Justice for Girls?: Stability and Change in the Youth Justice Systems of the United States and Canada

Justice for Girls?: Stability and Change in the Youth Justice Systems of the United States and Canada

Justice for Girls?: Stability and Change in the Youth Justice Systems of the United States and Canada

Justice for Girls?: Stability and Change in the Youth Justice Systems of the United States and Canada

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Overview

For over a century, as women have fought for and won greater freedoms, concern over an epidemic of female criminality, especially among young women, has followed. Fear of this crime wave—despite a persistent lack of evidence of its existence—has played a decisive role in the development of the youth justice systems in the United States and Canada. Justice for Girls? is a comprehensive comparative study of the way these countries have responded to the hysteria over “girl crime” and how it has affected the treatment of both girls and boys.

Tackling a century of historical evidence and crime statistics, Jane B. Sprott and Anthony N. Doob carefully trace the evolution of approaches to the treatment of young offenders. Seeking to keep youths out of adult courts, both countries have built their systems around rehabilitation. But, as Sprott and Doob reveal, the myth of the “girl crime wave” led to a punitive system where young people are dragged into court for minor offenses and girls are punished far more severely than boys. Thorough, timely, and persuasive, Justice for Girls? will be vital to anyone working with troubled youths.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780226770062
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Publication date: 12/15/2009
Series: Adolescent Development and Legal Policy
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 232
File size: 3 MB

About the Author

Jane B. Sprott is associate professor of criminal justice and criminology at Ryerson University. Anthony N. Doob is professor at the Centre of Criminology at the University of Toronto and coauthor of Responding to Youth Crime in Canada.

Read an Excerpt

Justice for Girls?


By Jane B. Sprott Anthony N. Doob

The University of Chicago Press

Copyright © 2009 The University of Chicago
All right reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-226-77004-8

Contents

Foreword by Franklin E. Zimring |....................vii
Acknowledgments |....................xi
Chapter 1 Criminal Girls and Girls in Youth Justice....................1
Chapter 2 Are Sugar and Spice Really Evolving into Snips and Snails and Puppy-Dog Tails?....................19
Chapter 3 Paternalism and the Social Control of Adolescent Girls: Juvenile Justice Reform in the United States....................44
Chapter 4 Paternalism and the Social Control of Adolescent Girls: Juvenile Justice Reform in Canada....................74
Chapter 5 The Impact of Law Reform: Deinstitutionalization in Law and Practice in the United States....................98
Chapter 6 The Impact of Law Reform: Deinstitutionalization in Law and Practice in Canada....................128
Chapter 7 Continuity and Change in Justice for Girls....................158
Appendixes....................175
Notes....................191
References....................199
Index....................209

Chapter One

Criminal Girls and Girls in Youth Justice

Overview of the Book

For more than a century, concerns have been expressed repeatedly about a "crime wave" involving women and girls, one of the main causes of which was thought to be women's increasing freedom. As society changed and women were afforded greater freedoms—most notably in the 1960s and 1970s—a crime wave seemed to be looming on the horizon or was even assumed already to have arrived in various communities. In the past 10 years in the United States and in Canada, concerns about increased involvement of girls in crime—especially violent crime—have grown, with equality and equal opportunity seen once again as the culprits. The only problem is that credible evidence of a crime wave involving young girls does not exist. The long-awaited crime wave simply did not happen.

A different but related issue relates to boys and girls in the youth justice system. Credible data demonstrate that girls are being treated differently from boys by the youth justice systems of these two countries. This different treatment of girls and boys is not the inevitable result of the decisions in these two countries to set up separate justice systems to respond to youth crime. Indeed, in the early days of the youth justice systems in both Canada and the United States, the different treatment of boys and girls was dismissed, in large part because of the perception that girls were more in need of treatment than boys, especially for offenses such as "sexual immorality" and "incorrigibility" (Knupfer, 2001). The treatment of girls—specifically, concern about the offenses that brought them into court and the use of custody—became an important policy topic within youth justice only when more general concerns about due process became salient in the latter part of the 20th century. The manner in which girls have been treated by the youth justice systems of Canada and the United States is the focus of this book.

Focusing a study on the manner in which girls are treated by youth justice systems can be justified in the same way in which the study of women in the adult justice systems is justified: if girls aren't singled out as the focus of their own study, their relatively low numbers mean that differences between the treatment of boys and girls will simply not be noticed. Said differently, in understanding overall trends, girls, in a statistical sense, become error variance. Given that thousands of girls do find themselves in contact with the justice system, to ignore their special treatment by the youth justice system is a bit like saying that in a study of violence, homicide can safely be ignored because the numbers do not warrant a special study.

