Doreleijers and Fegert Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health 2011, 5:20 http://www.capmh.com/content/5/1/20 EDITORIAL Open Access Forensic child and Adolescent Psychiatry and mental health in Europe Theo AH Doreleijers1,2† and Jörg M Fegert3*† Forensic Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and - Educational exchange: Finnish and British colleagues Mental Health in EuropeTheo Doreleijers and came to Holland, Dutch colleagues went to the United Joerg M. Fegert Kingdom, Italy and Germany; - Student projects: Dutch student-trainees in Italy, Editorial Spain and UK, a German student in The Netherlands The medical and educational interests of young people - Phd-projects: Dutch phd-student in Germany and who find themselves in the police and justice systems UK; PhD-ceremonies in Belgium, Norway and Sweden; are the main aims of the European Association for For- Finnish research in Belgium and Holland; Swiss PhD- ensic Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychology and project with Germany and The Netherlands; other involved professions, EFCAP-EU, which was offi- - Practice experiences exchange: Russia, Ukraine. cially founded in 1997. Two years earlier the first youth Striking and topical themes at the EFCAP 2010 Basel forensic symposium was held at the ESCAP Congress in Congress were focusing on specific groups like children Utrecht, containing eight papers from all over Europe. and adolescents with characteristics of psychopathy, offen- Other aims of EFCAP are: ders of very young age, juvenile sex offenders and girls in - to improve forensic assessment and treatment of the justice system. There were quite a few presentations children and adolescents in the justice system, as well as on neurobiological research topics, on intercultural issues of their families and on risk assessment and management in juveniles. - to improve facilities for these young people What is more, practice presentations were given: indivi- - to facilitate joint international research, and dual interventions, family therapies, restoration and med- - to promote international training and education. iation. In addition there were also presentations on policy EFCAP-EU is a federation of some officially founded and legislation. national EFCAP’s like in Finland, Switzerland and The The Basel Congress was opened by an overview of Netherlands, and of working groups in other countries what is going on in the countries represented in the like Germany (Arbeitsgemeinschaft), United Kingdom board. A summary is given here below. (unit of the Royal College of Psychiatrists), Italy, Portu- gal, Spain, Hungary and Turkey. Belgium, Italy, Luxem- What is going on in The Netherlands bourg and France are initializing a national EFCAP. (Theo A. H. Doreleijers)? Other countries sympathize with EFCAP without having Juvenile crime is decreasing. You never know what fig- yet formal organizations: Sweden, Norway, Austria, and ures really mean, but annual similar registration meth- Ukraine. ods elicited an ongoing decrease of youth crime. It EFCAP’s activities focus on: explains also the sudden overcapacity of residential jus- - Since 1995 annual conferences organized in colla- tice facilities: nowadays more than 50% of the juvenile boration with EAPL, ESCAP, IALMH; since 2008 biann- justicecapacityisnotanymoreinuse.Apartfrom ual EFCAP-congresses on its own: 2008 Amsterdam, crime decrease the tendency of magistrates to convict 2010 Basel, 2012 Berlin; young people to a civil instead of a penal measure also caused this vacancy. On the other hand the residential youth care had to build new facilities to house all these * Correspondence: [email protected] † Contributed equally new populations. 3University Hospital Ulm, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry/ In the mean time the Ministry of Justice invests a lot of Psychotherapy, Steinhövelst 5, 89075 Ulm, Germany money and energy to improve the quality of interventions Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © 2011 Doreleijers and Fegert; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Doreleijers and Fegert Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health 2011, 5:20 Page 2 of 4 http://www.capmh.com/content/5/1/20 offered to young people under its roofs. A Committee for of minors, attracted to each local authority and the the Approval of Justice Interventions was set up some youth re-education centres have been reorganized, years ago. In the future, only officially approved interven- which has led to the closing of several of them. tions will be financed. And, finally: much more research There is a new law which says that the same crime of is carried out in the Justice field: epidemiological and sexual abuse committed by the same individual against longitudinal studies, intervention effect studies, and even thesamevictimisconsideredasasinglecontinued studies using modern techniques like fMRI. The national crime. And a new student/pupil status (Estatuto do science foundation funded the initiative for an Academic Aluno) was set up that give more power and facilities to Working Place for Forensic Youth Care with one million the head of the schools to act and punish pupils bad Euro’s (collaboration of the Leiden and Amsterdam Uni- behaviour. versities Child and Adolescent’sdepartmentswithtwo Juvenile Justice Institutions). What is going on in Italy? (Marco Zanoli & The new government has planned (to be elaborated in Giovanni Camerini) the upcoming years) a new Adolescent Criminal Law for In Italy there is still not a spread culture of clinical eva- youths between 15 and 23 years of age. Everyone is cur- luation of risk and protective factors in youngsters and ious about this initiative: is it going to help young peo- there’s no general consensus about prevention-rehabili- ple or just make the measures and punishments more tation interventions. Evaluations are done by social ser- restrictive? vices and minor justice centers using criteria that are more ‘social’ than clinical. What is going on in Spain? (Josep Cornella) After some successful conferences in Gerona, Valencia, What is going on in Finland? (Riittakerttu Seville and Tarragona (2010) with forensic topics a ‘Con- Kaltiala-Heino) troversial Session’ will be held on the accountability of The two massacres by shooting in schools in 2007 and minors at the Spanish Pediatric Association Congress in 2008 have resulted in great concerns about access to psy- Valladolid (June 2011) and a comparable session at the chiatric care of young people. The Ministry of Welfare Social Pediatric Congress in Granada (October 2011). and Health has supported the development of flexible services for child and adolescent mental health and wel- What is going on in Germany? (Renate Schepker fare services by financing the development of projects and Jörg M. Fegert) aiming to enhance early recognition, prevention and In the South of Germany a first course was organized for early treatment. Research is initiated to identify psycho- a certificate in Forensic Assessment. The State of Bavaria pathology in kids who have been brought to psychiatric decided to found a forensic unit for adolescents in services due to threats of school massacres Regensburg. In legislation, the Law on Secure Detention has to be revised (due to a sentence of the European What is going on in Russia? (Елена Дозорцева) Court in Brussels). The Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft der Within the last 3 years the number of juveniles in 62 peni- Leitenden Ärzte, Untergruppe Maßregelvollzug (repre- tentiary institutions was reduced from 10,7 (2007) to 6 senting the adolescent forensic units in Germany) of the (2009) thousand. The total number of crimes perpetrated German Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Society was by juveniles or with participation of juveniles decreased asked to join the debate. from 139 (2007) to 95 (2009) thousands. At the moment there is a lot of public and political There is no national separate system of juvenile justice, debate about sexual abuse in institutions in Germany. but in the Rostov region function four juvenile courts. In For the first time research into these issues has been set many other regions specialization of judges in the frame- up. Further on, there are many (usual) discussions about work of general criminal courts is implemented. In some migrant youth offenders and how to react appropriately courts so called ‘juvenile technologies’ like restorative upon them in court and in the pedagogical system. Much justice procedures are realized. The situation with social attention deserved school shootings like in Winnenden perception of juvenile justice has worsened in the course and related copycats [1]. of the last two years due to an organized campaign of its opponents. However, in February 2011 a special resolu- What is going on in Portugal? (Antonio Castro tion of the Supreme Court of Russian Federation Fonseca) declared individual approach to juvenile offenders, their After the sexual abuse cases came to the public, there is re-socialization, protection of their rights and prevention a much stronger sensibility (in the public and in the of juvenile crimes as main principles of the courts dealing courts, etc) regarding the children’s neglect and sexual with juveniles. The resolution gives the detailed practical abuse