Learning Disabilities and the Juvenile Justice System
Ron Hume

Imagine what it must be like for a young person with learning disabilities to be apprehended and questioned by the police. Your fear and nervousness make your impairment more acute, and you do a poor job in answering the questions. Looking guilty (maybe because of your disability not actual guilt) you end up in front of a judge. Even more anxious and scared, you continue to have difficulty in processing verbal questions, sequencing events, mustering demand language and controlling your impulses. Odds are that no one will ask you if you have a disability, or understand what a learning disability is, even if you tell them. Regardless of guilt or innocence, it will be unlikely that anyone understands your disability or provides you with accommodations. Your attorney may not even know how to make a mitigating case on your behalf, considering the nature of your impairments.

Research will support that the notion that there is a disproportionately high rate of youth with learning disabilities and/or ADHD that come into contact with the juvenile justice system. Prevalence estimates vary considerably because of differences in how the disability is defined and measured, poor screening and assessments in both school and the juvenile justice system, and inconsistent transfer of school records to juvenile court.

Precise estimates of specific disabilities vary for the same reasons:

• Some studies suggest that up to 36 percent of youth in correctional facilities have specific learning disabilities (Rutherford 2002).

• Between 20 to 50 percent of incarcerated youth are estimated to have ADHD (Rutherford 2002).

• ADHD is four to five times more prevalent in correctional facilities than in schools (Rutherford 2002).

• Between 1993 and 1997 the number of youth with disabilities of any kind in correctional facilities increased by 28 percent (U. S. Dept of Education 2001).

• Youth with learning disabilities were more than twice as likely to commit a delinquent offense as their non- disabled peers (Brier 1989).

• Students with learning disabilities were 3.9 times more likely to be arrested while enrolled in school than non-disabled students (Doren, Bullis and Benz 1996).

There are a number of factors that contribute to the problems encountered by youth with disabilities at risk of entering the juvenile justice system:

• There is a tremendous gap in empirically-based research knowledge about youth with disabilities who are at risk of delinquency or involved in the juvenile justice system.

• Juvenile court personnel are not trained in how to identify or serve youth with disabilities. Additionally, criminologists have not examined the problem by addressing it through research, textbooks or training.

• Juvenile court intake does not routinely screen for disabilities and relies instead on school records, which are often unavailable or incomplete.

• School policies and practices may be contributing to an unnecessary and inappropriate flow of youth with disabilities into the juvenile justice system. For example “zero tolerance” discipline policies, enhanced security procedures may all disproportionately target youth with disabilities as well as some No Child Left Behind practices.

• Juvenile courts themselves are increasingly taking a get-tough policy of punishment rather than treatment.

By 1950 every state had enacted legislation creating juvenile courts. Unlike criminal courts, juvenile court authority flowed from civil law, providing it with jurisdiction over cases involving both criminal and non-criminal behavior. Juvenile court was established with a less formal rehabilitative focus in the “best interests” of the child with responsibility to act on behalf on abused, neglected or misbehaving children.

Crimes committed by juveniles fall into two broad categories. Criminal offenses are acts that are illegal and would be a crime regardless of the individual’s age. Status offenses are acts that are illegal only when committed by a minor. Disability law is also intended for children involved in the juvenile justice system. Alternative education programs, detention and correctional facilities, juvenile court and all juvenile justice programs are required to accommodate for the youth’s disability. IDEA mandates also apply.

It costs between $60,000 to $100,000 to house a youth in a correctional facility for one year (Cheney, et al. 1998).

Katherine A. Larson and K. David Turner provide the following description of eight best practices in a monograph published by The Center for Effective Collaboration and Practice and The National Center on Education, Disability and Juvenile Justice.

1. Individual Juvenile Planning
Active and comprehensive planning of goals and intervention strategies for each youth with disabilities involved in a prevention or intervention program has been found to be essential.

2. Skill Based Interventions
Counseling
Non-directive or psychodynamic, insight-based counseling did not reduce recidivism. Cognitive therapy or social cognitive training that intends to change the youth’s cognitions, vales, attitudes and expectations has been shown to be very effective.

Social Skills Training
Research has shown that an effective, comprehensive, social skills-training program arguably has the greatest positive single influence for reducing recidivism or preventing antisocial behavior in youth with disabilities (Gendreau, 1996; Palmer, 1996; Ross & Fabiano, 1985; Walker & Bullis, 1996).