The study of girls in the youth justice system is useful for a completely different reason as well. Girls and boys are in many, often subtle ways treated differently by the youth justice systems of these two countries. By looking at the different treatment of girls and boys, we can study the sometimes conflicting purposes of the youth justice systems of these two countries. Girls then become a lens through which one can better observe, and thus understand, the system as a whole.

Why, then, study the treatment of girls and boys in the justice systems of these two countries? Why not simply study one country on its own, or one country in relation to some other subset of the 192 countries in the world? ? Indeed, why treat these two federal states as countries, rather than as a set of 51 separate youth justice systems in the United States and an additional 10 or 13 in Canada? Comparing the United States and Canada is interesting because the separate youth justice systems in these two countries were established almost simultaneously at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. Those responsible for the establishment of the two systems were in more direct contact with each other than youth justice reformers probably are today in the two countries. More important, the problems that the youth justice systems were designed to address were seen as being quite similar. Both were intent on finding a place to deal with youth crime away from the adult criminal courts. Also, however, the basic structure that was established at the end of the 19th century—a juvenile court operating under legislation that separated youths from the adult justice system—was, and was seen to be, quite similar in its orientation in the two countries. At the same time, there are important differences that make the contrast between these two systems more interesting than simply the contrast between two relatively similar and contiguous countries.

In the first place, the American youth justice model typically is explicitly established by the states under laws that are not explicitly criminal. When Canada established a separate youth justice system, however, it was as part of the criminal-law jurisdiction of the federal government.

But given that the law and the administration of it in the United States is largely the responsibility of the state rather than of the federal government, and that in Canada the administration of the law in the ten provinces and three territories is the responsibility of the province or territory rather than of the federal government, why would one look at national data rather than state or provincial data in either country? Aside from the practical issue of trying to describe and make sense of the historical development of youth justice systems in 64 jurisdictions, there are two simple justifications, one historical and the other legal. In the first place, in the United States, the model of the juvenile court that was developed in Chicago at the end of the 19th century spread across the country rather quickly. Although there are numerous ways in which the laws vary (e.g., how open the court is, how transfers take place, the age jurisdiction of the court, the resources associated with the court), the broad structure of the juvenile justice systems in the U.S. states are relatively similar. In the second place, in recent years factors such as the often-cited Supreme Court cases of the 1960s and 1970s and national standards encouraged through the transfers of funds (e.g., the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974) applied to—or at least were encouraged in—all the states.

In Canada, there is only one juvenile justice law covering all ten provinces and three territories, though it is clear that the administration of this law varies considerably across provinces (and, almost certainly, across locations within provinces). As in the United States, however, the influence of the federal government is broad and often related to money: at various points in time the federal government has offered the provinces money to move in particular directions that are seen as consistent with federal youth justice policy.

In both countries, therefore, there are fairly straightforward justifications for focusing on the countries as a whole at the outset. The focus on individual states and provinces, and the manner in which they have treated girls in their youth justice systems, is a separate and interesting topic that we will for the most part leave for another day.

We begin our story by looking at the way girls' off ending, in particular violent off ending, has been discussed and portrayed both in the media and in traditional criminology. We then present trends of girls' off ending, looking at both self-reported data and court data, to explore whether there is any evidence of a "girl crime wave" (chapter 2). After placing girls' offending in context and in particular determining whether there has been a rise in violence by girls, we then turn our attention to legislative changes. The next two chapters focus on juvenile justice policy developments in both the United States (chapter 3) and Canada (chapter 4). The impacts of such developments are then explored for both the United States (chapter 5) and Canada (chapter 6).

In the end, we hope to present a single story that consists of two separate but related subplots. The first subplot is about the girl crime wave that did not happen. The second subplot tells the story of how two different youth justice systems were created at much the same time without much focus on gender issues but developed practices that resulted in different treatment for girls and boys. The laws governing youth justice in the two countries, while initially quite similar, evolved differently over time. One could easily expect, therefore, to find that gender issues played out differently in the two countries. In the end, however, we will see that the issues surrounding the manner in which girls are treated by these two systems are remarkably similar, notwithstanding quite different histories during the past century. The study of the treatment of girls who come in contact with the youth justice systems of these two countries is, therefore, a story that tells us not only about the way in which we view the misbehavior of girls, but also about the manner in which these systems respond to both girls and boys.

