Introduction

Why Ending Girls’ Incarceration Matters

There are at least 24,000 detentions of girls and gender expansive youth and thousands more long-term commitments each year, typically in correctional facilities that mirror adult prisons designed for punishment and isolation.^[] Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, “Easy Access to Juvenile Court Statistics, 1985–2021,” database, Table for National Estimates of Juvenile Court Processing for Delinquency Cases, accessed October 21, 2024, search: Detained, Female, https://ojjdp.ojp.gov/statistical-briefing-book/data-analysis-tools/ezajcs/case-processing. The number of detained females steadily decreased for years; in 2019–2020, the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the population decreased approximately 34 percent. In 2019, the last year reported prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, 39,600 girls and gender expansive youth were detained. The girls and gender expansive youth put in these dangerous settings are already some of the most marginalized young people in the country: they are disproportionately poor; LGBTQ/TGNC and Black, Native American, and Latina/x youth.^[]For LGBQ/TGNC youth, see Center for American Progress, Movement Advancement Project, and Youth First, Unjust: LGBTQ Youth Incarcerated in the Juvenile Justice System (Washington, DC: Center for American Progress, Movement Advancement Project, and Youth First, 2017), 2, https://perma.cc/SW53-97V4. For youth of color, see Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, “Easy Access to Juvenile Court Statistics, 1985–2021,” database, Table for National Estimates of Juvenile Court Processing for Delinquency Cases, accessed October 21, 2024, search: Detained, Female, https://ojjdp.ojp.gov/statistical-briefing-book/data-analysis-tools/ezajcs/case-processing. Further, many have experienced multiple forms of adversity across generations, usually from a young age, including housing instability or homelessness, child welfare involvement, sexual abuse, commercial sexual exploitation, domestic violence, parental incarceration, historical trauma, and more.^[]On facilities being “dangerous settings”: A review of the literature on juvenile corrections by the Annie E. Casey Foundation concluded that “the case against America’s youth prisons and correctional training schools can be neatly summarized in six words: dangerous, ineffective, unnecessary, obsolete, wasteful, and inadequate,” see Richard A. Mendel, No Place for Kids: The Case for Reducing Juvenile Incarceration (Baltimore: Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2011), 5, https://perma.cc/CKS8-3NEG. A survey of children involved in the juvenile justice, mental health, and child welfare systems also found a 32 percent difference in experiences of sexual abuse between female and male respondents, see National Crittenton Foundation, Beyond ACE: Summary Findings from the Crittenton Family of Agencies 2014–2015 Administration of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Survey (Portland, OR: National Crittenton Foundation, 2016), 8–9, https://perma.cc/7SEV-8HUH. See also Malika Saada Saar, Rebecca Epstein, Lindsay Rosenthal, and Yasmin Vafa, The Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline: The Girls’ Story (Washington, DC: Human Rights Project for Girls, Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality, and Ms. Foundation for Women, 2015), 7–8, https://perma.cc/JDP6-ER74; and Francine T. Sherman and Annie Balck, Gender Injustice: System-Level Juvenile Justice Reforms for Girls (Portland, OR: National Crittenton Foundation and National Women’s Law Center, 2015), https://perma.cc/UVR9-RWWY.

These girls and gender expansive youth are overwhelmingly arrested and pushed into the legal system for their responses to trauma or the steps they take to protect themselves from harm and abuse—such as running away from an abusive group home or avoiding a school where they feel unsafe—in what some refer to as the “abuse-to-prison pipeline.”^[]Saar, Epstein, Rosenthal, and Vafa, The Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline, 43. Incarcerating these young people for reasons rooted in service needs and lack of safety in the community unjustly punishes them for the structural inequities that have already caused them and their families so much harm.^[]Richard Mendel, Why Youth Incarceration Fails: An Updated Review of the Evidence (New York: Sentencing Project, 2023), https://perma.cc/XX6E-BFMK.

Incarceration is harmful and does not protect young people’s safety.^[]Ibid. Correctional facilities are also not appropriate settings for substance use or behavioral health treatment. Moreover, detention exacerbates young people’s housing instability, disrupts their education, and further isolates them from their families and communities. Young people who have been incarcerated describe violations of their human dignity, sexual abuse, violence, and maltreatment within facilities.^[]Ibid.; and Richard A. Mendel, Maltreatment of Youth in U.S. Juvenile Corrections Facilities (Baltimore: Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2015), https://perma.cc/5ND7-KYLQ. Vera also collected qualitative information on this topic across our own work, including the NYC Youth Advisory Council (2017–2018) and focus groups conducted in New York City Close to Home nonsecure placements (2018). The needs of girls and gender expansive youth should be met using a collaborative system of diversion services and community-based programs that provide ongoing support without ever relying on youth prisons, which have proven so dangerous. Incarceration in smaller facilities should be used only to address imminent concerns about community safety.

