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Date: April 29, 2024 Mon
Time: 10:13 pm
Time: 10:13 pm
Results for female delinquents
4 results foundAuthor: Sherman, Francine T. Title: Making Detention Reform Work for Girls: A Guide to Juvenile Detention Reform Summary: In 2005, the Annie E. Casey Foundation published Detention Reform and Girls: Challenges and Solutions, the thirteenth installment in its “Pathways to Detention Reform” publication series. The report showed that while girls comprise a minority of youth who appear in juvenile courts on delinquency charges, they often present vastly different challenges than boys. The special needs of girls are manifest throughout the juvenile justice process, the report found, but particularly at the detention phase. Serving girls effectively often requires targeted gender-responsive strategies. Throughout the nation, court-involved girls frequently pose minimal risk to public safety but suffer with significant social service needs. Data on detention utilization show that girls are being disproportionately detained for misdemeanors, status offenses and technical violations of probation and parole. In short, many girls enter detention for the wrong reasons and many remain in detention for extended periods harmful to them and contrary to best practice. Mirroring the national picture, the Pathways report found, “JDAI sites are struggling with how to reduce the population of girls in their secure facilities, implement detention alternatives to best meet girls’ needs, and provide gender-responsive programming for girls who require detention.” Further, the report noted, JDAI’s “core strategies by themselves — without specific policies, practices, and programs that address the particular challenges posed by girls — do not seem sufficient to eliminate disparities, to improve program performance, or to ensure appropriate conditions of confinement.” The Pathways report included a wealth of information about girls and detention. It provided data on girls’ growing share of the detention population, information on how girls’ backgrounds and needs differ from boys’, and an extensive discussion of promising approaches and best practices research on how to serve girls more effectively and make detention reform work for girls. What the report did not provide, however, were clear and specific instructions for local JDAI leaders on how to put this information to constructive use. This practice guide aims to fill that void. It responds to a call from both mature and new sites, which continue to find that effectively serving and supervising girls is among the most difficult issues in detention reform. The practice guide will stress that efforts to safely reduce the inappropriate detention of low-risk girls must be rooted in JDAI’s core strategies, but with an added intentional focus on applying those core strategies to girls’ unique needs and circumstances. These efforts require a strong and collaborative leadership team with the will and capacity to undertake meaningful reforms in the treatment of girls at the detention stage. The work must be rooted in careful analysis of detention management reports and individual case files to pinpoint policies or practices that may result in girls’ inappropriate or unnecessary detention, and they must lead to action as local leaders design, test and continually revise new strategies to meet girls’ needs. The practice guide begins with an overview of the challenges facing local juvenile justice systems in improving their approaches to girls in the detention process. The chapter summarizes the available information about the characteristics of girls in detention, the disparities in the system’s treatment of girls and boys, and the harm caused by unnecessary overreliance on detention for girls. This opening chapter highlights several prevalent causes for this overreliance on detention for girls, and it summarizes some of the key lessons from available research about what can be accomplished through focused efforts to improve the treatment of girls in the detention process. Chapter II describes the organizational steps necessary for JDAI jurisdictions to create a gender work group at the local level and to begin the process of analyzing current practices vis-à-vis girls in detention and developing a work plan for improving the detention process for girls. The chapter provides guidelines and suggestions for creating a local work group to examine the needs of girls, discusses the best timing for detailed gender analysis, and explains how the efforts of the girls work groups will be rooted in the JDAI core strategies. Chapter III will detail the steps required to conduct in-depth gender-focused data analyses to identify the nature and extent of disparities in the jurisdiction’s treatment of girls. Steps in the process include: an initial data scan of readily available data; selection of locally targeted research questions for further study (based on national research combined with local judgment and experience); in-depth quantitative analyses to determine underlying patterns that might be driving gender disparities and problematic treatment of girls; and, finally, a systematic analysis of information contained in case files and related records to further understanding and address questions that remain unanswered based on quantitative data. In addition to step-by-step instructions, the chapter will illustrate the process through a practical case study of a hypothetical jurisdiction. Chapter IV will describe how jurisdictions should go about putting the information gleaned from their gender-focused analysis to practical use. The chapter will help participating jurisdictions create a locally tailored work plan for improving the detention process for girls. The chapter profiles an array of promising and proven strategies gleaned from both the core JDAI strategies and best practice research on effective and gender-responsive practices for girls to address common needs and problems that may be revealed by sites’ data analyses. Also included are practical examples of these strategies from JDAI sites and other jurisdictions. The discussion will illustrate this process by detailing the gender-focused work plan developed in the hypothetical jurisdiction introduced in the prior chapter. Finally, in addition to the text in these chapters, the practice guide offers a variety of practical tools and templates in the Appendices. These include Girls Detention Facility Self-Assessment guidelines and sample tables for the quantitative and case file analyses for the jurisdiction described throughout the report in the hypothetical case study. Details: Baltimore: Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative, Anne E. Casey Foundation, 2013. 88p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 4, 2013 at: http://www.jdaihelpdesk.org/Featured%20Resources/JDAI%20-%20Making%20Detention%20Reform%20Work%20for%20Girls.pdf Year: 2013 Country: United States URL: http://www.jdaihelpdesk.org/Featured%20Resources/JDAI%20-%20Making%20Detention%20Reform%20Work%20for%20Girls.pdf Shelf Number: 128653 Keywords: Female DelinquentsFemale Juvenile OffendersJuvenile CorrectionsJuvenile Delinquency (U.S.)Juvenile Detention |
