Resources on Justice Involved Women - Girls

Making Detention Reform Work for Girls

This practice guide will stress that efforts to safely reduce the inappropriate detention of low-risk girls must be rooted in JDAI’s [Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative’s eight] 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...

Development Sequences of Girls' Delinquent Behavior

“[R]esearchers from two long-term longitudinal studies of delinquency- the Denver Youth Survey and the Fast Track Project-collaborated to establish common delinquency measures, conduct analyses, and integrate findings on developmental patterns of girls’ offending from childhood through adolescence ” (p. 1-2).

This bulletin presents some of their major results. These are: prevalence and frequency of offending-ever-prevalence, prevalence by age and/or grade, and frequency of offending behavior among girls reporting delinquency; initiation and desistance patterns-girls’ first offenses, age of first offense, and...

Neglected Needs: Girls in the Criminal Justice System

You need to read this document if you work with justice-involved girls. It explains the serious problems faced with girls in the criminal justice system and suggests ways to address these challenges and meet these girls' critical needs. This Briefing Paper is divided in to four sections: introduction-particular issues facing girls involved in criminal justice systems, numbers, and the right to non-discrimination; discrimination in the juvenile justice system-gender-specific offences, access to justice, alternatives to detention, and recommendations for eliminating this...

Trauma among Girls in the Juvenile Justice System

The impact of trauma on girls involved in the juvenile justice system is examined. Sections of this fact sheet cover: why there are increasing numbers of girls in the juvenile justice system; prevalence of trauma-exposure among justice-involved girls; prevalence of PTSD (posttraumatic stress disorder) among justice-involved girls; potential consequences of trauma for girls; impact of the juvenile justice system on traumatized girls; and gender-responsive programming. This review suggests that trauma-informed and gender-responsive programming and intervention models are needed in order...

Gender Injustice: System-Level Juvenile Justice Reform for Girls

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...