Our difficult child has been threatened with it since he was about 10, 2 years now. The state atty general wrote him a letter thru his probation officer that if he breaks another law (he took a bb gun, a switchblade type knife, a paring knife and a razor blade to school, and has 3 felonies (the school ignored the razor blade because difficult child said someone in his family planted it on him and he was abused and they believed him) and three convictions), but if he breaks another law it's MANDATORY juvenile detention.
Two of his probation officers and one CPS investigator and a couple police officers have all laid it out straight to difficult child what this means.
difficult child is a small, red headed skinny white boy with ears that stick out. He looks like Opie Taylor on the Andy Griffin show. His last probation officer told him that he would be raped in Juvy, 'they can't watch you all the time', he explained what rape was. They've told him about being beaten up and pushed around and 'being someone's boyfriend'. In court difficult child has seen the huge 14, 15, 16 year olds who come into court shackled before the judge. "Those will be the people you will be living with".
Juvenile detention in our county, in our state makes no pretensions about doing anything about mental health counselling. From what I understand, they'll give medications, and insist that rules are followed, but it's nothing more than a juvenile prison (notwithstanding what the website says about rehab).
I think it's something to be avoided at all costs if you can. Maybe others have better news. Maybe your area is different.
However, I think there are county and state run programs and facilities for rehab and mental health therapy. It's hard to find them tho, the schools don't want to tell you because then sometimes they have to pay for them, they don't want to pay $38,000 out of their budget for one student.
But juvvy....I think you want to avoid that if you can.