Girls’ Pathways into the Juvenile Legal System

Source notes:
For family conflict/violence, see Michael T. Baglivio, Nathan Epps, Kimberly Swartz, et al, “The Prevalence of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) in the Lives of Juvenile Offenders,” Journal of Juvenile Justice 3, no. 2 (2014), https://perma.cc/6BEX-9YAC. For school-to-prison pipeline, see U.S. Government Accountability Office, K-12 Education: Nationally, Black Girls Receive More Frequent and More Severe Discipline in School Than Other Girls (GAO-24-106787) (Washington DC: Government Accountablity Office, 2024) p. 16, https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-24-106787.pdf; and Kayla Patrick and Neena Chaudhry, Let Her Learn: Stopping School Pushout for Girls Involved in the Juvenile Justice System (Washington, DC: National Women’s Law Center, 2017), https://perma.cc/5K8R-UPGD. For crossover from child welfare systems, see Denise Herz, Philip Lee, Lorrie Lutz, et al., Addressing the Needs of Multi-System Youth: Strengthening the Connection between Child Welfare and Juvenile Justice (Washington, DC: Center for Juvenile Justice Reform and the Robert F. Kennedy Children’s Action Corps, 2012), https://perma.cc/C5KL-UH3K. For mental and behavioral health, see Seena Fazel, Helen Doll, and Niklas Langstrom, “Mental Disorders Among Adolescents in Juvenile Detention and Correctional Facilities,” Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 47, no. 9 (2008), https://perma.cc/CUB8- ZGM8. For commercial sexual exploitation and sexual violence, see Dana DeHart and Robert Moran, “Poly-Victimization among Girls in the Justice System: Trajectories of Risk and Associations to Juvenile Offending,” Violence Against Women 21, no. 3 (2015), 291–312; Dana Smith, Leslie Leve, and Patricia Chamberlain, “Adolescent Girls’ Offending and Health-Risking Sexual Behavior: The Predictive Role of Trauma,” Child Maltreatment 11, no. 4 (2006), 346–353; and Carly B. Dierkhising, Susan J. Ko, Briana Woods-Jaeger, et al., “Trauma Histories Among Justice-Involved Youth: Findings from the National Child Traumatic Stress Network,” European Journal of Psychotraumatology 4 (2013).

How to End the Incarceration of Girls and Gender Expansive Youth and Promote Safety, Well-Being, and Freedom

Incarceration means pre-adjudication detention and post-adjudication placement in a juvenile legal system facility. This toolkit also uses the term confinement in some places to include all mandated placements through the juvenile legal system (for example, if a youth is ordered into a child welfare or mental health facility and would suffer repercussions in their delinquency case if they did not comply).<sup>a

a</sup> U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “Prisoner Research FAQs: How Do the Regulations Define ‘Prisoner’?”, https://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/regulations-and-policy/guidance/faq/prisoner-research/index.html.

The good news is that we have the knowledge and tools to end unnecessary and inequitable incarceration. The Vera Institute of Justice (Vera) and our partners are leading a national movement to end the incarceration of girls and gender expansive youth by building stronger, safer, and more equitable communities where young people are no longer criminalized and punished for the violence and discrimination they face. By adopting the approaches we have collaboratively developed, communities can promote safety, well-being, and accountability. Investing in basic needs and addressing the systems that funnel girls and gender expansive youth into the juvenile justice system can advance freedom and end unnecessary incarceration. This change is possible if communities align their policies and practices to Vera’s Advancing Freedom Principles.

• Principle 1: Ensure that incarceration is used as a last resort or not at all by explicitly prohibiting any confinements based on young people’s service and safety needs, status offenses, technical violations of probation, misdemeanors, and other offenses that evidence shows can be safely addressed in the community.
• Principle 2: Invest in a continuum of community resources—including prevention, diversion, alternatives to incarceration, and community reintegration programs—to meet the needs and challenges of girls and gender expansive youth with increased support instead of punishment.
• Principle 3: Draw on interagency collaboration, youth leadership, and inclusive community partnerships to stem the criminalization of girls and gender expansive youth by government systems, including education, mental health, immigration, and child welfare.

