Hannah Green is a senior program associate on the Vera Institute’s Initiative to End Girls’ Incarceration.
An increasing body of literature highlighting the connection between trauma and incarceration is beginning to shed light on one of the darkest parts of the juvenile justice system: Girls in need of protection and support not only fail to receive the care they deserve, but have been criminalized as a direct result of their trauma, a phenomenon known as the sexual abuse to prison pipeline.
Successful juvenile justice reform efforts over the past decade have reduced the number of incarcerated youth by half. One key aspect of successful reform has been a focus on the ways that trauma serves as an underlying driver of arrest and incarceration, and a corresponding investment in trauma-responsive diversion strategies. These reforms, however, have largely failed to address the unique forms of gender-based violence and trauma that bring girls and LGBQ/TGNC youth into the justice system. Girls now make up a greater proportion of the juvenile justice system than ever before, and the most recent data continues to show the deep disparities for LGBQ/TGNC youth in the system (Irvine and Canfield, 2018).
Girls in the justice system experience high rates of complex childhood trauma (Baglivio et al., 2014). Sexual violence, in particular, is a gendered and often unaddressed form of trauma that commonly leads girls into the justice system. Best estimates indicate that up to 81 percent of girls in the justice system have experienced sexual violence (Acoca, 1998; DeHart, 2009; Smith, Leve, & Chamberlain, 2006). Additionally, girls in the justice system experience sexual violence at an earlier age and for a longer period of time as compared to other forms of abuse (Chamberlain & Moore, 2002). Girls of color are disparately impacted—Black women are more likely to be survivors of sexual violence and sex trafficking than their White peers (“Characteristics of suspected human trafficking incidents”, 2011; DuMonthier, Childers, & Milli, 2017).
Childhood trauma and sexual violence are not only a key part of girls’ experiences before and during their justice involvement, they are also a direct pathway leading girls and LGBQ/TGNC youth into the justice system (Dierkhising et al., 2013; Ford, Grasso, Hawke, & Chapman, 2013; Saada Saar, Epstein, Rosenthal, & Vafa, 2015).
This can happen in two primary ways. Girls may be criminalized when experiences of abuse or trauma are not adequately responded to by child-serving preventive systems. In these cases, the justice system becomes the default answer to trauma responses, like running away or fighting. Girls may also be criminalized when systems confine them in an effort to protect them, a common story for girls who are being trafficked. Once girls are in the justice system, they are often pathologized, diagnosed with mental health disorders, and mandated to services aimed primarily at behavioral modification rather than addressing the underlying trauma that led to their incarceration.
In these cases, girls are punished twice— first when they do not receive acknowledgment or support for the abuse and trauma they experienced, and then again when they are arrested for behaviors directly related to that abuse. Implicit racial biases result in girls of color, and Black girls in particular, being viewed as less in need of empathy (Epstein, Blake, & Gonzalez, 2017), which makes it more likely their trauma responses will be incorrectly and inappropriately recategorized as delinquent behaviors. The justice system, however, is ill-equipped to provide the type of individualized, trauma- informed responses that are best practice for supporting trauma survivors.
In 2018, the Vera Institute of Justice launched the National Initiative to End Girls’ Incarceration, working in five sites across the country: Hawaii, Maine, New York City, North Dakota, and Santa Clara County (CA) to ensure that girls and LGBQ/TGNC are no longer left behind by government systems that have a responsibility to prevent and respond to childhood trauma. Our work brings together a cohort of jurisdictions working across agencies to disrupt the pipeline into the justice system and invest in a continuum of community-based resources that can support the safety and well-being of girls and LGBQ/TGNC youth and address the root causes of their incarceration.
Across our “Getting to Zero” sites, we have seen vivid examples of the patterns documented in the research, highlighting the ways in which childhood trauma and abuse intersect with gender and race to lead girls and LGBQ/TGNC youth into the justice system. For example, girls are consistently arrested for drug use, running away from home, or fighting with family members following a sexual assault that has not been reported or responded to. Schools call police after fights prompted by repeated harassment due to a young person’s gender expression. And, even in jurisdictions where minors cannot be arrested for prostitution, trafficked youth are arrested for survival behaviors, like shoplifting, burglary, or drug running coerced by traffickers. Girls who run away from placement or schools, often in an effort to avoid further harm or to cope with the aftermath of harm, are confined in a misguided attempt to keep them safe.
