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http://womensenews.org/story/in-the-courts/150412/girls-fare-better-in-open-door-justice-programs
USA – Girls in the Juvenile Justice System Fare Better in Non-Detention Alternative Programs
By Crystal Lewis and Angeli Rasbury, with
Annie Geng - Teen Voices at Women's eNews – April 13, 2015
Programs that keep troubled girls from entering juvenile detention
residences are lowering recidivism rates as well as costs. An advocate points
to increased homelessness and poverty, saying they result in more runaways.
Teen girls
from the Center for Community Alternatives.Credit: Christine Abaté, deputy
director, Center for Community Alternatives
NEW YORK
(WOMENSENEWS)-- If a girl in New York State gets arrested by the police and
winds up in a juvenile detention facility her horizons quickly close in.
Just ask
Marsha Weissman, executive director of a group called the Center for Community
Alternatives, which has locations in New York City, Syracuse and Rochester.
"Our
work with adult women . . . provides the most haunting picture of girls in the
juvenile justice system," Weissman told the New York City
Council several years ago. "Most women in the criminal justice
system first appeared as girls in the juvenile justice system."
Weissman, in
a recent phone interview, said increasing poverty and homelessness is causing
more girls and young women to run away from home and into "not-so-good
situations or the streets." That in turn, Weissman said, raises the odds
of getting drawn into law-breaking behaviors and getting arrested.
The Center
for Community Alternatives and other programs like it are offering young people
an alternative to what happens after arrest.
Instead of
incarceration, these programs allow participants to stay in their own homes and
communities while accessing educational, mental health and behavioral services.
For girls, the programs that are single sex are proving most beneficial.
Such
alternatives to detention (ATDs) or alternatives to incarceration (ATIs) are
part of a growing effort to fight the dire statistics that loom over children
who enter detention and confinement facilities.
Last year,
in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo granted $5 million for 23 such programs for
adults and teens in a push for de-incarceration in New York State.
And little
by little, a space in these programs is being carved for girls stuck in a
system that was made for males.
Girls make
up 19 percent of those in juvenile facilities in New York State and 29 percent
of juvenile arrests.
More often
than for boys, girls are confined for "status offenses," acts that
would not be illegal if they were performed by an adult, such as truancy,
rather than violent crimes.
Sixty-six
percent of boys and 49 percent of girls who come out of a detention or
confinement facility were rearrested within two years, according to a 2011 New York
State Office of Children and Family Services study.
Decreasing Recidivism
Alternative
programs appear to be lowering recidivism.
In the first
11 months after participating in one such a program, Youth Advocate Programs,
based in Harrisburg, Penn., less than 10 percent of the young people enrolled were
arrested after being released, according to a 2012 report.
At the New
York City-based Center for Alternative Sentencing and Employment Services,
known as CASES, less than 15 percent of the graduates of their court employment
project have a further criminal conviction within two years of graduation.
Costs are
also lower. Enrollment in ATI programs cost between $2,500 and $15,000 a year per child,
compared to $200,000 a year for those in placement, according to a 2008 report from New York State's Office of Children and Family Services.
"We
need to change our lens," said Judy Yu, associate director of LGBTQ Youth
Issues at the New York City-based Correctional Association of New York, in a
recent phone interview. "A lot of issues teens in the juvenile justice
system face don't need to be criminalized. Instead, we need to fix a system
that is too quick to punish youth of color, and we need to provide educational
opportunities and better responses to poverty as a way to help these
kids."
Yu's
Correctional Association of New York is the oldest criminal justice reform
organization in the state. Her group and other advocacies are backing
alternative programs that give judges in the state options beyond incarceration
or probation for teens who commit crimes.
Most girls
who participate in alternative programs are mandated by the court.
"There
are judges who are eager to have evidence-based programs that have good outcome
rates, 'keep the community safe' and show the girls' progress," said Maria
Schwartz, supervisor of an alternative program, The New York Foundling's
Families Rising initiative, based in New York City.
And for
girls, who have a particularly hard time in custody, alternative programs are
especially beneficial when they are single sex and provide the chance of
girl-to-girl bonding and support.
In her City
Council testimony, Weissman said girls with the Center for Community Alternatives have done
better since the program began taking a gendered approach. The number of girls
leaving the program unsuccessfully--either by dropping out or getting back into
trouble with the law--dropped to 15 percent from 25 percent two years after
initiating such programs.
Weissman
said the percentage of girls and young women in the center has increased to 20
percent today from 10 percent five years ago. She attributes the jump to the
increasingly difficult lives of these young girls and women. The organization serves
40 to 50 teen girls.
The center
offers training programs exclusively for young women. Topics include leadership
skills, sexualized violence, building healthy relationships with partners and
reproductive health.
Receptive to
Gender-Specific Programs
Soffiyah
Elijah, executive director of Correctional Association of New York, says
policymakers are increasingly receptive to gender-specific programs.
"It's
important that any programs that are developed for girls and young women are
sensitive to the kinds of experiences they may have had before," she said.
"There is a real need to build the capacity of staff to be sensitive to
the issues that impact young girls and women."