Several of Vera’s local partners have made dramatic improvements through their alignment with these principles. Read on to learn how and to find tools that can support your efforts.

Advancing Freedom Principle 1

Ensure that incarceration is used as a last resort or not at all by explicitly prohibiting any confinements based on young people’s service and safety needs, status offenses, technical violations of probation, misdemeanors, and other offenses that evidence shows can be safely addressed in the community.^[]Mendel, Why Youth Incarceration Fails.

The overwhelming majority of girls and gender expansive youth experiencing incarceration in the United States have not been charged with serious offenses.^[]Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, “Easy Access to Juvenile Court Statistics, 1985-2021,” database, Table for National Estimates of Juvenile Court Processing for Delinquency Cases, accessed October 21, 2024, search: Detained, Female, Offenses: simple assault, other person offenses, larceny–theft, vandalism, stolen property, trespassing, other property offenses, drug law violations, obstruction of justice, disorderly conduct, liquor law violations, nonviolent sex offenses, and “other public order offenses,” https://ojjdp.ojp.gov/statistical-briefing-book/data-analysis-tools/ezajcs/case-processing. The following charge categories made up 90 percent of girls’ delinquency cases in 2019: simple assault, other person offenses, larceny–theft, vandalism, stolen property, trespassing, other property offenses, drug law violations, obstruction of justice, disorderly conduct, liquor law violations, nonviolent sex offenses, and “other public order offenses.” Felony person offenses, robbery, burglary, or other offense categories that could pose imminent threat of bodily harm to community members made up 10 percent or less. If every state stopped incarcerating youth for misdemeanors, status offenses, and technical violations of probation, most communities could end the incarceration of girls and gender expansive youth entirely. If incarceration for these offenses is not banned, girls will continue to be incarcerated due to real or perceived concerns about their safety and a lack of safe housing or support services in the community. Decision-makers will continue to have broad discretion that can lead to unjust incarceration and discrimination, worsening racial and gender disparities in confinement.^[]Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, “Easy Access to Juvenile Court Statistics: 1985–2021,” database, Table for National Estimates of Juvenile Court Processing for Delinquency Cases, accessed December 22, 2023, search: Detained, Female, Minority, https://ojjdp.ojp.gov/statistical-briefing-book/data-analysis-tools/ezajcs/case-processing.

Steps to take in alignment with Principle 1

Legislators, probation agency leaders, presiding judges, chief prosecutors and defenders, and other decision-makers can take the following actions depending on the laws in their jurisdiction:

• Eliminate any state laws that allow for the incarceration of girls and gender expansive youth for status offenses (such as truancy, running away, or curfew violations) and technical violations of supervision rules.
• Ban juvenile detention or commitment for misdemeanors, allowing community providers to serve youth in their homes with minimal legal system involvement and oversight.
• Transform probation policies so that support services are used in place of surveillance responses such as probation and electronic monitoring, using the latter only when needed to protect others, not as punishment or for young people’s safety.
• Enact policies and practices at every decision point to prohibit incarcerating or detaining girls and gender expansive youth based on personal safety concerns or because there is “no place for them to go.”

When making these changes, decision-makers should plan for and prevent unintended consequences, like young people being charged with more serious crimes instead of misdemeanors just to justify incarceration or surveillance. Among these safeguards must be strong oversight and routine public reporting on data about the use of incarceration, including charges, risk levels, and demographic information, so that the ways incarceration is used in communities are transparent for public officials, advocates, and community members.

Advancing Freedom Principle 2

Invest in a continuum of community resources—including prevention, diversion, alternatives to incarceration, and community reintegration programs—to meet the needs and challenges of girls and gender expansive youth with increased support instead of punishment.

Expanding access to gender-responsive community-based services is vital to advancing the freedom and well-being of girls and gender expansive youth, keeping them out of the court system, and ending their incarceration. Building and sustaining a continuum of comprehensive community resources to prevent and intervene in challenges—without requiring legal system involvement—is the evidence-based way to address concerns about girls’ safety or service needs. In contrast, incarcerating them is unsafe and harmful to their well-being.^[]Mara Sanchez, Erica King, and Jill Ward, Place Matters: Aligning Investments in a Community-Based Continuum of Care for Maine Youth Transitioning to Adulthood (Portland, ME: University of Southern Maine, 2019), https://perma.cc/NS8V-XP6J.