Prevention and early intervention are critical, because understanding and attending to the link between childhood trauma and justice involvement can disrupt the pipeline to the justice system. One promising model, called an “advocacy-approach,” builds on work developed in the context of victim services for survivors of domestic and sexual violence. When applied to delinquency prevention, advocacy-based interventions pair girls with advocates who support them in achieving self-determined goals. These models are fundamentally about restoring the agency and power that are taken away from girls when they experience trauma and building their capacity to directly change their environmental contexts, including safety concerns (Javdani, 2013). Preliminary findings demonstrate success at increasing resilience and self-efficacy, while reducing delinquent behaviors, internalizing symptoms, substance use, and sexual risk-taking (Javdani & Allen, 2016).
Providers working within the context of child welfare and childhood trauma need to be aware of the ways that responses from prevention systems can result in justice involvement. So-called “delinquent behaviors” should never make a child unworthy of empathy and support, but instead must be understood within the full context of a young person’s experience—at an individual, interpersonal, and institutional level acknowledging the role that racism and sexism have played in their lives. Practitioners working with childhood abuse survivors must have access to support, training, and resources to provide trauma-informed, gender-responsive, and culturally responsive interventions that can adequately identify and attend to trauma, disrupting the pipeline into the justice system.
References
Abram, K. M., Teplin, L. A., Charles, D. R., Longworth, S. L., McClelland, G. M., & Dulcan, M. K. (2004). Posttraumatic stress disorder and trauma in youth in juvenile detention. Archives of General Psychiatry, 61(4), 403-410.
Acoca, L. (1998). Outside/inside: The violation of American girls at home, on the streets, and in the juvenile justice system. Crime & Delinquency, 44(4), 561-589.
Baglivio, M. T., Epps, N., Swartz, K., Huq, M. S., Sheer, A., & Hardt, N. S. (2014). The prevalence of adverse childhood experiences (ACE) in the lives of juvenile offenders. Office of Juvenile Justice & Delinquency Prevention Journal of Juvenile Justice, 3(2), 1-23.
“Characteristics of suspected human trafficking incidents, 2008-2010.” (2011). Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics. Retrieved from https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cshti0810.pdf
Chamberlain, P. & Moore, K. J. (2002). Chaos and trauma in the lives of adolescent females with antisocial behavior and delinquency. Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment & Trauma, 6 (1), 79-108.
DeHart, D. D. (2009). Poly-victimization among girls in the juvenile justice system: Manifestations & associations to delinquency. Columbia, SC: The Center for Child & Family Studies. Retrieved from https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/228620.pdf
Dierkhising, C. B., Ko, S. J., Woods-Jaeger, B., Briggs, E. C., Lee, R., & Pynoos, R. S. (2013). Trauma histories among justice-involved youth: Findings from the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 4(1).
DuMonthier, A., Childers, C., & Milli, J. (2017). The status of black women in the United States. Washington, DC: Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Retrieved from https://iwpr.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/The-Status-of-Black-Women-6.26.17.pdf
Epstein, R., Blake, J. J., & Gonzalez, T. (2017). Girlhood interrupted: The erasure of black girls’ childhood. Washington, DC: Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality. Retrieved from https://www.law.georgetown.edu/poverty-inequality-center/wp-content/uploads/sites/14/2017/08/girlhood-interrupted.pdf
Ford, J. D., Grasso, D. J., Hawke, J., & Chapman, J. F. (2013). Poly-victimization among juvenile justice involved youths. Child Abuse & Neglect, 37(10), 788-800.
Irvine, A. & Canfield, A. (2018). Reflections on new national data on LGBQ/GNCT youth in the justice system. Boston: LGBTQ Policy Journal, Harvard Kennedy School. Retrieved from https://lgbtq.hkspublications.org/2018/01/29/reflections-on-new-national-data-on-lgbq-gnct-youth-in -the-justice-system/
Javdani, S. (2013). Gender matters: Using an ecological lens to understand female crime and disruptive behavior. In B. L. Russell (Eds.), Perceptions of Female Offenders: How Stereotypes and Social Norms Affect Criminal Justice Responses (9-24). New York: Springer.
Javdani, S. & Allen, N. E. (2016). An ecological model for intervention for juvenile justice-involved girls: Development and preliminary prospective evaluation. Feminist Criminology, 11(2), 135-162.
Saada Saar, M., Epstein, R., Rosenthal, L., & Vafa, Y. (2015). The sexual abuse to prison pipeline: The girls’ story. Washington, DC: Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality. Retrieved from https://rights4girls.org/wp-content/uploads/r4g/2015/02/2015_COP_sexual-abuse_layout_web-1.pdf
Schlossman, S., & Wallach, S. (1978). The crime of precocious sexuality: Female juvenile delinquency in the progressive era. Harvard Educational Review, 48(1), 65-94.
Smith, D. K., Leve, L. D., & Chamberlain, P. (2006). Adolescent girls’ offending and health-risking sexual behavior: The predictive role of trauma. Child Maltreatment, 11(4), 346-353.