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EGACY Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow.
WEDNESDAYS • Nov. 11, 2015
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INSIDE
PDrive tackles mass incarceration - 2 Professor on memoirs from jail- 4 Have you accepted street violence?- 9 Reseachers on cancer from parasites - 14
Richmond & Hampton Roads
Honoring those who have served in the U.S. Armed Forces, Nov. 11.
LEGACYNEWSPAPER.COM • FREE
New report tackles gender injustice, proposes system-level juvenile justice reforms for girls I
n Virginia, girls of color are two-and-a-half times more likely to be incarcerated and confined than white girls, notes RISE for Youth, a new nonpartisan campaign in support of community alternatives to youth incarceration. Rise for Youth is bringing attention to a new report from the National Crittenton Foundation (NCF), which supports girls and young women to thrive, build skills, break destructive cycles, and become powerful agents of personal and social change. Despite decades of attention, the proportion of girls in the juvenile justice system has increased and their challenges have remained remarkably consistent, resulting in deeply rooted systemic gender injustice, according to the report. “The literature is clear that girls in the justice system have experienced abuse, violence, adversity, and deprivation across many of the domains of their lives—family, peers, intimate partners, and community,” according to the report. “There is also increasing understanding of the sorts of programs helpful to these girls. What is missing is a focus on how systems—and particularly juvenile justice systems—can be redesigned to protect public safety and support the healing and healthy development of girls and young women.” Juvenile justice systems reform is occurring across the country as a result of a growing understanding of developmental and neurological differences between youth and adults, the high cost of incarceration, and the consistent failure of a punitive juvenile justice model. However, even as systems are initiating reforms and changing
their approach, they are routinely failing to modify those reforms for girls or even to collect data on how girls, specifically, are affected by the problems they are seeking to remedy. As a result, the particular impact on girls of failures in the juvenile justice system is not understood and few juvenile reforms are tailored to girls’ needs and pathways into the system— meaning girls and young women are unlikely to fully benefit from system reforms. Many of the problems discussed in this report are not unique to girls—and many of the suggested paths forward can benefit both boys and girls. However, because girls are frequently left out of reform discussions, an intentional focus on girls is needed to ensure that they
fully benefit from system reforms. Indeed, in writing this report we were struck by the number of promising national and large-scale juvenile justice reform efforts that have not fully considered the role of gender in the problems they address or in the solutions they propose. If this intentional gender focus does not coexist with current largescale system reforms, an important opportunity for gender justice and equity and developmental system reforms will be missed. To facilitate developmental juvenile justice system reform for girls, the report will: •Map girls’ current paths into and through the juvenile justice system; •Describe the social contexts driving girls’ behavior and involvement in
the juvenile justice system; and •Detail recommendations for an alternative, developmental approach to redesign juvenile justice systems to address harmful social contexts and girls’ resulting behaviors, rather than penalize and punish girls for challenges beyond their control. The recommendations included in the report are consistent with decades of research on adolescent development, as well as newer data on the development of girls in particular, notes NCF. With continued research on girls and an intentional focus on their needs, system stakeholders and policymakers can capitalize on current reforms that are already underway and ensure girls are not simply wedged into solutions meant for boys.