Re-imagining Justice for Girls: A New Agenda for Research
| Author | Gilly Sharpe |
| DOI | 10.1177/1473225415570358 |
| Published date | 01 April 2016 |
| Date | 01 April 2016 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
570358YJJ0010.1177/1473225415570358Youth JusticeSharpe
research-article2015
Article
Youth Justice
2016, Vol. 16(1) 3 –17
Re-imagining Justice for Girls: A
© The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1473225415570358
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Gilly Sharpe
Abstract
This article argues that justice for girls has been narrowly conceived as the delivery of gender-specific
interventions within a correctional framework. I contend that the translation of feminist pathways research
into gender-specific programming (GSP) has inherent logic flaws and that GSP makes unwarranted
assumptions about girls’ routes into and out of offending. In addition, by translating girls’ victimisation
histories into individualised intervenable risks/needs, state welfare (non-)responses to them are ignored.
I argue that a new feminist research agenda is required which implies a more expansive conceptualisation
of justice and which investigates meso-level welfare institutional cultures and practices with troubled girls.
Keywords
gendered justice, gender-specific programming, girls, victimisation, welfare
Introduction
It is now commonplace to argue that a criminal justice system designed for boys and men
does not meet the needs of the girls and women who find themselves in it. Ethnographic
studies have demonstrated that girls and women suffer particular pains of imprisonment
(Bosworth, 1999; Carlen, 1983a; Haney, 2010) and that gender-blind community sanc-
tions are inappropriate for, and indeed detrimental to, female lawbreakers (Morash, 2010;
see also Malloch and McIvor, 2011). Simultaneously, research with adjudicated young
offenders spanning several decades has documented significant differences in boys’ and
girls’ pathways into crime, leading many to surmise that risk factors for offending are
gendered. This important body of work on ‘feminist pathways’ has demonstrated that the
backgrounds of young female lawbreakers are characterised by profound structural, insti-
tutional and familial injustices and disadvantages, the most clearly gendered of these
being their frequent experience of violent and sexual victimisation at home, on the streets,
Corresponding author:
Gilly Sharpe, School of Law, University of Sheffield, Bartolomé House, Winter Street, Sheffield S3 7ND, UK.
Email: g.h.sharpe@sheffield.ac.uk
4
Youth Justice 16(1)
in state care and in custody (Batchelor, 2005; Belknap and Holsinger, 2006; Chesney-
Lind, 1989; Schaffner, 2006; Sharpe, 2011a).
Consequent to these scholarly developments, and also in response to dramatic increases
in the number of young women entering juvenile justice systems across Western jurisdic-
tions, gender-specific programming (GSP) has emerged during the past 20 years as a
means of re-imagining justice for girls and young women (Hubbard and Matthews, 2008).
Although less well established elsewhere, GSP is now the dominant paradigm for juvenile
justice intervention with girls in the United States, following an increase in federal funds
dedicated to the identification of gender-specific risk factors for delinquency and offend-
ing and to the development of gender-specific juvenile justice services for girls (Bloom
et al., 2002, 2003; Greene, Peters, and Associates, 1998). GSP aims to advance equitable
treatment within the juvenile justice system by responding to girls’ distinctive needs sen-
sitively and effectively (Bloom and Covington, 2001; Bloom et al., 2002). Outside the
United States, and also Canada (see Hannah-Moffat, 2010), GSP has been slower to
develop and is rarely incorporated into juvenile justice policy (Burman and Batchelor,
2009).1 However, in England and Wales, for example, there are a growing number of
gender-specific youth crime prevention and justice programmes, prompted in part by con-
temporary concern (but little robust evidence) that girls are increasingly at risk of gang
involvement (Centre for Social Justice, 2014; Khan et al., 2013). In common with North
American provision, these emerging programmes include a substantial focus on empow-
ering girls, increasing their self-esteem and promoting healthy relationships.2
Against this background of growing international interest in GSP as a youth crime
reduction and prevention strategy, this article contributes to a small body of critique which
questions the dominant view that correctional GSP is unequivocally beneficial to young
women (Goodkind, 2005, 2009; Hannah-Moffat, 2010). Specifically, I contend that the
translation of feminist pathways research into gender-specific youth justice policy and
practice is based on flawed assumptions about girls’ pathways into and out of crime. First,
by virtue of its adherence to the risk factors prevention paradigm, GSP decontextualises
research evidence about girls’ victimisation experiences and targets individual young
women and their gender-specific, victimisation-related ‘programming needs’ as a means
of preventing and reducing crime. Second, GSP ignores the contingent and transient
nature of much female youthful lawbreaking and the potentially iatrogenic consequences
of any formal youth/juvenile justice intervention, gender-specific or otherwise. Third,
gender-specific, victimisation-focused interventions fail to acknowledge the meso-level
institutional practices – the actions and omissions of state welfare and education agencies
– that over-determine young women’s routes into crime and into the justice system.
