Juvenile Justice

Robert E. Shepherd, Jr.

Girls in the Juvenile Justice System

The last few years have witnessed a rather remarkable and unexpected reduction in juvenile crime, and an even more significant dip in serious and violent crimes committed by young offenders. However, while these general and substantial decreases were taking place across the board, the number of young women arrested for delinquent offenses increased dramatically. Indeed, violent crime arrests of girls increased by 25 percent between 1992 and 1996, and the increase in arrests of girls for property crimes went up 21 percent, while arrests of male juveniles dropped 4 percent overall. (KIMBERLY J. BUDNICK & ELLEN SHIELDS-FLETCHER, What About Girls? OJJDP FACT SHEET (1998).) In 1997, girls constituted 26 percent of all juvenile arrests as opposed to 24 percent just four years earlier in 1993, and 21 percent in 1983. (EILEEN POE-YAMAGATA & JEFFREY A. BUTTS, FEMALE OFFENDERS IN THE JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM: STATISTICS SUMMARY (1996).) More than 730,000 girls were arrested in 1997 across America. (HOWARD N. SNYDER & MELISSA SICKMUND, JUVENILE OFFENDERS AND VICTIMS: 1999 NATIONAL REPORT (1999).) Even as late as 1999, girls represented 59 percent of the arrests for running away and 30 percent of the arrests for curfew violations, so there was still an overrepresentation of females in arrests for traditional status offenses. Interestingly, about 10 percent of all girls and 10 percent of all boys report that they have run away from home at some point before they turned 16. (Id.; Howard N. Snyder, Juvenile Arrests 1999, JUV. JUST. BULL. (2000).) However, girls are taken into police custody much more frequently than boys for these behaviors. The typical juvenile female offender has been described as being about 16 years old, living in a city in a single-parent home, as being a high school dropout with inadequate work and social skills, and with a victim history of physical or sexual abuse. (ILENE BERGSMANN, The Forgotten Few: Juvenile Female Offenders, FEDERAL PROBATION (1989).)

Federal efforts

Despite these data, and an important 1992 amendment to the federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, states have been slow to develop gender-specific programming for juvenile female offenders. That amendment grew out of the 1992 reauthorization of the act and it provides that states must include in their annual plans to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention "(i) an analysis of gender-specific services for the prevention and treatment of juvenile delinquency, including the types of such services available and the need for services for females; and (ii) a plan for providing needed gender-specific services for the prevention and treatment of juvenile delinquency." (Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, § 223(8)(B).) The same reauthorization process also added a "challenge grant" component to the act that includes money for states involved in "developing and adopting policies to prohibit gender bias in placement and treatment and establishing programs to ensure that female youth have access to the full range of health and mental health services, treatment for physical or sexual assault and abuse, self-defense instruction, education in parenting, education in general, and other training and vocational services . . . ." (Id. at § 285(B)(2)(E).) As of 1997, only about half of the states had developed meaningful plans or established programs for female juvenile delinquents, though progress continues in developing model programs that are successful in addressing the unique needs of girls.

Program design

There are four basic assumptions that underlie successful programs for juvenile female offenders, and lawyers and jurisdictions should use these criteria in judging the effectiveness of proposed programs. First, exemplary gender-specific programs should incorporate the characteristics of good programs in general. A weak program for juvenile offenders will not become an effective program for girls simply by adding a gender-specific component. The program should be based on solid research predicated on current adolescent development theory with a well-trained and competent staff and an ongoing and demanding evaluation component. Second, an effective gender-specific program must recognize that young women are quite different from their male counterparts. They may have different patterns of offending and need tailored and innovative treatment modalities. Third, equity in programming for girls does not mean that programmers should simply allow girls equal access to existing services designed for young men. Equality certainly should exist in access to resources and to quality staff and facilities. However, as one study has pointed out "in the particulars of treatment . . . equality must be redefined to mean providing opportunities that mean the same to each gender." Fourth, services for girls cannot be viewed in isolation. To effectively address the issues presented by juvenile female offenders, the juvenile justice system must connect services to the broader issues of girls and women in the larger society, including education, gender roles, parenting, and a variety of other concerns. (Community Research Associates, JUVENILE FEMALE OFFENDERS: A STATUS OF THE STATES REPORT (1998).) One of Minnesota's pioneers for programming for girls has observed that "developmentally, girls are a lot more like women than they are like boys or men." (Mary Scully Whitaker, quoted in GUIDING PRINCIPLES FOR PROMISING FEMALE PROGRAMMING (1998).)

