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/]
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