Girls in Juvenile Detention Facilities

This chapter examines the experiences of incarcerated girls who participated in a service learning course that paired them with college mentors in a juvenile detention facility. The course defined the girls as agents in social contexts of inequality, rather than as poor girls of color, and honored their voices as they discussed the issues that were most important to their lives in the community. It also provided the opportunity to examine the girls’ experiences of detention in light of their life stories, and to understand girls’ involvement with the justice system and incarceration as a form of abandonment by society, institutions, and families. This chapter highlights the paucity of treatment programs specifically designed for incarcerated girls and describes how practitioners can create moments of healing in a system designed to punish and dehumanize.

Gender, Psychology, and Justice

This chapter identifies the core themes that cut across the chapters of the book. Specifically, it discusses the relationship between systemic processes and women’s and girls’ entanglement with the justice system. It also calls attention to the compounding effect of institutional discrimination on the concerns of justice-involved women and girls. Lastly, it highlights the need for more interdisciplinary research, multicultural training, and evidence-based gender- and culturally responsive legal interventions in all arenas of the justice system.

Lesbian, Bisexual, Questioning, Gender-Nonconforming, and Transgender (LBQ/GNCT) Girls in the Juvenile Justice System

LGBTQ youth’s involvement with the juvenile justice system occurs in the context of family conflict, parental rejection of homosexuality, trauma, and hostility at school and in the community. As they run away from abuse, LGBTQ youth are more likely to commit survival crimes and get arrested for offenses related to homelessness. This chapter focuses on the experiences of lesbian, bisexual, queer, and gender-nonconforming girls in juvenile justice settings and examines how biases about gender and sexual orientation affect court decisions and correctional practices. Lack of awareness and training about LGBTQ issues compounds the harmful effects of homophobia, transphobia, and racism and adversely impacts lesbian, queer, and gender-nonconforming girls’ rights to due process, as well as their access to appropriate health care services. This chapter makes recommendations for LGBTQ-affirming practices in juvenile justice settings.

Transwomen in the Criminal Justice System

This chapter describes transwomen’s experiences in diverse arenas of the criminal justice system, including law enforcement and corrections. Specifically, it describes transwomen’s encounters with police officers and their mistreatment while in custody. Criminalization, police violence, and micro-aggressions are discussed as strategies for enforcing gender conformity. This chapter highlights the unique social and health care needs of transwomen and their vulnerability to harassment, hate crimes, intimate partner violence, and police profiling in the community. It also discusses recent legal decisions and implications for gender-affirming treatment in detention facilities. Lastly, the chapter provides recommendations for increasing awareness of transwomen’s issues and for promoting gender-affirming practices in diverse arenas of the criminal justice system.

Women, Sex Trafficking, and the Justice System

This chapter discusses the experiences of women and girl survivors of sex trafficking in the United States. It highlights the risk factors that make women and girls vulnerable to sex traffickers and victimization, examines the impact of sex trafficking on women’s and girls’ health, and describes the circumstances that lead to their forced involvement in the sex trade and their contact with the justice system. Gender, class, and racial stereotypes are barriers that prevent trafficking survivors from obtaining legal protection. Other barriers include fear of violence, lack of awareness of resources, and fear of deportation. When seeking legal help, trafficking survivors often experience revictimization and are treated as criminals. Lastly, this chapter identifies the need for more research on survivors of sex trafficking, highlights promising legal and mental health interventions, and proposes guidelines for greater gender and cultural responsiveness in programming.

Introduction

This chapter offers an overview of feminist literature on the justice system and highlights the way gender influences legal interventions. The concepts of gender neutrality, gender equality, and chivalry are discussed in the context of family courts and criminal justice settings to demonstrate how gender bias influences decisions such as child custody determinations and the definition of women’s and girls’ behaviors as criminal. This chapter calls attention to the growing involvement of women and girls with the justice system and the need for more research that describes the unique social and health concerns of diverse female populations. Therapeutic jurisprudence and intersectionality are proposed as frameworks for designing and evaluating gender- and culturally sensitive justice interventions.

Women and the Criminal Justice System

This chapter takes the theoretical perspective of the psychology of men to describe how the criminal justice system operates in ways that perpetuate men’s dominance and reproduce gender bias. Prostitution and human trafficking are used as examples to discuss men’s role in the judicial management of these key social issues. The concepts of hegemonic masculinity, gender role socialization, and gender role strain are discussed in relation to men’s attitudes and behaviors towards women involved in prostitution. They also help to explain men’s legal invisibility and lack of legal accountability in the sex trade. This chapter examines current efforts to involve male consumers of illegal sex services in the prevention of prostitution and sex trafficking. It also argues for a preventative, male-focused approach to women’s crimes that places responsibility on men to change their beliefs about gender roles.

Women, Domestic Violence, and the Criminal Justice System

This chapter describes women’s experiences of recent justice reforms intended to enhance the effectiveness of criminal justice interventions in incidents of domestic battering, specifically mandatory arrest laws and no-drop policies. Domestic violence is a form of complex trauma that is associated with poor mental and physical health outcomes. This chapter discusses how trauma-related symptoms explain women’s responses to physical, emotional, and psychological abuse as well as their ambivalent attitudes towards the justice and mental health systems. It also highlights the way racial and gender stereotypes, poverty, immigration status, and fear of social rejection constitute barriers to seeking help. Lastly, this chapter highlights the principles of a gender-responsive, trauma-informed approach to the treatment of female survivors of domestic violence.

Undocumented Mexican Women in the U.S. Justice System

This chapter highlights the experiences of repatriated undocumented immigrant women in several arenas of the U.S. justice system. As efforts to identify and remove immigrants from the country intensify, undocumented immigrant women increasingly come into contact with law enforcement officials, prosecutors, detention facilities, lawyers, and judges, primarily through those enforcing U.S. immigration laws. This chapter gives voice to the concerns of immigrant women who have experienced the unjustifiably harsh practices of the U.S. justice system. At issue are the ways in which unsubstantiated assumptions and social constructs about immigrants work to influence the attitudes and practices of those responsible for upholding the rule of law. This chapter also discusses the possible long-term psychological impact of legal practices on immigrant women, and offers strategies that might improve the integration of psychological principles into justice interventions to reduce harm.

Women, Poverty, and the Criminal Justice System

Systemic issues related to the feminization of poverty have profound influences on women’s interactions with the criminal justice system, yet the field of psychology has contributed little to informing the responses of justice officials and mental health practitioners to poor women who come into contact with the law. The criminal justice system operates to disenfranchise low-income women by criminalizing nonviolent behaviors that frequently derive from their disadvantaged economic status and through inflexible institutional policies that result in the incarceration of growing numbers of women who live below the poverty level. This chapter elaborates on the linkages between the feminization of poverty and crime that influence women’s initial contact with the criminal justice system, contribute to gender-biased institutional policies, and exacerbate the stigma that incarcerated women face when returning to their communities.