by Ara Oshagan

On Saturday,  I spent the day with an incredible group of over 30 young women who are participating in the relaunch of a terrific project called Girl Talk.

We are preparing to participate in a bi-weekly film series along with creative art activities at our local detention center.

Recently the OJJDP published a summary about the needs of girls in trouble with the law. Research suggests that “girls are not more violent than before and confirm that girls engage in far less crime and delinquency than boys for nearly every offense. It was also observed that mandatory arrest policies and other changes in the juvenile justice system are associated with the higher arrest rates for girls.”

National studies have found that when girls do offend, the rate at which they are being processed through the criminal legal system has increased dramatically over a very short time. Nationally, minor transgressions are being formally policed at an unprecedented rate (Schaffner, 2007).

Among young women in trouble with the law, black girls are overrepresented within the system and they receive harsher punishment than white girls (Moore and Padavic, 2010).

Key Concerns for Girls in Custody

Challenges facing girls before detention and/or incarceration
Sociologist Beth Richie has made the case that a key to understanding and responding to women as offenders is understanding their status as crime victims . Laurie Schaffner (2007) extends this argument by suggesting that “young women adjudicated delinquent in juvenile court report suffering inordinate amounts of emotional, physical, and sexual trauma in early childhood and adolescence.” She contends that “a disproportionate number of girls come into the juvenile justice system with family histories of physical and sexual violence and emotional neglect” (p.1229).

Substance abuse is often used as a means of escape for young women who have had to deal with victimization and trauma. Ravoira & Lydia (2008) suggest that “male and female youth experience adolescence, trauma, relationships, peer pressure, cultural expectations and negative life experience in profoundly different ways” (p.10) . They point out that girls are more likely to attempt suicide than young men as well as to present with higher rates of mental health problems and depression than boys.

Challenges facing girls while institutionalized
Young women face many hardships and injustices in the juvenile justice system. According to Ravoira & Lydia (2008):

“The traditional policies and practices of confinement – including use of isolation rooms, shackles, staff insensitivity, loss of privacy, strip searches, rules that prohibit contact with siblings and children, prohibitions on use of make-up/beauty products, and use of bright-colored jumpsuits to indicate a specific problem area (escape risk, anger issues, etc…) or male clothing – can exacerbate girls’ existing negative self-image, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and may result in increased suicidal ideation and self-mutilation/self-harm” (p.10).

Another issue facing girls while in custody involves sexual victimization within juvenile facilities.  A comprehensive report was recently released about the incidence and prevalence of sexual victimization in juvenile facilities.

Sexual Violence & The Girl Prison Pipeline

The topic of sexual violence in the lives of young women and its connection to future incarceration is sometimes referred to as the Girl’s Prison Pipeline.  We can’t have conversations about young women in conflict with the law without addressing their histories with sexual violence.

This brings me to a new documentary that I had the privilege of previewing.  The film is called Me Facing Life: Cyntoia’s Story.

The film is described this way on its website:

In 2004, Cyntoia Brown was arrested for murder. There was no question that a 43-year-old man is dead and that she killed him. What mystified filmmaker Daniel Birman was just how common violence among youth is, and just how rarely we stop to question our assumptions about it. He wondered in this case what led a girl — who grew-up in a reasonable home environment — to this tragic end?

Me Facing Life: Cyntoia’s Story explores Cyntoia’s life. The camera first glimpses her the week of her arrest at age 16 and follows her for nearly six years. Along the way, nationally renown juvenile forensic psychiatrist, Dr. William Bernet from Vanderbilt University, assesses her situation. We meet Ellenette Brown, Cyntoia’s adoptive mother who talks about the young girl’s early years. Georgina Mitchell, Cyntoia’s biological mother, meets her for the first time since she gave her up for adoption 14 years earlier. When we meet Cyntoia’s maternal grandmother, Joan Warren, some patterns begin to come into sharp focus.

Cyntoia wrestles with her fate. She is stunningly articulate, and spends the time to put the pieces of this puzzle together with us. Cyntoia’s pre-prison lifestyle was nearly indistiguishable from her mother’s at the same age. History — predestined by biology and circumstance — is repeating down the generations in this family.

Cyntoia is tried as an adult, and the cameras are there when she is convicted and sentenced to life at the Tennessee Prison for Women. After the verdict, Cyntoia calls her mom to tell her the news.

In the end, we catch up with Cyntoia as she is adjusting to prison, and struggling with her identity and hope for her future.

This description gives you the facts about the film and yet it does not convey the emotional impact of watching this documentary.  I would describe the film as being “suffocating” in terms of how it made me feel.  There were moments when I just lost my ability to breathe because I was choking with emotions.  At times, I was angry and at other times I felt despondent at the seeming intractability of this problem.  I was grateful to be a witness to Cyntoia’s journey and yet I felt powerless in the face of the challenges that she has to live with.  I cannot recommend this film more highly.    It demands for us to do more and to respond to its call to action.

I found the film so affecting that I agreed to be a co-organizer along with Community Cinema Chicago of a special screening of the film on February 19th.  The screening will take place at the Chicago Cultural Center and more information will be forthcoming.  If you live in other parts of the country, dates for other screenings of the film can be found here.

For more useful resources about girls in trouble with the law, click here.