One of my main areas of interest with respect to the juvenile legal system involves how girls and young women are treated. For years, I have been an advocate of “gender-responsive” programming within the juvenile legal system. Over the years, I have found myself thinking seriously about what the content of such gender-responsive programming should be. I have offered my own ideas and been involved in crafting programs for girls in trouble with the law. And yet here we are in 2010 and we are still struggling to figure out what would work best in terms of intervening with girls in the system.

In the 11 years between 1998 and 2007, the number of arrests of girls increased at a faster rate (or decreased more slowly) than those of boys for robbery, assault, burglary, drug violations, and driving under the influence. A number of researchers have suggested that this increase in young women coming to the attention of juvenile justice authorities has to do with a change in the way that young women’s behavior is policed. Criminologists like Meda Chesney-Lind have attributed the increase in two phenomena called “upcriming” and “relabeling.” Physical altercations which would have been handled by the principal or parents in the past are now being referred to law enforcement and the courts and are labeled as serious “violent” offenses.

Because young women still only make up a minority of those in the juvenile system, in 2008 they represented 22% of juvenile arrests for example, much of the programs and interventions are still very much boycentric.

I was reading a fascinating article this weekend which really got me thinking about the issues facing young women in trouble with law more immediately. The article titled “Looking in the Rearview Mirror: What Incarcerated Women Think Girls Need From the System” seeks out the opinions of women prisoners (who were involved in the juvenile justice system as girls) to learn about what they believe girls in the juvenile justice need in order to ensure that they do not end up behind bars as adults. This is super interesting because few studies actually focus on the opinions of prisoners to ascertain the effectiveness of programming and criminal legal interventions.

What a novel approach… Perhaps we should actually ask prisoners opinions and seek their guidance when we are developing policies to address crime and delinquency. It seems so common-sense and yet researchers and policy makers rarely rely on the experiences and expertise of current or former prisoners.

Anyway, the female prisoners in this study underscored a number of key things that girls need from the juvenile justice system in order not to graduate into the adult system as they themselves did.

Quoting from the article:

[T]he women argued for highly structured placements that use female staff that are caring and professional, the importance of female role models/female mentors, and to provide girls a voice in the proceedings against them and in the development of their treatment plans.

Also, as has been indicated in the literature, a large proportion of girls have been victimized and faced serious trauma in their lives. Some have faced sexual, physical, and/or emotional abuse. Others have faced seriously dysfunctional and chaotic family lives, poor parenting, parental loss (whether by death, incarceration, or abandonment), and neglect. Because of these factors, the women in this study argued persuasively that correctional programming for girls should include parenting classes, independent living skills, and self-esteem building components. These programmatic “prescriptions” also appear in the gender-specific literature for girls. The literature also indicates, as did the women in this study, that families (when appropriate) should participate in the girls’ treatment, with the goal of repairing the family relationship in mind.

Moreover, some women pointed out the need for girls to learn to become self-sufficient, some by vocational training and job placement, and others by finishing their education or going on to college. Thus correctional programming needs to identify educational deficits that can be corrected and current skills that can be strengthened. Other important types of counseling that the women indicated as crucial to help girls get over their traumatized pasts were sexual abuse, substance abuse, grief and loss counseling….Finally, the women noted that healthy relationships are virtually nonexistent in these girls’ lives. They underscored the need for programming to teach girls how to develop and sustain healthy relationships. This is especially true when one considers that the literature has established that relationships are one of the major ways girls develop their sense of identity.

Many of us who work as researchers or “experts” get paid money to come up with information that is accessible and available if we were to pay more attention to people who are actually impacted and affected by systems of oppression. This article is an important reminder of that truth.

Article cited: “Looking in the Rearview Mirror: What Incarcerated Women Think Girls Need From the System” by Crystal A. Garcia and Jodi Lane in Feminist Criminology, 2010 5: 227.