In the 90s, the landscape of the juvenile justice system made a definite shift - more girls were coming into the criminal justice system than ever before. Now a decade later, more attention is finally being paid to this group and the outcomes, many hope, will slow the rate of girls who are adjudicated.

Much like the research on adult female offenders, the studies on girls indicate that they are deeply relational in their interactions with others and many have a history of abuse. Although they still represent a small percentage of the total number of youth in the criminal justice and juvenile justice system, girls require a strategic and well thought-out approach on the part of those who manage and supervise them.

"I think the most important thing you can do with girls is listen to them, engage them in meaningful discussion and talk about their lives. When we started listening to them, it was the safety issues [they were concerned about]," said Susannah Burke, Homebase Program Director for PB&J Family Services in New Mexico. "You hear stats of the girls -76-78 percent [have histories of trauma] -- but our experience has been 100 percent of the girls have been traumatized."

Organizations like PB&J have been working with girls in the community for years but recently have seen that institutions and detention centers are also seeking gender-responsive programming for girls. With more supports and a better understanding of where girls come from and who they are, agencies can do a better job at helping girls begin anew.

One agency that has tried hard over the years to make a difference with the girls in its system is the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice. The DJJ's Girls Initiative has a rough road over the last several years but has finally gotten its footing and hopes now to make a difference, just as the arrest rates and delinquency are on the rise.

Florida's Girls Initiative

In 1993 the Florida DJJ began its effort to respond to the specific needs of girls in its system by creating a specific program and forum to discuss their needs. According to Kelley Gandy, of the DJJ's Residential & Correctional Facilities division, the project had a good start, but then went into hiatus while the organizational leadership was restructured.

The Girls Initiative began again in earnest in 2003 when it created a Girls Forum that included representatives from the DJJ - including administration, detention, prevention and victim services, as well as probation and provider agencies, the Department of Health and Department of Education.

The idea behind the forum was to gather these people together at regular meetings to discuss the types of services that girls need and plan out which services and programs would be provided to them in the DJJ system.

"For a program to be gender specific or gender responsive - it starts in how you advertise for staff. How do you interview them? [And then,] ask them who is the most important female in your life. Not all women want to work with girls, some haven't dealt with their own issues, their self-esteem issues," said Gandy.

Gandy said a program that supports girls is also evident by the feeling one gets when they walk through the door.

"What posters are on the wall? Do they highlight women's accomplishments? It doesn't have to have frills and curtains, but at the same time that's what girls like. Then what is going on with the programming," said Gandy.

Gandy said the Girls Initiative has been bolstered by the recent passage of Florida House Bill 1989, which requires juvenile justice programs to provide gender specific services.

With that in mind, Gandy said the department is in the process of developing specific standards that mention gender specific programming, which all facilities will have to follow.

In the interim, the department has created several programs that focus on the mental health issues of girls - including those with a history of sexual victimization, substance abuse programming and sex offender treatment.

In addition, the programs make a special effort to address the role that sex has played in the girls' lives and their involvement in the criminal justice system.

"Sex is a big thing - teen dating, violence -- [and] relationships are abusive for them or their mothers. Our numbers show a high rate of them have had past sexual trauma or victimization and some of the girls don't even think that. Some of them don't think they were sexually abused if intercourse didn't happen, or if they got away," Gandy said.

The DJJ is also in the process of creating training programs for staff to educate them on gender specific issues, particularly the needs of girls.

A regional training conference for staff is planned for 2005 and the DJJ recently received a technical assistance grant from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention to increase training in relation to the Girls Initiative.

"One of the biggest things is the training of staff and management," Gandy said. "We've done some trainings and workshops on the whole concept. For some it was refreshing and for others it new material for them. You can't paint the walls pink and call it a girls program."

Reaching Out to Teens in New Mexico

Those running PB&J's programming for teenage girls in Albuquerque, New Mexico are well aware of the substantive issues girls present with when they enter the juvenile justice system.

Having worked with children and families for 33 years, it was only a matter of time before the family service organization began to focus energy on a growing problem -- the high rate of girls coming into the juvenile system.

With a program already underway to in correctional facilities to reunite families with their children, PB&J saw a need to work with a related populatio - young incarcerated mothers. With a contract through the state's Youth and Families Department a program was developed to address their specific needs.

"We began working with the young mothers and developed a very gender specific program for girls and we based it on the work we were doing with girls in the juvenile center," said Burke. "The one thing they had in common was a history of trauma. We started working with them on looking at their lives and how their bodies clue them in that they are in an unsafe situation."

