Study: Girls In Justice System Often Sexually, Physically Abused
WASHINGTON, July 9 (UPI) — Up to 80 percent of girls in some state juvenile justice systems have a history of physical or sexual abuse, a new study released Thursday found.
The study, “The Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline: The Girls’ Story,” found sexual abuse is among the primary predictors of a girl entering the juvenile justice system, but the systems are ill-equipped to handle the problems. The report recommends law enforcement no longer pursue prostitution charges for girls who have been sexually trafficked.
“Our girls, and especially our girls at the margins, are suffering, and what the study shows is how violence is part of their lives and how the response is criminalization,”said Malika Saada Saar, the executive director of the Human Rights Project for Girls, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that conducted the research with the Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality and the Ms. Foundation for Women.
The authors of the report say boys receive more attention than girls involved in criminal behavior because there are fewer girls in detention centers and crimes by girls are not usually violent. The report chastises state and local policies that call for arresting girls for prostitution, truancy or running away as a means of punishing them rather than helping them.
“When law enforcement views girls as perpetrators, and when their cases are not dismissed or diverted but sent deeper into the justice system, the cost is twofold: Girls’ abusers are shielded from accountability, and the trauma that is the underlying cause of the behavior is not addressed,” the report says. “The choice to punish instead of support sets in motion a cycle of abuse and imprisonment that has harmful consequences for victims of trauma.”
The report also said of the girls in the system — who are disproportionately poor African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans — 31 percent have been sexually abused, compared to seven percent of boys in the system.
