Girls Poorly Served by Juvenile Justice System, Say Authors

A pair of new scholarly articles say nominally neutral rules in the juvenile justice system can actually fail girls, especially, emphasizes one author, young women of color. Discrimination is sort of hidden, said Professor Francine Sherman, director of the Juvenile Rights Advocacy Project at Boston College Law School and author of the paper “Justice for Girls: Are We Making Progress?”

“If there were laws on the books that said we’re going to do one thing for girls and another thing for boys, that would be challengeable” in court, she said.  Instead, the discrimination is in practice, where “we do one thing for girls and one thing for boys.”

For example, in some states minors are still subject to criminal prostitution charges, a charge that disproportionately falls on females, and can make them less likely to run away from their exploiters. Both Sherman and a colleague point out that girls are more likely than boys to be locked up for the status violation of running away. “Most of the girls are running away from abuse,” said Jyoti Nanda, author of “Blind Discretion: Girls of Color and Delinquency in the Juvenile Justice System” and core faculty member in both the David J. Epstein Public Interest Law Program and the Critical Race Studies Program at the University of California Los Angeles School of Law.