Challenging Girls' Invisibility in Juvenile Court

Abstract

Despite the fact that girls account for one of four arrests of juveniles, discussions of delinquency and juvenile justice generally ignore young women and their problems. A review of the nature of female delinquency as well as the juvenile justice system's long-documented bias against girls suggests that careful consideration of girls' issues would shed considerable light on the shortcomings of the juvenile justice system as a whole. Specifically, the unique problems of girls, like sexual abuse, were long ignored by a system that purported to seek "the best interests of the child." Instead, girls' survival strategies, like running away from home, were criminalized. Contemporary congressional efforts to reform juvenile justice, focused almost exclusively on boys' violence, are likely to produce changes that will result in the compounding of girls' problems due to contact with a system that ignores their unique situations.

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