On Jan. 21, hundreds of thousands of women gathered in Washington and other cities to send the message that “women’s rights are human rights.” The broad agenda for the marches included issues as disparate as LGBT rights, immigration reform, pay equality and even environmental protection.

Though very different, all were issues we have come to expect to see appended to a gender equality agenda. What we don’t often hear on the national stage is a call for broad reform of how women and girls are treated in the criminal and juvenile justice systems.

With the announcement of the president’s Proposed Budget Blueprint, which threatens significant cuts to programs for children and youth, jurisdictions seeking to do transformational work on this issue should not wait for a large, progressive national agenda to address this need; they should start locally, and start small.

[For more of this story, written by Marie N. Williams, go to http://jjie.org/2017/04/03/sta...nile-justice-system/]