This article extends previous critiques claiming that GSP assumes an essentialised
notion of the female subject (Goodkind, 2005) and one whose problems require individual
therapeutic recovery and transformation through empowerment and self-esteem enhance-
ment programmes (Goodkind, 2009). The principal focus of my own critique is GSP’s
inattention to gender and generation – in relation to both age-related patterns of female
lawbreaking and age-specific modes of gendered state governance. I argue that a new
research agenda is required which implies a more expansive conceptualisation of justice
for girls. In this vein, new feminist scholarship should investigate meso-level institutional
Sharpe
5
cultures and practices within welfare and education agencies, their intrapsychic conse-
quences for troubled and troublesome girls, and their role in girls’ pathways from victims
to offenders.
Gender-Specific Juvenile Justice: Concept and Practice
In the United States, the rationale underpinning GSP is twofold. First, the number of girls
entering the youth justice system, and particularly penal custody, has expanded rapidly
during the past two decades, the reasons for which have generated extensive debate (see
Steffensmeier et al., 2005, and Sprott and Doob, 2009, for further discussion3). Second,
and the issue on which I focus in this article, a substantial body of research indicates that
girls’ pathways into crime are different in important ways from those of boys. Most sig-
nificantly, a large corpus of feminist-inspired empirical work has revealed that the bound-
aries between young women’s victimisation and their offending are blurred and that a
very high proportion of young female adjudicated lawbreakers have experienced violent
and/or sexual abuse and exploitation (Acoca, 1998; Batchelor, 2005; Belknap and
Holsinger, 2006; Goodkind et al., 2006, inter alia). Estimates of the prevalence of sexual
abuse among imprisoned young women range from 40 to 73 per cent (Chesney-Lind and
Shelden, 2004: 145), and although less well researched, victimisation rates appear to be
almost as high among girls subject to community penalties (Sharpe, 2011a).
The intervening causal mechanisms between victimisation and offending are poorly
understood (Hollin and Palmer, 2006). However, victimisation may constitute an ‘indirect
pathway’ to offending in several inter-related ways. For example, self-medication with alco-
hol and drugs can lead to acquisitive crime or alcohol-fuelled violence; runaways may
engage in survivalist acquisitive offending; homeless or precariously housed girls some-
times resort to sex work; and anger may result in ‘explosive’ violent outbursts (Rumgay,
2004). Moreover, and partly as a result of their victimisation histories, youth justice system–
involved girls frequently have low self-esteem, as well as significant emotional and mental
health needs (Belknap and Holsinger, 2006; Douglas and Plugge, 2006). Finally, the rela-
tionship between victimisation and lawbreaking may not be causal at all; rather, contextual
contingencies – most notably, the extent to which girls come to the attention of support and
control agencies and what happens to them if they do – are likely to be significant.
The theoretical starting point of GSP, drawing on extensive evidence from feminist
pathways scholarship, is that girls and women are gendered subjects, with particular, gen-
dered, social experiences, who require a holistic and therapeutic approach to intervention
which recognises the social origins of their troubles. However, GSP as a response to law-
breaking is enacted within a risk reduction/offending prevention framework: it ‘aims to
help girls already in trouble, while preventing future delinquency among girls who are at
risk’.4 Consequently, the holistic intent of GSP, which recognises the impact of the disad-
vantaged structural positioning of young women, is in practice subordinated to a risk
reduction rationality, with the result...
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