Understanding developmental life-course theory for justice-involved girls and women residing in rural coercive sexual environments

ABSTRACT

Coercive sexual environments (CSE) spotlight spatial disadvantage and sexual exploitation of at-risk girls in the United States. While existing literature explores sexualised culture in rural places, little is known about rural CSEs. The current study folds a developmental life-course framework together with the CSE phenomenon and gendered pathways to assess rural communities’ responses to ‘difficult’ girls. Incarcerated girls and women, as well as community stakeholders from rural communities, were interviewed to assess the gendered pathways of delinquent girls. Findings confirmed girls (juveniles) and young women (adults) can identify overt and covert community (in)actions that ignore their abuses and criminalise their trauma. Within this study, 37.5% of the sample moved from the juvenile justice system to the adult criminal justice system, with all previously residing in non-urban locations. Evidence suggests traditional gendered norms influence the community's responses to girls in rural CSEs, which partially explains the abuse-to-prison pipeline and later involvement in the criminal justice system.

KEYWORDS:

• Coercive sexual environments
• developmental life-course theory
• juvenile justice involvement
• rural communities

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This classification system has five categories based on the number of persons per square mile (ppsm). The current state average was 35.6 ppsm. Of the 105 counties, 36 were categorised as Frontier, 34 Rural, 19 Densely-settled Rural, 10 Semi-Urban and 6 Urban (The University of Kansas, 2018).

2 Metro to non-metro classification ranges from 1–9 (1 = most metro; 9 = most non-metro). With 105 total counties, 18% were metro and 82% were non-metro (Economic Research Service, 2013b).

3 Medically Underserved Areas/Populations are areas or populations designated by Health Resources and Services Administration as having too few primary care providers, high infant mortality, high poverty or a high elderly population.

4 Extension Agents are part of a statewide network of educators sharing unbiased, research-based information and expertise on issues important to the state to address global food systems, water, health, developing tomorrow's leaders and community vitality.