Danielle Hicks-Best's shocking story, "An 11-Year-Old Reported Being Raped Twice, Wound Up With a Conviction" reported in the Washington Post on March 13, puts a compelling face to our mistrust and misunderstanding of girls and our harmful over use of the juvenile justice system.
Unfortunately, Danielle's story is not unique. Every day our juvenile justice system locks up girls who are victims of sexual violence, and physical and emotional abuse. In fact, we often incarcerate victimized girls in a misguided effort to provide them with services and to "protect" them.
Girls presence in the juvenile justice system has been steadily increasing -- growing from 20 percent of arrests in 1992 to 29 percent in 2012 and from 15 percent of detentions in 1992 to 21 percent in 2011. Black girls have been particularly ill-served. In 2011 Black girls were more than twice as likely as their white peers to be referred to juvenile court for delinquency and 20 percent more likely to be detained. New research by Dr. Angela Irvine of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, from a sample of 1,400 girls in juvenile jurisdictions around the country shows that 40% of girls in the juvenile justice system are lesbian, bisexual, transgender, questioning, or gender-nonconforming. We use the justice system to intervene more, yet we have improved very little in the lives of girls.
[For more of this story, written by Liz Ryan and Francine Sherman, go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...-them_b_6929764.html]
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