Whether the young women are former gang members, lived on the street or had been victims themselves, the core of the PB&J program is to provide them with physical self defense techniques and to become "connected to their own bodies again."

"We teach them skills, simple things -- learning about their body language, reading cues that others are sending them, identifying their personal space, what they do when someone gets too close to them. Sometimes even staff come too close to them and girls react too violently; it's a trigger for abuse," said Burke.

Although still a young program, the techniques that are being taught to these girls seem to be making a difference - at least anecdotally.

According to Burke, former participants have come back to program events to share how they are doing and their successes.

Burke said at one open house hosted by PB&J, a former program participant shared that she has taught other girls about tuning-in to their bodies and how their body language can send signals to people.

"It was incredible to hear how it's a skill that makes sense to her," Burke said.

This is especially good news for program administrators who hope to make this kind of an impression on the teen moms in the juvenile justice system - and affect their future and that of their children.

"That's really our hope -- ending the cycle. When the moms can't identify situations that make them uncomfortable, it is dangerous for their children [as well]," said Burke.

She added that programs like PB&J's take a lot of time and patience on the part of educators and staff to ensure that girls learn about themselves, their options and how to leave the cycle of crime they have entered into.

"[You] need to learn as much as you can about them and then train staff to be sensitive to that. It can promote healing in the girls. Then connect them to their families and [provide] support to them in the community," she said.

Other juvenile justice agencies are taking a slightly different approach to gender specific programming for girls - focusing on their primary relationships growing up as a starting point for healing.

Empowering Girls

Noerena Abookire, Director of the Washington DC-based Creative Empowerment Institute, has been studying the impact of girls' relationships with their mothers as a way to approach young women in the juvenile justice system.

As an artist and an educator, she has conducted programs for women and girls to reflect on their primary relationships with their mothers.

"Many of us have resentment areas around our mothers. As women, the one common thread is we are all daughters and as daughters we pick up things [from our mothers] that either help us or hurt us. The work that is intriguing is [how it relates to] criminal justice," Abookire said.

In the justice system, many women are looking to make amends and start anew, but if they are not in touch with some of their deep feelings around their primary relationships, they may not be available to move forward or be supportive to their own children.

Recently, Abookire was asked to create a curriculum for girls in the Maryland juvenile justice system that focused on her ideas around gender responsive programming.

"I spent most of the year going to conferences, researching women and girls. What I kept hearing is people are doing research on the numbers, but there's a deeper piece of it that resonates in my work on mother-daughter relationships and having to do with healing," she said.

In her program, Abookire said she first focuses on each woman as a daughter then the work expands to healing the relationship with their mother, and being able to move forward through positive empowerment by understanding both the positives and negatives they have taken with them from that relaitonship.

"The creative piece of it empowers us to move forward - to be able to look at the past, [and ask]  what do we carry with us that is working and how to carry it with us [into our adult lives]. If you look at people like plants, our root system is important but we don't [typically] focus on that, because we don't want to look at that," she said.

When she conducts the program with girls, many  will say their mothers love them, but don't like them - or their clothes or their friends. The result is a feeling, Abookire said, of abandonment.

Abookire said this feeling of abandonment is important to identify and work on if girls in the juvenile justice system are going to heal and mature into responsible members of society.

"The abandonment issue is fuel for resentment and a sense of rejection," she said. "We know with women, the primary difference is that women focus on the relationship, that's what everyone is talking about. [But] men are not driven by this interaction between human beings," she said.

Abookire hopes that the trainings and curriculum she has developed will help groups of women and girls in the justice system think out loud about where the resentment and abandonment they feel comes from so they can move on to a life after incarceration or detention.

Equally important, Abookire said, is to ensure that the staff supervising these groups of women and girls understand what makes them tick.

"[Many say] that the women are difficult, but my premise if it may be a little more work up front but as soon as you establish a relationship with them, the progress will go fast. It's difficult for women and girls to be in a holding pattern. We resist. It's part of our ability and need to have a relationship," she said.

Abookire and others working with this population believe that by taking the time to understand girls better, the investment will pay off as these young women become better at re-evaluating their lives and relationships and begin to develop a vision for a better life for themselves.

Resources:

Florida Girls Initiative
Kelley Gandy, email: kelley.gandy@djj.state.fl.us
Phone: 850-922-0966

PB&J Family Services, Susannah Burke, 505-877-7060, ext 119

Creative Empowerment Institute - www.creativeempowermentinstitute.com
Noerena Abookire, email: Noerena@aol.com
Phone: 202-291-8250