agencies ultimately benefits our operations. For example, we loaned generators to our local water companies to help them provide water to the community, which also services our facilities. During the Deepwater Horizon spill, we realized the value of the relationships we've built with our sheriffs when we were called upon to execute quick classification reviews to fill available work program beds and provide labor support for the work that was done to protect Louisiana's coast.

In the most recent months, as water threatened to fill Louisiana's oldest and highest security prison farm, we learned that it takes far more time to move maximum-custody offenders than anticipated. We learned from this experience that innovative ideas make the most sense. For example, those offenders who were not moved from Louisiana's maximum-custody facility were placed in the unit closest to the levee. While it seems to be directly in harm's way, the reality was that it was the closest place on the farm to high land and would allow quick relocation via foot should a breach to our levee system have occurred.

Through all of these experiences, we've recognized that it is vitally important to conduct an annual inventory of resources available by location (i.e., buses, flex cuffs, rated capacity beds, generators, etc.), including those resources available to us through our partnerships with the local level (i.e., sheriff buses). We know now that nontraditional resource inventories are also a necessity. For instance, knowing how many staff members have experience driving buses, even though they don't do so as part of their day-to-day job, is valuable when conducting mass moves. Likewise, every experience has produced feedback from the offender population that being involved in emergency response efforts benefits them as well. It presents the opportunity for them to give back to the community, while also keeping them from feeling helpless when their own families are being affected by the disaster.

It cannot go without saying that as states across the country face the necessity to trim their budgets, being aware of the lack of resources for emergency response should not go unnoticed. We found in our recent evacuation that limited staffing meant we had to call on law enforcement partners such as state police, sheriffs, and our probation and parole staff, who aided in the process by providing security and transport escorts, and worked special details such as patrolling the levee looking for sand boils.

Being prepared for disaster is so much more than having a written plan for what will occur within the fences of our facilities. It requires a wide-angle view of the role of corrections in providing public safety. It requires educating others on your needs and capabilities. Most important, it requires practice to make response as near perfect as possible.

Together We Can Stop the Rape of Inmates
Lovisa Stannow
Executive Director
June/July 2011, Corrections Today

Editor's Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily the American Correctional Association.

Just Detention International Just one year ago, this would have been unthinkable." That's what ran through my mind as I sat in a room filled with ACA members and listened to prison rape survivor Scott Howard tell his story. Scott was part of Just Detention International's (JDI) panel at the 2011 ACA Winter Conference in San Antonio discussing how corrections officials and advocates can - and must - work together to end sexual abuse behind bars.

Howard described being raped and extorted by a white supremacist gang in a Colorado prison. He had begged officials for protection, only to be called a "whiner" and told that, as a gay man, he should expect to be targeted by one gang or another. For months, Howard was so afraid of other inmates that he refused to leave his cell.

There was total silence as he spoke. It was impossible to know what the audience was thinking. But Howard kept on, his voice never wavering - and when he finished, the room burst into applause. The deputy commissioner of a state correctional agency walked up to the podium and embraced him, saying, "Scott, it wasn't your fault."

I think of that hug as a symbol of the shift that has begun within the U.S. corrections community. Howard too was amazed. "They listened, they really listened," he said. "Even after what I went through, I've always believed that most prison staff would like to protect inmates. Today I had that feeling reaffirmed."

There is a new acceptance among corrections officials that sexual abuse in detention facilities is a much bigger problem than has generally been acknowledged. JDI is increasingly hearing more from prisons and jails seeking help and advice. Advocates are changing their approaches too, recognizing that no reform efforts can succeed if they aren't embraced by the men and women charged with implementing them. Both sides are agreeing to respect significant differences of opinion while noting each other's essential roles in this effort. The shift away from antagonism toward collaboration is critical - and long overdue. Collaboration is not easy, and it takes courage.

