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Date: November 22, 2024 Fri
Time: 11:48 am
Time: 11:48 am
Results for juvenile delinquency (u.s.)
2 results foundAuthor: Zahn, Margaret A. Title: Causes and Correlates of Girls’ Delinquency Summary: Although the literature examining the causes and correlates of male delinquency is extensive, the extent to which these factors explain and predict delinquency for girls remains unclear. This bulletin summarizes results of an extensive review of more than 1,600 articles and book chapters from the social science scientific literature on individual-level risk factors for delinquency and factors related to family, peers, schools, and communities. The review, which focused on girls ages 11 to 18, also examined whether these factors are gender neutral, gender specific, or gender sensitive. This bulletin defines delinquency as the involvement of a child younger than 18 in behavior that violates the law. Such behavior includes violent crime, property crime, burglary, drug and alcohol abuse, and status offenses (i.e., behaviors that would not be criminal if committed by an adult) such as running away, ungovernability, truancy, and possession of alcohol. According to arrest statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the overall rate of juvenile arrests decreased from 1994 to 2004. More specifically, the arrest rate for violent crimes over this period decreased 49 percent. The violent crime arrest rate then increased in 2005 by 2 percent, with a 4-percent increase in 2006. However, these overall rates obscure important variations in rates by gender. From 1997 to 2006, arrests for aggravated assaults decreased more for boys (24 percent) than for girls (10 percent). In addition, arrests for simple assault declined by 4 percent for boys, whereas the rate for girls increased by 19 percent. Arrest data, however, are inadequate in helping to understand the factors that lead to girls’ offending and arrests. To better understand the causes and correlates of girls’ delinquency, this bulletin examines evidence from research studies that have explored the dynamics of girls’ delinquency and risk behavior. Details: Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2010. 20p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed April 19, 2011 at: http://girlsstudygroup.rti.org/docs/GSG_Causes_and_Correlates_Bulletin.pdf Year: 2010 Country: United States URL: http://girlsstudygroup.rti.org/docs/GSG_Causes_and_Correlates_Bulletin.pdf Shelf Number: 121405 Keywords: Female Juvenile OffendersGenderJuvenile Delinquency (U.S.) |
Author: 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 |