Topic: Juvenile Jam / Mental health exams for Juvenile Justice workers

I agree that training and the culture of the facility are perhaps our best tools. In addition, I would say adequate background checks should be conducted. I believe that quite often this is the part that is lacking for smaller agencies who don’t have the resources available to conduct a thorough investigation on applicants.

Topic: Juvenile Jam / gang assessment

A part of the problem is that you have your true gang members and then you have your wanna be’s. Putting them together only reinforces the gang behavior but yet keeping them apart quite often means that the wanna be’s are going to try and impress others with how tough they are….this is where behavior modification could come into play if there was an effective program that addresses the issues.

Topic: Juvenile Jam / suicidal juveniles

One thing that adults tend to forget is that juveniles are impulsive. They act without thinking things through, mainly due to their brains not being fully developed. It is difficult for them to process that situations will change under normal circumstances, add depression into the mix and the situation can indeed become dire (at least in their minds)