Juvenile probation officers (JPOs) are increasingly using risk/needs assessments to evaluate delinquency risk, identify criminogenic needs and specific responsivity factors, and use this information in case planning. Justice-involved youth are exposed to traumatic events and experience traumatic stress symptoms at a high rate; such information warrants attention during the case planning process. The extent to which JPOs identify specific responsivity factors, in general, and trauma history, specifically, when scoring risk/need assessments is understudied. In the current study, 147 JPOs reviewed case vignettes that varied by the adolescents' gender (male vs. female), traumatic event exposure (present vs. absent), and traumatic stress symptoms (present vs. absent), and then scored the YLS/CMI and developed case plans based on that information. JPOs who received a vignette that included trauma information identified a higher number of trauma-specific responsivity factors on the YLS/CMI. Despite an overall high needs match ratio (57.2%), few JPOs prioritized trauma as a target on case plans. The findings underscore the importance of incorporating trauma screening into risk/needs assessment and case planning. (PsycINFO Database Record

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Youth involved in the juvenile justice system typically have a high prevalence of mental health disorders. Although police are frequently the first point of contact for these youth, they are often not trained to understand or address their mental health challenges. To combat this, interventions through community policing have increased police awareness of mental health and decreased arrests of these youth throughout the country. Yet there is scant research examining the effects these changes have had on access to mental health treatment for youth. This study aims to assess whether Cambridge's police-mental health collaboration increased utilization of youth mental health care. This study included 207 subjects who were either diverted (n ϭ 71) or summonsed/arrested (n ϭ 136). Their individual arrest and health care records were combined to retrospectively evaluate the rate of health care service utilization before and after initial police contact. Both groups showed similar rates of mental health diagnoses. Youth who were diverted had significantly increased outpatient mental health visits when comparing before with after diversion. This rate was also significantly higher than that of those with an initial arrest or summons. There was no difference between groups for acute inpatient visits or emergency department (ED) visits. These findings support translational efforts to partner police with community mental health providers to increase access to treatment, decrease stigma, and keep our neighborhoods safe. What is the significance of this article for the general public?Youth at risk for arrest or detention typically suffer from high rates of mental health difficulties and have poor access to needed services. The results of this study demonstrate that a model of ongoing collaboration between psychologists, community services, and community police can divert youth from arrest, increase at-risk youth access to outpatient mental health treatment, and decrease the likelihood of incarceration.

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A special customer must complete service from two servers, each with an M/M/1 queueing system. It is assumed that the two queueing systems have initial numbers of customers a and b at the instant when the special customer arrives, and subsequent interarrival times and service times are independent. We find the expected total time (ETT) for the special customer to complete service. We show that even if the interarrival and service time parameters of two queues are identical, there exist examples (specific values of the parameters and initial lengths a and b) for which the special customer surprisingly has a lower expected total time to completion by joining the longer queue first rather than the shorter one.