Generally, there are three types of social skills that are important to master: overt interaction skills, social-cognitive skills and self control skills. There are three goals in teaching social skills to at-risk youth. The first is to enhance the youth’s likelihood of making prosocial choices in solving social problems. The second is to enhance the youth’s social interaction skills so he/ she can establish satisfying social relationships and prosocially negotiate social encounters. The third goal is to reduce social conflict in the youth’s life by eliminating negative behavior.

Academic Intervention
Low literacy is consistently related to delinquent and criminal behavior. Research has shown that increasing the youth’s academic skills will have a positive effect on recidivism.

Vocational Intervention
Data indicate that vocational interventions have a positive effect on recidivism. When paired with academic intervention the results were even more encouraging (lower recidivism was found in half of the programs).

Life Skills and the Multimodal Approach
A life skills program is a mixture of various approaches such as academic, vocational, social skills training and counseling. The components vary greatly between programs and comparison becomes difficult. Some programs have been shown to reduce recidivism up to 20 percent within the juvenile justice system.

3. Medical Interventions
Medication
There is no empirical evidence that medication is associated with reduced recidivism. However adolescents with anxiety disorders, conduct disorders, bi-polar disease, hyperactivity and attention deficits may be candidates for medication.

Substance abuse programs
Youth with disabilities are at increased risk for substance abuse. For example, individuals with ADHD have been reported to be up to seven times more likely to develop a drug problem. Providing delinquent youth with disabilities access to effective drug treatment appears necessary.

4. Behavioral Systems
A behavioral system that includes a cognitive social skills program and generalization training has been recognized as being among the best and strongest approaches to reducing recidivism and preventing antisocial behavior.

5. Family Involvement
The juvenile justice system must be concerned with relapse prevention. Because family members will most likely play a significant role in the youth’s life after treatment, family participation in the youth’s intervention is critical.

6. Transitioning
The broadest form of transitioning is to provide a continuum of integrated services often referred to as a System of Care or Wrap Around. The idea is to wrap the family with services that are needs driven, coordinated and that offer a single point of contact for the family.

7. Staffing
Research has shown that the skills and personalities of the intervention staff lend considerable weight to the effectiveness of treatment. The most important finding is that positive rapport between the staff and the youth is substantially influential for achieving positive outcomes.

8. Assessing Program Effectiveness
In order to maintain quality, programs need an ongoing formative assessment that guides staff to make programmatic changes as needed to be most responsive to the youth’s needs.

Additional Programs Proven Effective
In addition to the best practices for youth with disabilities previously identified there are some additional programs that have documented their effectiveness in reducing recidivism through empirical research. Multisystemic Therapy (MST), Functional Family Therapy (FFT) and Aggression Replacement Therapy (ART) have all been shown to be effective with the general delinquent population.

There are certain systemic changes that we can advocate for in order to make the Juvenile Justice System more responsive to all youth with disabilities. The National Council on Disability suggests the following principles for effective intervention:

• Develop integrated delinquency and disability initiatives in schools and communities to provide appropriate services for children and youth with disabilities.

• Provide comprehensive, needs based services and transition assistance before, during, and after entry into the juvenile or adult justice systems.

• Emphasize, where possible, diversion from the justice system and employ emerging promising practices for managing and treating youth locally.

• In schools and the juvenile justice system, use objective risk and needs screening and assessments to identify and intervene with youth who are at the highest risk to engage in delinquency and other negative behavioral outcomes and who have disabilities and/or special service needs.

• Develop treatment programming based on the principles of effective intervention.

• Coordinate and organize the efforts of communities, schools, law enforcement, and juvenile justice, adult justice, child welfare and social service systems.

• Implement an aggressive public outreach campaign on the needs of and effective strategies for treating or providing services to youth with disabilities in the juvenile justice system.

• Monitor and evaluate trends in the capacity of communities, schools, and the juvenile and adult justice systems to provide services to youth with disabilities to assist with decision making about resource allocations, programs and policies.

• Address school system and justice system biases that perpetuate unequal access to treatment and services among youth with disabilities as well as the disproportionate confinement of these youth.

One final personal note: encourage everyone to seek every opportunity to provide training and education to all of our law enforcement and juvenile court personnel. Most of these individuals are very concerned about our children and, given the right knowledge, could create the opportunity for youth with learning disabilities to be afforded the accommodations and programming that would level the playing field and give them the same rights as their non-disabled peers.