I believe that sexual violence in detention facilities constitutes a human rights crisis. I am appalled by the fact that some corrections officials abuse prisoners - or look the other way when inmates abuse each other. I feel strongly that prisons and jails should be subjected to external, independent monitoring, which results in publicly available reports. I consider it a moral outrage that the United States incarcerates one-quarter of the world's detainees. I also firmly believe that the vast majority of corrections officials are good people who want nothing more than safe facilities where everyone - staff or inmate - is treated with dignity.

JDI's panel in San Antonio included two such officials, Jodi Ramirez, health services manager, and Charles Contreras, investigative sergeant from the California Correctional Institution. They have long worked with JDI to end sexual abuse within the large prison. Still, in facilities across the country, new leaders like Ramirez and Contreras are emerging. They are implementing PREA even before national standards have been finalized by the U.S. attorney general. They are recognizing that prisoner rape is preventable, and that it's their job to stop it.

But individual trailblazers can't do the work alone. Sexual violence in detention facilities is a systemic problem. To end it, corrections leaders must show courage, even when it means criticizing (and punishing) people within their own ranks. When every single officer knows that sexual abuse will not be tolerated, and understands fully that silence does not equal loyalty when colleagues abuse their power - only then will we see the end to sexual victimization. In the coming years, JDI will continue to work side-by-side with corrections staff to protect everyone's right to be free from abuse.

Sustainable Design: Key to New Criminal Justice Complex

Gerald D. "Jerry" Hebert, II, AIA, NCARB, LEED AP

Principal Grace & Hebert Architects, APAC

April/May 2011, Corrections Today

When you think about sustaining our environment, there are potentially huge consequences in how our buildings are constructed and work. Owners who are not well informed, or who choose to not look at the operations and maintenance costs of a new facility are missing an opportunity to truly understand the impact of a building's life cycle cost.

A basic principle to understand about buildings is that the actual cost of construction is typically 15-30 percent of the building life cycle cost. With this large percentage attributable to life cycle cost, it becomes easy to understand the importance and value of sustainable buildings. The best time to address this is during the design process. Whether you are renovating, adding on to an existing facility, or building from the ground up, your architectural design team should be able help you understand your potential life cycle costs.

With the opportunity to "rebuild" in New Orleans, I have been fortunate to be able to implement sustainable design strategies for the New Orleans Parish Criminal Justice Complex. The issue of sustainable design and the continued operation of a corrections complex in the eye of another storm was at the forefront of Sheriff Marlin Gusman's vision. Hurricane Katrina taught us all many lessons about critical building systems, evacuations and how to get a facility quickly back in operation if forced to evacuate. The sheriff's experiences played a key role in many design decisions.

The new complex, a joint venture between Grace & Hebert Architects and Sizeler Thompson Brown, was designed using building information modeling (BIM). This technology has changed the way we produce a building, from concept to construction documents to final construction. The implementation of BIM in the design process allows us to create a virtual building. Within this virtual building, we are able to modify building components, orientation and other factors used in efficient energy modeling and design.

BIM enables owners and designers to carefully, and more accurately, review the payback of one building scheme relative to another over the life cycle of a building. Energy modeling with the BIM Model is relatively new and continuing to improve, and these tools have become vital to understanding and creating sustainable buildings. While it was not possible to implement all of the energy modeling strategies in the New Orleans project due to technology at the time we started design, we have currently implemented these strategies on other projects.

The first phase, the nerve center, is a central plant, kitchen and warehouse. The central plant will handle the distribution of the complex's utilities, including normal and emergency electrical power, and mechanical (hot and chilled water) for the heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system. The central plant is designed to handle the load of currently planned buildings and is located well above the flood level experienced during the hurricane. The new kitchen is designed to operate with a cook-chill process. The design allows the facility to store 30 days of meals in the cooler and freezers, with a complete generator back-up system.