Effective programming

The Florida Female Initiative helped to develop some basic principles for a continuum of care for young women involved, or at risk of being involved, in the juvenile justice system:

• girls should be treated in the least restrictive programming environment consistent with a balance between their treatment needs and the public safety;

• young women should be treated in programs close to their homes so as to maintain key family relationships and maximize effective transitional services;

• treatment modalities in the continuum should be consistent with principles of female development;

• programs at all stages of the continuum should address the particular needs of girls who are parents or are pregnant; and

• programs, if possible, should be all-female, or, if coeducational, should maintain an equal balance between young women and young men.

This continuum should be reflected in all stages of the system from prevention services through early intervention and diversion services to post-adjudicatory juvenile justice intervention services. (JUVENILE FEMALE OFFENDERS: A STATUS OF THE STATES REPORT (1998).)

Prevention services should include such features as prenatal care for pregnant girls, sexual and physical abuse intervention, early childhood programs for at-risk girls, health and sexuality information programs, and strong educational attention to the learning processes of girls. Early intervention and diversion services should include gender-specific counseling, remedial and tutorial education consistent with young women's learning styles, specially trained intake and court personnel to deal with girls and their needs, family-based wraparound services, all-female group homes and probation groups, and shelter care and other residential services for young women who have run away from home or engaged in other status offense behavior as an alternative to handling in the formal juvenile system. Special attention needs to be paid to juvenile detention policies as girls tend to be detained in many localities at a higher rate than their contribution to delinquency arrests would seem to justify. Girls entering the juvenile justice system also seem to have a higher level of mental health problems than their male counterparts. Juvenile justice intervention services should include all-female group treatment homes and specialized group homes for pregnant or parenting girls, gender-specific secure facilities for those few young women who are serious offenders and yet who still need a full range of treatment services, and aftercare and parole services that are designed specifically to help reintegrate juvenile female offenders back into the community with a reduced risk for reoffending. (Id.) Gender-specific probation services are an especially important component of the intervention because mothers tend to report probation violations by their daughters more frequently than by their sons. Girls also seem to have more difficulty than do boys in complying with some conditions of probation, and, thus, have a higher level of revocation and detention. (FRANCINE SHERMAN, Probation and the Delinquent Girl, WOMEN, GIRLS & CRIMINAL JUSTICE (August/September 2000).)

Conclusion
Considerably more research is needed into the particular and unique needs of juvenile female offenders and the evaluation of programs that currently exist around the country. There also should be more sharing of information about those programs that do work and how they can be replicated elsewhere. Lawyers representing girls in the juvenile justice system may have to spend more time developing trust in their clients, because these young women have so frequently been abused by adults that they view any adult, including their own lawyers, with understandable mistrust. Also, lawyers representing girls in court proceedings and prosecutors handling cases involving female offenders should examine the availability of gender-specific programs and activities, and should insist on the ability to access such programs so as to effectively prevent reoffending. The past decade has seen a much greater focus on young women in the juvenile justice system and this increased focus should be generating new and innovative programs.

Robert E. Shepherd, Jr., is a professor of law at the University of Richmond School of Law in Richmond, Virginia. He is also a contributing editor to Criminal Justice magazine and former chair of the Section's Juvenile Justice Committee.

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