Criminalization
Contrary to popular belief, girls – particularly girls of color – represent a growing share of the juvenile justice population, even though they do not present threats to public safety. The decision to arrest and detain girls is often unjustly based on the perception that girls have violated conventional norms and stereotypes of feminine behavior, the failure to recognize the context of girls’ actions, or neglect to consider age-appropriate behavior or the contributing factor of trauma–especially the trauma of gender-based violence.
Highlights of Our Work on Criminalization & the Justice System
Criminalized Survivors: Today’s Abuse to Prison Pipeline for Girls
This 2023 report provides a fresh analysis of the abuse to prison pipeline and a call to end the criminalization of girls who experience sexual violence, jointly released with Rights4Girls. This report calls for an end to the criminalization and re-victimization of survivors and outlines key recommendations in service of systemic change.
Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline: The Girls’ Story
This report exposes how we criminalize girls — especially girls of color — who have been sexually and physically abused, and it offers policy recommendations to dismantle the abuse to prison pipeline. It illustrates the pipeline with examples, including the detention of girls who are victims of sex trafficking, girls who run away or become truants because of abuse they experience, and girls who cross into juvenile justice from the child welfare system.
About Our Work on Criminalization & the Justice System
The criminalization of girls is most often an unjust response to behavior that is age-appropriate or, at times, a response to violence or unaddressed trauma. Rooting girls into the juvenile justice system is often justified on the grounds that it is “for their own protection” or “safety;” they are also criminalized because they are blamed for the sexual violence they survived.
In fact, sexual abuse is one of the primary drivers of girls’ entry into the juvenile justice system. Our work on the sexual abuse to prison pipeline for girls examines the perverse twist of justice in which girls are blamed and punished for the violence they’ve experienced.
This focus area also intersects with our work on school pushout. Although the conversation about the school to prison pipeline typically concentrates on boys, girls of color are also disproportionately criminalized at school. Black girls, in particular, are arrested in school far more often than their white counterparts.
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