Girls in Traditional and Gender-Responsive Juvenile Justice Placements

Abstract

There is no shortage of policy, research, or practice recommendations for implementing gender-responsive programming. There is, however, substantial variation in the way in which gender-responsive has been defined and operationalized in practice. This exploratory study represents an examination of girls’ lived experiences in traditional and gender-responsive juvenile justice programs from an insider’s perspective. Participants’ narratives were overwhelmingly positive about gender-responsive programming; however, the findings in this study also suggest that it is critical to incorporate important gender-neutral skills into gender-responsive programming to enable girls to succeed economically and interdependently as they attempt to maintain themselves and their families once they are released from custody.

Keywords:

• female offenders
• gender-responsive programming
• girls
• juvenile justice

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank my partners at the Utah Juvenile Justice Services Division, my research assistants, and the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments. This project was supported by a grant awarded to the author by the University of Utah's Research Committee and the Utah Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Utah Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice [Grant Number 5Z19].