She also
points out the importance of programs that recognize that in their early lives
many young women have been subject to trauma that can impact how they
experience the criminal justice system. One major trauma is sexual
exploitation.
Over the
past 10 years Girls Educational and Mentoring Services, based in New York City,
has helped girls and young women across the city who are commercially sexually
trafficked. The organization fights to end the normalization of incarcerating
victims of prostitution-related crimes by providing legal support and advocacy.
Girls in the
juvenile justice system need trauma support not just because they have gone
through traumatic experiences, but because "going through the legal system
itself is traumatic," said, Rukia Lumbumba, director of youth programs for
CASES.
Girls who
end up in juvenile placement in New York State facilities have often suffered
physical and emotional abuse, as reported by Human Rights Watch and the ACLU.
In custody,
these re-traumatized girls often lack necessary mental health services,
according to a 2010 Congressional Hearing on meeting the needs of girls in the juvenile
justice system. And when they try to move back into their
communities, such teens can have a hard time re-enrolling in school or finding
employment.
In the
alternative programs, counselors often try to flip the discouraging narratives
surrounding these girls. Instead of focusing on their misbehavior, they strive
to identify the strengths these teens had to develop to survive amid trauma and
poverty and build on that.
Girls Circle
One such
program came about in 2010 through a collaboration between New York State's
Office of Children and Family Services and an ATD program called Youth Advocate
Programs, which works with youth internationally and in 18 American states,
including 15 counties across New York State.
The effort
arose in response to concerns about girls in detention facilities acting out
physically in all directions; sometimes trying to harm themselves, sometimes
directing their hostilities at staff and other girls. In addition, many
residential facilities throughout the state were being shut down, making alternatives to detention a
necessity.
"The
mental health issues these girls faced were not being addressed and were
escalating, so we added programs specifically for girls," said Stephanie
Hart, president of Youth Advocate Programs' New York division.
Girls began
participating in a 20-hour program called a Girls Circle designed to help
participants open up about the hurt in their lives and connect with other girls
in nonviolent ways.
Star Jones,
16, lives in the Bronx, attends the High School for Fashion Industries and is a
member of Youth Advocate Programs.
"I was
very negative and spent time around a lot of negative people who weren't really
my friends--people can break you," she said.
Star said
the conflict resolution helped her prepare for her future. "It helped me .
. . deal with my anger," she said. "It prepared us for society, and
helped me not let others ruin my day."
Hart said
she believes such programs are especially important for girls because they tend
to do "very poorly" in facilities and receive little after-care once
they are released from juvenile detention facilities.
The girls
also each have a mentor, or "advocate," who plans how to best help
the girl she is working with.
"We use
an individualized approach to make sure that our mentors have more in common
with these girls than that they are female," said Shaena Fazal, national
policy director of Youth Advocate Programs, in a phone interview. "We
build upon these girls' strengths and interests. So if a girl is interested in
cosmetology, an advocate can take them to the hair salon to learn, or even get them
a job."
Star said
she felt her advocate was like "family" to her. "Me and my
mentor went to a lot of places and did a lot of activities together," she
said. We would get our nails done, go around the city . . . She helped out a
lot with school and if I had any problems."
'Path Toward
Stability'
CASES runs
eight programs across four boroughs for court-mandated young people.
These
programs include mental health and substance abuse counseling and educational
services that provide high school equivalency exams, college prep and paid
internships that give youth not just job experience but "essential"
positive encounters. About 10 to 20 percent of teens enrolled in their programs
are female.
Rather than
focusing on punitive measures, CASES provides services that establish a
relationship with the girls enrolled in their programs.
"We
don't ignore the crime, but we highlight the behavior behind it," said
Lumbumba from CASES. "We're going to focus on what we can do to put each
youth on a path toward stability, making each one feel as comfortable as
possible in the process."
Despite the
governor's recent funding support, finances are a chronic problem and threat to
many alternative programs.
In the past
few years, several programs, including at CASES and Youth Advocate Programs,
have lost funding for services. One of them, GirlRising,
was a girls-only ATD program offered as part of CASES' Court Employment Project
that started in 2002.
"When
the project started, we had 30 to 40 girls enrolled. But by the last year, we
had about 10 girls, so we lost funding," Lumbumba said. She added that
she's "unsure" why the numbers dwindled.
Lindsay
Rosenthal is a 2013-2014 Ms. Foundation fellow whose advocacy work focuses on
girl survivors of sexual and physical abuse in foster care and the juvenile
justice system. Rosenthal said that although New York and many other states
have made progress on many general juvenile justice fronts, there is inadequate
focus on gender at every level, from the municipal to the federal.
"There
are great programmatic responses, but often state and federal policy responses
have left girls out," Rosenthal said. As an example she cites a New York State
Office of Children and Family Services' juvenile justice reform initiative
that fails to address gender.
Rosenthal
said more data is needed about girls in the juvenile justice system, especially
to determine how alternative programs affect recidivism. "Most of the
research on the juvenile justice system hasn't included girls," she said.
"One of
the greatest injustices is how invisible this population is," she added.
"Having programs and services meant for girls is an equity issue--we need
to give them every chance to get back on the right track."