Some readers will no doubt notice that we have not mentioned the issue of race or ethnicity in this overview. This absence reflects the subject's near-absence in the rest of the book. The reason is both simple and unfortunate. As will become quickly apparent, we found the gathering of adequate data on gender to be a challenge, especially if we wanted these data broken down by other factors. But in addition, in Canada, there are almost no data on race published on people of any age at any stage of the youth or adult criminal justice system. At various points in time, data on Aboriginal people in the justice system have been reported. And, more recently, for Canada's federal penitentiaries, information about race and ethnicity has sometimes been published. But even then, race or ethnicity and gender do not appear in the same tables. Hence, with the exception of very specific individual studies, we could not find any relevant information on this issue for Canada. In the United States, though we were able occasionally to find some data on race or ethnicity, we were not able to find sufficient data that were broken down simultaneously by gender and race or ethnicity. For our purposes, the separation of race and gender in the presentation of justice-system data meant that the data on race or ethnicity were of little value to us. The problem of race and ethnicity is but one example of the primitive nature of youth justice data in the two countries across any reasonable period of time. It was rare to find consistent data over time that were broken down by gender on variables more complex than factors such as offense. Where possible, we will speculate on how the systems in both countries respond to issues around race or ethnicity.

Concerns about Girls' Off ending: The Media and Traditional Criminology

It is, therefore, to be expected that as woman's position becomes more like that of man, her criminality will increase. That this has already happened has been illustrated in the statistics.

—M. Parmelee, Criminology, 1918

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s there was discussion in both Canada and the United States about trends in girls' involvement in crime generally and in violence specifically. Almost invariably, the implication was that girls were becoming more violent, or that their violence was becoming more serious. Headlines from newspapers in both countries revealed the concern and belief in the rising levels of violence among girls.

• Girl-vs.-girl fighting up in city schools: But overall violence is down 10 percent over last year (Chicago Sun-Times, February 15, 2006)

• Violence raging among teen girls (Boston Globe, June 20, 2005)

• Bad girls go wild; A rise in girl-on-girl violence is making headlines nationwide and prompting scientists to ask why (Newsweek, June 13, 2005)

• Mean girls getting younger (National Post, (Canada) May 5, 2005)

• Behind the surge in girl crime (Christian Science Monitor, September 15, 2004)

The media in both countries have tended to focus on isolated events of violence committed by girls and tried to understand these events in a broader context (see also Chesney-Lind and Irwin, 2008, for a discussion of the media depiction of girl violence). The questions of why these events were happening and what explained the perceived change in girls' behavior were often asked with respect to serious off ending by girls, but less so about serious off ending by boys.

In Canada, in November 1997, a 14-year-old girl, Reena Virk, was brutally beaten and eventually drowned. The culprits were said to be eight other teens, seven of them girls. Ten years later, Reena Virk's name is almost certainly still recognized by most Canadians. The case shocked the country and sparked much debate around the trends and causes of girl violence. What is happening to girls, people asked, that they would do such a terrible thing? Many stories presented this case as part of a growing trend of girl violence. Criminologists like us were called upon by television, radio, and the newspapers not to put this event in context, but rather to explain why such crimes were becoming more common. To argue that they were rare and were not becoming more common was to be ignored. "Everyone knew" that "crimes by girls" were increasing in number and becoming more brutal. The lack of evidence to support this assertion was seen as just that: a lack of evidence to support what was "known" by all.

The only national newspaper at the time in Canada, the Toronto Globe and Mail, presented a number of stories on this case, linking it to broader trends.

• What is different about last week's murder in Victoria of the 14 year old Reena Virk is that it forces us to create a new image of the youth who disturb us. Alongside the boys, now the girls. Girls are the fastest growing group of violent off enders in the country. (Patricia Pearson, Toronto Globe and Mail, November 29, 1997)

• The problem is that while the killing of Reena, who was repeatedly brutalized the night she died and was finally drowned, has many dreadfully unique features, it is one of a series of similar incidents of shocking girl violence that have come to light in recent years.... It is clear both in Canada and the U.S. that violence is rising among girls. (Alanna Mitchell, Toronto Globe and Mail, November 28, 1997) • Assault charges against young women in Canada have tripled since 1986, Dr. Artz said, and although teenage boys are still 2½ times more likely to commit an assault than girls of the same age, that gap has narrowed.

Continues...


Excerpted from Justice for Girls? by Jane B. Sprott Anthony N. Doob Copyright © 2009 by The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Franklin E. Zimring

Acknowledgments

1. Criminal Girls and Girls in Youth Justice

2. Are Sugar and Spice Really Evolving into Snips and Snails and Puppy-Dog Tails?

3. Paternalism and the Social Control of Adolescent Girls: Juvenile Justice Reform in the United States

4: Paternalism and the Social Control of Adolescent Girls: Juvenile Justice Reform in Canada

5. The Impact of Law Reform: Deinstitutionalization in Law and Practice in the United States

6. The Impact of Law Reform: Deinstitutionalization in Law and Practice in Canada

7. Continuity and Change in Justice for Girls

Appendixes

Notes

References

Index
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