The complex is designed with exercise yards adjacent to each housing unit. This arrangement creates a large glazed wall for natural lighting and allows inmates to access an area to the outside in case all mechanical systems fail. There are operable windows from the exercise yard to the housing unit to allow for natural ventilation from the day room while still maintaining a secure perimeter. Each housing unit will have recycling bins with central collection points located on each floor. Many other features relative to sustainability have been incorporated into the project within the interior finishes, concrete mix requirements, glazing, plumbing, lighting, energy management and heat recovery systems.
Sustainability has been addressed throughout the design process of the New Orleans Parish Criminal Justice Complex. However, the definition of a green building and what we do to achieve a green building is often confusing and misunderstood. LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is a baseline rating point system that has provided a standard to judge the operations and design of a building for sustainability. LEED is often confused and used synonymously with green building design. For example, a facility may achieve points for the reuse of an existing structure, using regional construction materials and many other items acknowledged in the LEED reference guide. LEED is at the forefront of pushing sustainability, but it is not always necessary to be LEED-certified to make educated, informed, sustainable design decisions.

The Cycle of Reform and Retrenchment in Juvenile Justice
Edward J. Loughran
Executive Director
February/March 2011, Corrections Today

Council of Juvenile Correctional Administratorshe history of juvenile justice in the U.S. dates back to the early 1800s with the opening of the first House of Refuge in New York City, and has evolved through repeated phases of reform and retrenchment. One of the earliest reforms was in Massachusetts. The Westboro School for Boys was constructed in 1846 and then closed with all Massachusetts training schools in the 1970s in a sweeping reform moving youths from institutions to small treatment centers located regionally around the state. The most significant retrenchment was in the 1990s, when the "get tough" movement returned juvenile justice systems to reliance on institutions as placement of choice. Today's emphasis on evidence-based programs is the most recent reform, moving delinquent and at-risk youths into community programs for the best chances of success.

I have experienced more than one of these cycles during my 40 years in the field and lived amidst reform as commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services (DYS) at the height of its leadership, when designated as the national model for juvenile corrections by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. At DYS and in my current role as executive director of the Council of Juvenile Correctional Administrators, I have seen the waves of reform come and go across the country and believe we are learning how to ensure the changes that improve the care, treatment and outcomes for youths and families do not get washed away with the next incoming tide.

Soon after I began my career as the director of a group home in New York City for the New York State Division for Youth, the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 passed Congress and required states to remove juveniles from adult jails and to end the practice of housing status offenders with juvenile delinquents in training schools. The requirements of the act ushered in the era of "least restrictive placement" for delinquents and remained the federal government's direction to state
systems.

However, the more lenient app-roach to handling juveniles in trouble with the law was short-lived. Politics, funding and construction dominated policy-making and practice. In 1978, the New York State Legislature rushed to pass the Juvenile Offender Act after a 15-year-old boy named Willie Bosket robbed and killed two laborers on successive weekend nights and bragged upon his capture, "You can't do anything to me, I'm only 15." New York, which already tried all 16-year olds charged with a crime in its criminal court, now required the automatic transfer of 13, 14- and 15-year-olds to criminal court for 17 different felony crimes from murder to burglary. Florida soon followed by giving prosecutors the authority to remand to adult court youths between the ages of 14 and 18 who were charged with either a misdemeanor or felony offense. When juvenile crime, then fueled by the lethal combination of drugs and guns in the hands of kids, began to rise in the mid-1980s and finally crested in 1993, virtually every state in the country had followed New York and Florida by passing transfer laws - usually in reaction to a particularly heinous crime by a single youth or group of juveniles acting together.

