Telehealth for Adolescents in the Juvenile Justice System

Children and adolescents involved in the juvenile justice system have experienced childhood trauma and have complex healthcare, social, and legal needs. While the number of youth under the age of 18 who experienced arrest or detention have decreased, as of 2017, over 200,000 delinquency cases still involved detention (Harp and Muhlhausen. Juvenile justice statistics: national report series fact sheet [Internet]. Ojjdp.gov 2019. [cited 19 November 2022]. Available from: https://ojjdp.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh176/files/media/document/253105.pdf ). Each encounter places youth at a higher risk for repeated exposure to trauma and recidivism. Interprofessional collaboration across different service providers, both within and outside of juvenile detention, through emerging avenues of communication and healthcare delivery, such as telehealth, can help improve health assessments, expand provision of services, and facilitate discharge planning, in efforts to promote a healthy and successful reentry of detained youth to their home communities. This chapter provides an overview of provisions of health services for detained youth, opportunities to use telehealth to expand access to care for youth in detention, and recommendations on ways to incorporate telehealth to facilitate discharge planning and safe reentry for youth involved in the juvenile justice system.