Funneled into Juvenile Justice System [JJIE.org]

Girls are the fastest-growing segment of the juvenile justice population. Despite the significant progress that juvenile justice advocates have made over the past few decades to spread awareness about the school-to-prison pipeline, to increase understanding about the role of trauma among children in the juvenile justice system, to reduce incarceration through development of alternatives to detention and to reduce racial and ethnic disparities, girls have not seen the benefits of these efforts.

In the past two decades, the proportion of detained girls has increased at a rate four times as fast as the number of detained boys. And racial and ethnic disparities among justice-involved girls remain stark: Girls of color are detained, committed and sent to residential placements at rates significantly higher than their Caucasian counterparts. According to OJJDP, there is no evidence that girls are becoming increasingly violent or criminal. So, what is leading girls into the juvenile justice system?

[For more of this story, written by Maheen Kaleem, go to http://jjie.org/when-we-fail-t...stice-system/116622/]

Back in my early days of "Prison condition activism" (early 1970's), I had occasion to meet a young woman who had recently been released from the N.Y. State Women's Prison in Albion. This young woman grew up in the same town where our National Women's Rights Monument is now located (Seneca Falls, N.Y.). It's also located in former Iroquois territory, where their "constitution" gave Women the Rights to Assert, Debate, Vote, and Declare War, almost 1,000 years before our U.S. Constitution was amended to give Women the franchise.

The charge for which this young woman was "Adjudicated" of (not "convicted" as per her "youthful offender status"), was "Being in danger of becoming Morally Depraved". I had never heard of a male being sentenced to a state prison for such an "offense". I don't know if New York State still has that "criminal statute" "on the books". I hope the "Sisterhood" among our ACEs Connection readership, can appreciate the importance of this blog post, when Texas still imprisons secondary students for Truancy. I don't know how many other states do.

Funneled into Juvenile Justice System [JJIE.org]

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