Women In The Juvenile Justice System

As much as today’s society would like to think that times have completely changed, gender stereotypes still dictate much of the way men and women are treated. More specifically, the way the juvenile justice system has historically treated young women has been consistent with gender bias. Boys are to be aggressive and violent and society expects to be protected from them, while girls are to be passive and well-behaved and society doesn’t expect to need protection from them. Furthermore, when girls misbehave the system is most of the times ill equipped to handle them. There are very few facilities and programs that are designed solely for girls. Around the country many of them are still treated by programs that were developed according to research about boys, or sometimes women, that don’t take into consideration the full spectrum of needs of a young adolescent female. Girls have needs that are unique to their experiences growing up, and require specific programming that tackles the underlying reasons for their …show more content…
2). What has the typical young female delinquent done to get into trouble? What happens to her if she is arrested? These are questions that are rarely taken into consideration when the juvenile justice system isn’t critically looked at through a gender responsive lens. Usually when delinquency or youth crime is addressed there is an understanding that it is generally focused on male behavior. Going as far back as Albert Cohen, who in his influential book on gang delinquency in 1955 wrote “The delinquent is a rogue male”, crime is a male centered occurrence (Cohen, 1955). Still over ten years later, in one of the most referenced books on delinquency, Travis Hirschi reduced female involvement in delinquency to a footnote, which said that “in the analysis that follows, the ‘non-Negro’ becomes ‘white,’ and the girls disappear” (Hirschi,