A white board with a giant illustration of the human brain sat in the middle of the room, a constant reminder, participants said, that any real attempts to treat juvenile offenders begins not with detention or tough love, but with science.
Many of the teens who find themselves in the juvenile system or alternative school programs have grown up with trauma that directly impacts their cognitive functions, said Pender Makin, assistant superintendent of schools in Brunswick, Maine. Physical abuse, hunger, the pain of living through domestic violence or watching a parent sucked into a life of addiction has a physical impact on a growing brain that creates chemical reactions and PTSD symptoms.
[For more of this story, written by John Holland, go to http://jjie.org/2017/06/26/per...ents-conferees-told/]
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