The concern about the increasing number of girls in the juvenile justice system and a lack of adequate programming is nothing new. Policymakers have been advocating for attention to these issues for decades.
Beginning in the late 1990s, experts began to notice the increase in the number of girls in the juvenile justice system. With recent research on brain development and trauma, more data on girls in the juvenile system and concerns over human trafficking the time has come for these problems to be addressed in a constructive manner.
The late Robert E. Shepherd Jr. pointed to studies in the 1990s showing that girls were more often arrested for status offenses such as running away, had greater mental health needs including suicide attempts and prior psychiatric hospitalizations, and a history of trauma and abuse. He also notedthat girls of color were overrepresented in the system.
[For more of this story, written by Deborah Wood Smith, go to http://jjie.org/girls-in-justi...ims-of-abuse/137846/]
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