Author: Sherman, Francine T. Title: Gender Injustice: System-Level Juvenile Justice Reforms for Girls Summary: 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. 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. 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 large-scale 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, this 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 this report are consistent with decades of research on adolescent development, as well as newer data on the development of girls in particular. 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. Details: Portland, OR: National Crittenton Foundation; Washington, DC: National Women's Law Center, 2015. 72p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed September 30, 2015 at: http://www.nwlc.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/ed_rp_gender_injustice.pdf Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: http://www.nwlc.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/ed_rp_gender_injustice.pdf Shelf Number: 136894 Keywords: Female DelinquentsFemale Juvenile OffendersJuvenile CorrectionsJuvenile DelinquencyJuvenile DetentionJuvenile Justice Reform |
Author: Millenky, Megan Title: Preventing Juvenile Justice Involvement for Young Women. An Introduction to an Evaluation of the PACE Center for Girls Summary: Involvement in the juvenile justice system has tremendous costs for the individuals within it, as well as for society. Such involvement may damage a child's relationships with friends and family, negatively affect mental health, and interrupt the academic progress and work experience that should accumulate during adolescence. On the societal level, the United States spends up to $88,000 per year on each individual placed in a juvenile corrections facility. Therefore, prevention or early intervention programs that help young people avoid involvement in the juvenile system in the first place offer a significant return on investment, and professionals in the field have focused on identifying and evaluating such promising approaches. Increasingly, girls are making up a larger proportion of those involved with the juvenile justice system. Although the juvenile confinement rate is declining, and juvenile arrest rates are slowing overall, girls are seeing less of an improvement than boys. Specifically, from 2001 to 2010 boys' arrest rates decreased by 26.5 percent, while girls' arrest rates decreased by only 15.5 percent. Yet the current juvenile justice system is not well positioned to meet the particular needs of girls, as most services are rooted in research based on the needs of boys. Girls at risk of juvenile delinquency have a specific profile that differs from that of their male counterparts: They are more often detained for non-serious offenses, such as truancy or violating probation, and more often enter the juvenile justice system with a history of physical or sexual abuse.6 According to a recent report by the Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality, "the juvenile justice system only exacerbates [the girls'] problems by failing to provide girls with services at the time when they need them most." One program that directly addresses this challenge is PACE Center for Girls. This "gender-responsive" program serving communities in Florida - perhaps the largest and most well-established of its kind - aims to prevent girls' involvement in the juvenile justice system. This brief describes an ongoing evaluation of PACE that will help policymakers and practitioners understand and strengthen the program's effects for at-risk girls on a range of outcomes, including education, delinquency, risky behavior, social support, and mental health. More broadly, the study will inform the national dialogue about how to better serve such girls. Details: New York: MDRC, 2016. 12p. Source: Internet Resource: Research Brief: Accessed January 28, 2016 at: http://www.mdrc.org/sites/default/files/Preventing_Juvenile_Justice_Involvement_2016.pdf?utm_source=MDRC+Updates&utm_campaign=af3e0f7338-January_28_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_504d5ac165-af3e0f7338-42214305 Year: 2016 Country: United States URL: http://www.mdrc.org/sites/default/files/Preventing_Juvenile_Justice_Involvement_2016.pdf?utm_source=MDRC+Updates&utm_campaign=af3e0f7338-January_28_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_504d5ac165-af3e0f7338-42214305 Shelf Number: 137698 Keywords: At-Risk YouthDelinquency PreventionFemale DelinquentsGender Specific Responses |
Author: Sanders, Jackie Title: Young females in the court system: A report prepared for the Principal Youth Court Judge Summary: The Principal Youth Court Judge expressed an interest in understanding more about the experiences of females who come through the Youth Court. He has asked three questions: 1. What is the profile of young females who come before the Youth Court? a. Age, ethnicity, charges and outcomes. b. Do they have particular background characteristics and needs that the Youth Court would benefit from knowing about in terms of sentencing? Of concern are factors such as levels of abuse and neglect, levels of violence perpetrated by them. 2. How can the Youth Court adapt its processes so that it can better enable participation of females in Court processes as required by legislation? Are there particular needs of females as opposed to males in these processes? 3. What do good rehabilitation programmes look like for females? Are there specific components that would differ from those appropriate for males? This report is divided into two sections. First, in order to answer Question 1, data from the New Zealand Successful Youth Transitions Research Programme (YTR) is used to generate a profile of females and males who report involvement in the Youth Court, to explore their pathways into and through the court system and to link these pathways with other aspects of their lives . This discussion situates these patterns within the wider literature. Second, the extant literature is reviewed with a view to answering Questions 2 and 3, bearing in mind the patterns identified in the first section. Details: Wellington, NZ: Massey University, 2016. 59p. Source: Internet Resource: The Youth Transitions Study (New Zealand): Whaia to huanui kia toa, Technical Report 25: Accessed July 31, 2017 at:http://www.youthsay.co.nz/massey/fms/Resilience/Documents/Female%20pathways%20to%20offending.pdf Year: 2016 Country: New Zealand URL: http://www.youthsay.co.nz/massey/fms/Resilience/Documents/Female%20pathways%20to%20offending.pdf Shelf Number: 146631 Keywords: Female DelinquentsFemale Offenders Juvenile Court |