While other developed nations are trying to reduce the levels of imprisonment, United States of America has focused much on penal sanctions on a variety of offences touching on adults. In 1970s, when American politicians realized that rehabilitative programs could not work, they persuaded American people that there was need to use tough methods for adult offenders. So from that time up to date United States prisons population has tremendously increased. Juvenile justice system has received mixed reactions from different people. Some see it as if it has it has abandoned the best interest of the child.
The juvenile justice system and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974, reiterated on imprisonment of youth offenders. The main factor that complicated incarceration of the youth was imprisonment of girls for violent offences and not boys. From the statistics given by Federal Bureau of Investigation, girls account for a third of the juvenile arrests. This is different from other decades when girls arrested were very few. Since then, the number of girls arrested for different offences have increased.
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Girls are getting more violent. For example, the beating of Florida cheerleader. The video showing the girl being beaten went viral. The girls involved in the battery were tried as adults and that could finally land them into life imprisonment. The media has been in forefront on exposing offenders. For example in 1980s, the media showcased the presents of girls gangs. For the data collected in 1990s, as girls’ arrests went up, boys’ arrests was declining. The change in girls’ arrests was not because of change in their behavior.
Girls normally confront different and diverse environments and obstacles than the boys when they are imprisoned. This has continued even when over a half of the States have proved to improve the conditions of girls in the juvenile justice system. By assessing girls’ unique needs and designing better programs for them. One lasting tendency is that there will be continuous absence of programs for girls. For example, in 1988, Ohio judges stated that there were few sentencing options for girls. Two thirds of judges surveyed disagreed with the statement that “there are an adequate number of treatment programs for girls” while less than one-third of judges disagreed with this statement regarding services for boys (Holsinger,Belknap, & Sutherland, 1999). In a San Francisco study, Schaffner, Shorter, Shick, and Frappier (1996: 1) concluded that girls were “out of sight, out of mind” and that girls tended to linger in detention centers longer than boys. In fact, 60% of girls were detained for more than seven days, while only 6% of boys were detained that long.
Another evidence that girls are more vulnerable than boys to experiencing sexual abuse while being detained. In their study of 200 girls in California juvenile justice halls, Acoca and Dedel (1998: 6), found several examples of abuse, including “consistent use by staff of foul and demeaning language, inappropriate touching, pushing and hitting, isolation,deprivation of clean clothing.” In addition, girls underwent strip searches while being supervised by male staff.
Lack of female staff seems to place girls in vulnerable positions whilebeing detained. In addition to increasing the chances that female wards will be abused by male staff, the lack of female staff also limits the programs and activities available for girls. Staff shortages in the Miami-Dade CountyJuvenile Detention Center for girls, for example, resulted in decreased outdoor recreation for girls. Ledermen and Brown (2000) reported that girls sometimes went as long as two weeks without outdoor recreation and were sometimes “locked down” due to shortage of staff. O
Several recent scandals suggest that like their adult counterparts women’s prisons), juvenile prisons are often unsafe for girls in ways that are uniquely gendered. Take, for example, a recent investigation of conditions in the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility in the summer of 2003 by the American Civil Liberties Union [ACLU]. According to the ACLU report, there were no female guards on duty at night on the girls’ ward, one reported case of rape of a girl by a male guard, and several reports of girls exchanging sex for cigarettes. The report also noted that male guards made sexual comments to female wards, talked about their breasts, and discussed raping them. While wards noted that rape comments decreased after the rape incident, White (2003: 16) wrote, “wards expressed concern that the night shift is comprised entirely of male guards and they feel vulnerable after the rape because male guards could enter their cells at any time.” The ACLU report also discovered that wards reported being watched by male guards while they changed clothes and used the toilet. Male guards were also present when girls took showers. And, like their counterparts in detention, girls had not received outdoor recreation for a week due to lack of supervising staff and girls were told that the situation could last for up to a month (White, 2003). While critics of the ACLU report commented that the wards made up stories and severely exaggerated tales of abuse, in April of 2004, the guard implicated in the rape charge pleaded guilty to three counts of sexual assault and one count of “terroristic threatening of a female ward” (Dingeman, 2004). Although comprising a plea bargain, the legal rape case uncovered details indicating that the sexual abuse was more severe and alarming than wards originally reported to the ACLU.
References
- Blankinship, L. A. (2018). Providing Culturally Sensitive Care for Islamic Patients and Families. Journal of Christian Nursing, 35(2), 94-99.
- Flores, A. (2017). How the US Hispanic population is changing. Pew Research Center, 18.
- Sue, D. W., Sue, D., Neville, H. A., & Smith, L. (2019). Counseling the culturally diverse: Theory and practice. John Wiley & Sons.
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