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Since the first juvenile court opened its doors a century ago, gender norms have gone through immense changes. So, too, have the contours of transgressions of these norms. Juvenile justice jurisdictions nationally are responding to federally funded calls for ?gender-responsive? interventions. However, after interviewing juvenile justice officials in various locations throughout the United States, I find a tendency towards reliance upon antiquated and relatively unsophisticated notions of masculinity and femininity. This paper explores changes in norms for young women?s behaviors, and the new ?gender-specific? programs that have cropped up to address ?girls? offenses.? I argue that gender-responsivity is non-productive when drawing from outmoded notions of masculinity and femininity. ?Gender-specific? should mean challenging traditional cultural myths of masculinity and femininity, not simply talking to young women about relationships, feelings, and ?manners.? Gender-specific projects should be places where critical thinking skills are taught and stereotypes are challenged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young women involved in the sex economy (YWISE) are variously represented as child abuse victims, girls in need of rescue, prostitutes, sexually trafficked, and commercially sexually exploited. Debates often focus on notions of victimhood and agency. However, the voices of YWISE are rarely included. This project seeks to bring those voices to the policy and theory table in order to better understand and ameliorate the situation for YWISE. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the summer of 2006, a group of four University of Illinois undergraduate and graduate students fashioned a summer film series for detained girls as part of an independent study course project. The students put out the call to the community on the Chicago Girls Coalition listserv and garnered seven volunteers who were home from their various colleges on summer vacation and seeking local internship projects. These eleven young women of color trained, designed and delivered a critical feminist Saturday Night Film Festival program grounded in restorative justice principles over a period of six weeks to the young women at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center. This paper discusses the design and implementation of this project, focusing on the syllabus and curriculum and the evaluations from both the detainees and the student's weekly field reports. I will conclude with a discussion of the promises and limitations of this kind of teaching tool and informal program delivery in terms of the demystification of what "court-involved girls are like" to college students, and what "college students are like" for court-involved girls, the collaboration between the University and the juvenile court system, issues of access, ethics, and implications for future research and pedagogic collaborations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to an over-reliance on incarceration in the United States beginning in the 1980s, arrest and detention rates of young women climbed to all-time highs. In response, court and community advocates in the juvenile legal system developed gender-specific policy to address girls' unique needs. These policies, inspired by feminist psychological research, created girl-only locations in the juvenile legal system where critical resistance could be encouraged. After outlining an etiology of gender-specific policy, I provide examples from qualitative fieldwork of the delivery of these programs to girls in classroom-like settings in secure facilities. I discuss the strengths of these gender-appropriate interventions, highlight where, I argue, their delivery can be mired in cultural myths about gender, and conclude with recommendations for improving the delivery of the programs, which ultimately lies in the conceptualization of the policy. This article argues that gender-specific policy needs to address and challenge current gender and racial stereotypes so that the programs do not reinforce conditions of sexual, violent, and racial oppression that contributed to the young women coming into the legal system in the first place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]