Specially trained Juvenile Court Clinicians conduct substance use evaluations as ordered by a Juvenile Court Judge. Juveniles before the court under a Section 35 petition typically are experiencing serious and intractable substance use issues that have been challenging to treat in the community, placing them at significant risk. 

Evaluating juvenile substance users is substantially different from evaluating adults. Juveniles differ from adults in their decision-making abilities due to underdevelopment of their frontal cortex, the area of the brain that controls reasoning and helps individuals think before they act. Juveniles are therefore less likely to recognize the risks of their substance use and less likely to make mature decisions about the need for substance use treatment.

The following basic points provide further information about juvenile Section 35s and clarify some of the differences in conducting these evaluations on juveniles.

• Criteria for involuntary commitment under Section 35 of the MA General Laws Ch123 are:
  • Juvenile has an alcohol or substance use disorder.
    and
  • There is an imminent likelihood of serious harm to themselves or others as a result of their alcohol or substance use.
• Clinicians evaluating whether a juvenile meets criteria for commitment always consider less restrictive community-based treatment alternatives first as dictated by case law.
• Juveniles who are committed on a Section 35 often present with very serious polysubstance use including life-threatening amounts of alcohol, fentanyl, marijuana mixed with fentanyl and dangerous mixtures of prescription and street drugs.
• In comparison to the adult court, there are very few Section 35s filed on juveniles statewide. For example, in 2023, the Adult Court Clinics conducted 4,142 Section 35 evaluations while the Juvenile Court Clinics conducted 82.
• Not all juveniles evaluated on a Section 35 are committed. In 2023, only 45 of the 82 youth who were before the court on a Section 35 were committed.
• Juveniles committed under a Section 35 were previously sent to Motivating Youth Recovery (MYR) in Worcester, MA, which was an unlocked detox facility, not a correctional facility. MYR closed in July, 2025. MYR was also the facility that served juveniles seeking voluntary residential substance use detox.
• Currently juveniles requiring involuntary inpatient substance use treatment may be sent to Southcoast Behavioral Health in Dartmouth—the ONLY place for this service in MA—where there are currently 4 co-licensed, locked psychiatric beds.  However, this facility does not reserve beds for juveniles committed under Section 35, so if all beds are full, there is no place available for a juvenile requiring involuntary detox treatment. Further, youth 17 and above may be waived into an adult detox facility.

In the absence of an available treatment bed, there is no place available in the Commonwealth of MA for the appropriate acute substance use treatment of a juvenile whose life is in danger due to substance use.

03/20/26