This time period regarded as the "get-tough" movement or "adultification" of juvenile crime, witnessed more youths transferred to criminal court or given longer confinement in secure juvenile facilities than in any other period since the founding of the juvenile court. Some transferred juveniles received the death penalty; many were given a life without parole sentence. Money followed the legislative and policy changes; panicked legislatures authorized the building of thousands of new secure beds around the country to "get tough." Ironically, most beds did not come on line until well after the juvenile crime rate began its steady drop for 10 uninterrupted years in 1993. But the overbuilding led to poor practices and policies incarcerating many nonviolent youths to fill the "state of the art" secure beds to justify their costs. One state even built a "supermax" juvenile facility in 1999 only to close it a decade later. The second irony is now it is again money - the lack of - driving the closure of large facilities and encouraging reinvestment in less expensive and more effective community programs.

Throughout retrenchment cycles, isolated pockets of reform have happened throughout the country that provide lessons for successful change initiatives. In Massachusetts, DYS' emergence in the early 1990s as a leader and model system led to replication of its reform system replacing large, congregate care training schools with small 15-bed secure treatment programs throughout the state. Just as state officials traveled to Massachusetts in the 19th century to study the Westboro School for Boys, policymakers from other states came again to Massachusetts to learn how and what DYS developed. Missouri sent several teams of judges, legislators and juvenile justice practitioners to Massachusetts, studied the changes and upon their return, adapted the Massachusetts model to the Missouri system, which is recognized as a leader in juvenile corrections today.

Research and data also provided impetus for reform. In 1994, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) launched the congressionally-mandated Conditions of Confinement study to collect data from 1,000 correction and detention facilities nationwide. The study found poor conditions in facilities, including high rates of youth injuries and staff turnover, little mental health services and crowded living. The study also found that facilities accredited by existing standards programs did not fare better than nonaccredited facilities. OJJDP launched the Performance-based Standards (PbS) program to establish and implement national performance standards and outcome data measuring practices. CJCA developed and directs PbS and currently works with more than 200 individual facilities in 28 states and the District of Columbia to align practices with approaches deemed effective by research and to integrate the PbS continuous improvement process with daily operations. Analysis of the national PbS database builds resources the field can use to address conditions of confinement issues. For example, research demonstrates the safest facilities are those where youths report they understand the rules, staff are fair, school is good and they have not been locked up - tangible practices facility staff can address and as a result, see fewer injuries and uses of restraints and isolation.

Research identifying what app-roaches work to rehabilitate young offenders started with studies by Robert Ross and Paul Gendreau, who reviewed 95 intervention programs and found that 86 percent of them reported success. Mark Lipsey's meta-analyses of many rehabilitative programs in the 1990s, which also demonstrated the effectiveness of correctional treatment programs similarly increased understanding and changes in practice. As research, outcome data and effectiveness increasingly entered the discussions of juvenile correctional practice as well as state legislatures, the rigorously-tested interventions of multi-systemic therapy, functional family therapy and multi-dimensional treatment foster care, began to spread across the country to treat youths with emotional and family-related problems in their home communities rather than in far away institutions.

Two philanthropic organizations have developed and invested millions of dollars during the last 15 years in juvenile justice reform initiatives: The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Beginning in 1996, the MacArthur Foundation funded the interdisciplinary Re-search Network on Adolescent Development and Juvenile Justice as well as training, advocacy, policy analysis and public education efforts. These reform-oriented efforts laid the groundwork for the national Models for Change initiative, which promotes juvenile justice reform in 16 states around the country. In 1992, the Casey Foundation launched the Juvenile Detention Alternatives to Incarceration project, which works with local and state pretrial detention authorities to significantly reduce the number of youths confined while awaiting their court process.

The evidence indicates that juvenile justice is recovering from the excesses of the "get-tough"
movement. Will the current reforms develop staying power, or will policymakers flinch at the first sign of a rise in juvenile crime? That depends on three things: First, each individual reform must be rigorously evaluated to demonstrate its effectiveness with the juvenile population it was designed to serve. Second, reforms must be incorporated in the everyday operations of a juvenile justice system - not stand as an isolated instance of reform with no connection to the whole entity. Third, reformers must leave their egos at the door and work together with other juvenile justice stakeholders to perpetuate the reforms.