My 14 year old grand-niece is on a fast track to Juvie.
In with all the "wrong kids"...she gets dropped off at school and as soon as the car is out of sight heads off to a near-by underpass to get high with her friends.
Got into a fight with her mom and broke her arm in 3 places. My niece is on disability / Medicaid so she went to the ER, got turned away, spent the weekend waiting for Monday so she could see her doctor. From what I understand the injuries were all fractures so they are probably going to set the bones and put on a cast (I'm not a doctor, and I'm getting my info long-distance from my sister, so that may not be 100% accurate).
My grand-niece isn't just a stoner...she has an obsession / romance with weed. Weed posters all over her bedroom. Takes a ton of selfies daily and posts on Facebook with captions like "I am soooooooo fucked up." It's not that she gets high, it's that the only interest she has is in getting high. That's her entire world. She's shown no interests or promise when it comes to her future. She just wants to get high with her friends.
She steals her mom's cigarettes and prescription meds, is experimenting sexually as well, and going with whatever flow is in her "posse."
The "posse" is basically every group of "bad kids" you ever saw in any 1980s horror flick.
Got herself a boyfriend. Both of the parents have been in prison for violent crimes and in his case the apple has not fallen far from the tree.
Cops showed up at her house today with a warrant for her arrest. Still not sure if it's related to the domestic violence incident or if she's done something new. Waiting for a phone call from my sister to find out.
And the worst thing that could possibly happen to this girl would be to get shipped off to Juvie, because she'd be in total contempt of the whole experience and would be surrounded by the kind of kids she chooses to hang out with now.
It wouldn't discourage her.
It would encourage her.
Today is one of those days where I'm glad I never had kids. I was never willing to roll those dice, so I didn't.
Feel terrible for my family but this has been coming for a long time. My niece lacks the parenting skills to have headed this off at the pass long ago. Now it's too late. This girl has made her choices, and I don't know what...if anything...could possibly get her off the path she's on.
Breaks my effing heart. She's 14 effing years old.
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...it's never too late. I taught middle school kids who were on a terrible trajectory and, with the right support and resources, became successful adults.
A worse situation is if she becomes pregnant. Or overdoses. Until then every adult in her family needs to get engaged in her life.
IMO, it's not ever okay to give up on a 14 year old. THAT is a recipe for failure. 
You're probably rolling your eyes about now but it's true. That child must feel so alone, as if no one cares about her...no matter what she does. That's precisely why she's acting out.
Your niece needs to be shown her family loves and supports her (that doesn't mean coddling her, it means telling her no and sticking to it). She is still a child, the adults need to help her find her way.
I raised three girls on my own and it's not easy. Good luck to you, I hope it gets better. 
...and part of that includes giving my grand-niece anything she wants, especially if it involves peer pressure at school ("All the kids have iPhones"
.
And enabling plays a large role in it. They allow her to smoke weed, and that's one of their forms of punishment ("no weed" so that when they lift that restriction, she goes full Bob Marley.
There's also a degree of antagonism / humiliation behind the discipline, when and if that happens. So the result with the best chance of success would be some very rigid requirements for counseling that involved ALL family members. My niece and her S.O. need an education when it comes to parenting in 2016, and my niece needs to gain an appreciation for why rules exist and what consequences await those who fail to acknowledge them.
When she's 18, it's her life, her decisions. This girl makes universally bad decisions. If she improved her decision making skills, more positive doors would open for her. Right now it's more a matter of "I know what I'm doing, leave me alone," and Monday she's going to be informed that it's not going to be that way. I hope they give my niece and her S.O. the opportunity to be a part of turning this around. My girlfriend's take on this is that since it is a "first offense," they are probably not going to shuttle her straight off to Juvie, but if she thumbs her nose at whatever the outcome is, my guess is that she'll end up there sooner rather than later.
...observations. You have clearly defined the problem. And they do only have 4 years to turn this around.
Family counseling to develop parenting skills would help. And clarifying the drug situation.
Good luck to you and your family. It must be really hard to 'watch from afar' and feel helpless.
Her parents have zero control here and are not responsible for an addicts addiction. Their daughter is a drug addict and the sooner you stop blaming everyone else and start focusing on addictions counseling, the better.
My (currently) 19 yr old is an older version of your 14 year old niece. Fearless, crazy, drug addicted.
She'd use her phone for drug deals so we'd take it away. She'd just use her friends' phones for the deals (and I lost a way to find/communicate with her.)
Ground her? She'd sneak out her window at 1 am jumping out her 2nd story bedroom window, she admits to doing that at least 50 times. Reality means she's done it 2 - 3 times as much. She had no car even though we were completely rural - that never stopped her finding a way to get a ride for drug deals.
I even tried tethering her to me at night to stop her drug deals and partying, she went on a hunger strike and wasted away to 75 lbs in protest. She went to her pediatrician and told her we were starving her. We had 3 years of DCFS hell in response. Now that DCFS knows the score that she's a drug addict, all of the DCFS crap has stopped but our cruelly drug addicted daughter knew exactly how to cripple our attempts to help her.
We have no teevee or video games so there wasn't anything to take away. She's damn happy to be left alone to read in her room even with her bedroom door taken off so she couldn't hide misbehavior.
Her older siblings were raised the exact same way and are doctors and PhDs. In fact, my 19 yr old drug addict graduated as her school's valedictorian (and top selling drug dealer...)
1. Your grand niece needs to be tested for STDs immediately. My daughter prostituted herself for drugs (continues to do it).
2. Her parents need to get to a Nar-Anon meeting immediately. There are real techniques for families coping with this. The earlier they start the better.
3. Your grand niece needs a therapist ASAP!! Can you pay? It's never too late for an addict but she needs an impartial observer telling her the score now. STAT. She's very young, too young. The only thing holding my daughter together right now is her trust in her counselor. I cling to hope.....
4. My daughter entered her 1st rehab at 16 years old. I've since met parents whose children have been 10x or more. Never give up.
You're in for a rough ride. I hope you don't give up on her. I've had many thousands of hours with similarly situated families and the one thing that seems to "work" the most with young addicts is that their families never, ever gave up fighting for them, always determined to see their best selves and to keep encouraging that spark for "more".
PM me if you want. I've walked this road. Still walking it...
