The Illinois Mental Health Opportunities for Youth Diversion Task Force was created to identify and recommend diversion programs that will help treat youth with mental health conditions in the community and avoid initial or further involvement in the justice system.

Youth courts provide an efficient—albeit unconventional—alternative to the formal juvenile justice system. Although structures of youth courts vary, the purpose remains the same: to rehabilitate and deter youth offenders in a forum largely governed by their minor peers—one free of the stigma associated with the traditional justice system.

Translating research into practice requires a systematic approach grounded in implementation science and input from practitioners. This document details such an approach for The Bridge Project— an effort designed to facilitate translation of juvenile justice research into actionable policy and practice changes through the development of practitioner-friendly, application-ready products. The underlying decisionmaking framework for this project includes: a continuous consideration of evidence, stakeholder feedback, and input carefully weighed and considered at multiple decision points

The United States, with 1.3 million child and adolescents arrests each year, incarcerates a far greater proportion of youth than any other developed country. Two new studies in the February 2017 Pediatrics (both published online Jan. 23) suggest far-reaching health consequences for individuals and society.

Four out of every 100 black youths are referred to court versus 1 out of every 100 white youths, Leiber found. Two black youths continued to be detained for every white youth, and black youths were far less likely than white youths to have their cases diverted and leniency.

Adolescents in the juvenile justice system are underserved and understudied even though they are disproportionately affected by myriad health risks and comorbidities.1 Less well understood is whether duration of incarceration is associated with poorer long-term health outcomes and whether risk behaviors persist into adulthood. This issue of Pediatrics provides 2 studies addressing these questions.