Treating Girls Like Boys: The Juvenile Court and the Burden of Gender Neutral Programming

Abstract

Just as delinquency case rates skyrocketed more for girls than boys in the 80s and 90s, recent declines show, yet again, that advances in youth intervention favor boys over girls. Given that boys continue to outnumber girls involved with the system, it is perhaps not surprising that juvenile courts tend to rely on gender-neutral programming; in effect treating girls like boys. Drawing a sample of youths (N = 3,901) processed by a Midwestern juvenile court filed between 2012 and 2016, the present study shows that gender neutral diversion programs yield lower recidivism rates for boys, but not for girls.

Keywords:

• Gender disparity
• gender neutral
• gender responsive
• recidivism

Disclosure statement

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Janet Lauritsen, Bryanna Fox, and Bryan Bischof for reviewing this manuscript prior to publication and providing thoughtful, encouraging, and enriching comments and criticisms. A debt of thanks to Evan Mitchell for providing advice on collecting and decoding juvenile court records.

Notes

1 “Harrison County” is a pseudonym. This name was chosen to protect the confidentiality of the particular juvenile court studied. There is no county named Harrison in Kansas.