Girls in Traditional and Gender-Responsive Juvenile Justice Placements

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.     

TENUOUS BORDERS: GIRLS TRANSFERRED TO ADULT COURT*

There are tremendous gaps in our theories and knowledge about girls who have committed crimes deemed so serious as to justify adult sentencing. This study is guided by a feminist approach to “give voice” to 22 girls incarcerated in a women's prison in the Midwest. Through in‐depth interviews, the girls describe their lives before prison and their perceptions of being tried and convicted as adults. Consistent with other research on female offenders, these girls reported lives fraught with violence and victimization, sexism, racism, and economic marginalization. This study calls for a more careful and complex look at issues of victimization, agency, and responsibility among female offenders, particularly those proclaimed “adults” by the legal system.     

Trafficking of Ethiopian women to Europe – making choices,taking risks,and implications

ABSTRACT

This piece focuses on the Ethiopian women victims of trafficking – the agency of these women in the whole trafficking process, and issues of choice – ‘trying a chance’, or just taking a risk to get out of poverty or difficult social circumstances, considering that they are lured, tricked, coerced, or even forced into the hands of traffickers by a wide range of circumstances and people, including family and friends. Traffickers target girls with economic, social, and family problems. Most of the trafficking of women and girls from Ethiopia is carried out through the use of service ‘agencies’ and human smugglers who facilitate the process of migration through a number of routes. Many of those who use the ‘desert route’ often begin from Sudan to North Africa from where they cross to Europe. The data for this contribution were generated in a study – ‘Captured in Flight: Experiences of violence among African women in Sweden’ – funded by the Swedish crime prevention agency (Brottsoffermyndgheten). The research for the project has been carried out in Sweden, but the women whose case studies are presented here have been in the Middle East, Turkey, Italy, Finland, and Greece before coming to Sweden.     

We Are Not Quite There Yet …

Abstract

This article explores the authors' critical reflections that arose while engaging in research with girls recovering from an eating disorder. The authors address issues related to media, consumerism, and identity construction. They emphasize that while there are no clear solutions to dilemmas facing girls in North American culture, researchers and practitioners can co-create space with girls where gendered issues are made explicit. Their holistic framework for working with girls does not imply a neutral approach; rather, they aim to honor the complexity of gendered narratives and critically reflect on their implications for practice.     

奸淫幼女应独立成罪

奸淫幼女的行为究竟该怎样定罪?在理论上存在着两种意见:一种是分立说,一种是统一说。最高人民法院的司法文件中取消了奸淫幼女罪,把奸淫幼女的行为纳入到强奸罪里来,以强奸罪定罪处罚。文章通过对奸淫幼女这一行为及其立法精神的考察,认为奸淫幼女的行为与强奸妇女的行为存在着很大的不同,奸淫幼女的行为不符合强奸罪的犯罪构成要件,应该独立成罪。     

中国现阶段女大学生就业问题研究

本文在调查结果的基础上分别从求职大学生、用人单位和劳动力市场的角度对女大学生就业问题进行了比较全面的分析,并提出了一些对策建议。     

The Juvenile Justice Reform Act of 2018: Updating the Federal Approach to Youth Involved,and At‐Risk of Becoming Involved,in the Juvenile Justice System

On December 21, 2018, the Juvenile Justice Reform Act was signed into law, marking the first update in 16 years to the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974, as amended. The reforms reflect much of the knowledge that has been gained through research and science over the past decade and strengthen the Act’s core protections for youth in the juvenile justice system. The changes also expand the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s role in research, and technical assistance, and provide for additional oversight for related programs.     

Eating Problems and Their Risk Factors: A 7-Year Longitudinal Study of a Population Sample of Norwegian Adolescent Girls

The longitudinal stability of eating problems and their relationships to risk factors were investigated in a representative population sample of 623 Norwegian girls aged 13–14 followed over 7 years (3 time points). Three eating problem symptoms were measured: Restriction, Bulimia-food preoccupation, and Diet, all taken from the12-item Eating Attitudes Test. The aim of the study was to investigate the stability of these eating problem symptoms both as separate components (as opposed to total symptom load) as well as from a syndrome perspective. Over 7 years, dieting behavior showed the highest correlational stability (0.32). Regarding stable eating problem syndromes, at all 3 time points, 1 group of girls with generalized eating problems was found, characterized by simultaneously pronounced bulimic tendencies and dieting. However, we did not establish individual stability across 7 years for this syndrome group. Through development, eating problem symptoms were associated with characteristic risk factors. Similarities and differences between findings regarding eating problems and eating disorders are discussed.     

On the Relationship Between Adolescent and Adult Conviction Frequencies

It is well documented that there is a strong association between involvement in adolescent delinquency and involvement in adult criminality. However, the association is not perfect. Some juveniles who offend at high rates do not go on to offend as adults while some do. Some juveniles who offend at low rates go on to offend as adults while some do not. The reasons for these behavioral changes are not yet well understood. Some criminologists contend that changes in behavior between the adolescent and the adult years are due to processes that occur during the adult years, while others contend that all important adult crime-producing processes operate before the end of an adolescence. In this paper, we use data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development to investigate the empirical merit of the second position. Specifically, after conditioning on adolescent offending behavior, we ask whether variation in adult offending is consistent with a conditional random process. Our analysis suggests an affirmative answer to this question. Although our results do not prove that this conditionally random explanation is the process that generates the data, they do suggest that models making this prediction cannot be easily dismissed.     

The independent and joint effects of race,crime, and social location on the dispositional decisions of juvenile girls

The nexus of race, gender, and social location remain a habitual line of inquiry for many criminologists. However, quantitative studies of intersectionality are rare and especially rare as it relates to those studying serious and violent girls sentenced in the juvenile court. Particularly, this study seeks to explore how racialized gender expectations and forms of double/multiplicative jeopardy influence the back-end outcomes for serious and violent girls. Findings reveal the black girls, compared to their white counterparts, were sentenced with less leniency, and instead, punished in a more punitive matter. Importantly, these findings vary across the gamut of legal and extralegal variables. Implications for theory, practice, and future research are discussed, as well as the limitations of the present study.