Alongside investments in prevention and early intervention, gender-responsive, trauma-informed diversion and alternative programming are essential to serving the small number of girls and gender expansive youth for whom earlier efforts do not prevent system involvement. These programs ensure girls and gender expansive youth—including those charged with more serious offenses—learn from their experiences in ways that are healing, promote accountability, and do not involve the harms of incarceration.^[]Roca, Roca Hartford 2-Year Report: Performance Data and Program Outcomes October 1, 2021–September 30, 2023 (Hartford, CT: Roca, 2023), https://perma.cc/GF6S-VR5N. While reviews of evidence-based models for youth have included girls and gender expansive youth, there is still a need to identify more alternatives to incarceration for girls and gender expansive youth who are charged with more serious offenses.^[]Leslie D. Leve, Patricia Chamberlain, and Hyoun K. Kim, “Risks, Outcomes, and Evidence-Based Interventions for Girls in the U.S. Juvenile Justice System,” Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review 18, no. 3 (2015), 252–279, https://perma.cc/KA7A-UVCN. These resources are necessary to promote safety for girls, their families, and their communities. When adequately resourced, communities can ensure that incarceration is extraordinarily rare or eliminated entirely.

Steps to take in alignment with Principle 2

Policymakers, government agencies, and funders should prioritize resourcing home-and community-based programming that can prevent juvenile legal system involvement and/or serve as an alternative to incarceration. Resources should be available for all young people and families who need them, and programs and services should be gender-responsive, culturally responsive, and equitable. Some of the most urgent areas of investment include the following:

• resources to help youth and families meet basic needs, including food, clothing, and medical care;
• housing support, including respite/crisis short-term housing and longer-term transitional housing (for youth on their own, those with their families, or those who are pregnant and/or parenting), and support for youth and families to obtain and maintain their own housing, such as eviction protection and rental assistance;
• education, employment, and additional professional development services to support economic security as youth transition into adulthood;
• mental health and substance use services, including support services for families in conflict and/or crisis, such as mobile crisis response services;
• resources for survivors of domestic violence, sexual abuse, and commercial sexual exploitation, including safety planning and healing resources so survivors do not end up in handcuffs as an added consequence of their victimization;
• reproductive health care and parenting support for all youth, including those expecting, parenting, and in foster care;
• childcare supports that would enable young parents to participate in programming and educational opportunities from which they may otherwise be excluded;
• gender- and culturally responsive diversion programming to keep young people out of the legal system and alternative-to-detention and alternative-to-incarceration programming for young people who do act in ways that could cause others serious or imminent harm, such that every young person has opportunities to avoid deeper system involvement and incarceration; and
• community reintegration programming to support successful release of young people so that those who have been incarcerated do not return.

Building and sustaining community-based resources requires collaboration. Communities, young people, and their families should be empowered to regularly review and identify needs through tools such as asset mapping. Because the legal system is often better funded than social service agencies, juvenile justice systems should advocate for and help fund basic needs and community resources to prevent youth from entering systems such as juvenile justice or child welfare because of unmet needs. As numbers of incarcerated youth decline, system resources should be reinvested in ways that better serve the needs of communities.^[]Cortney Sanders and Samantha Wing, “Hawai`i is Leading the Way for Girls’ Youth Justice,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, July 29, 2022, https://www.cbpp.org/blog/hawaii-is-leading-the-way-for-girls-youth-justice.

Advancing Freedom Principle 3

Draw on interagency collaboration, youth leadership, and inclusive community partnerships to stem the criminalization of girls and gender expansive youth by government systems, including education, mental health, immigration, and child welfare.

Leaders within and outside of government systems who are committed to ending the incarceration of girls and gender expansive youth must recognize how various systems contribute to criminalization. Otherwise, they will fail to prevent future arrests and incarceration. Those supporting these young people must work together to understand how gender, race, and sexuality shape both the discriminatory history of these systems and how young people experience these systems today.

To prevent harmful system involvement, girls and gender expansive youth must be safe, free from discrimination, and given opportunities to thrive in their communities. When harmed, they should have access to trauma support and resources that empower them to heal and build their futures in the community—outside of system involvement. Girls and gender expansive young people Vera has partnered with have demonstrated profound capacity for leadership and are vital partners in creating safer, more just, and more inclusive systems.

Steps to take in alignment with Principle 3

Child welfare, mental health, immigration, and education leaders should recognize that these systems have historically created—and continue to create—direct and indirect pathways to girls’ and gender expansive young people’s incarceration and learn more about how and why this may be happening in their communities.

Programming providers and child welfare, mental health, immigration, and education agencies, with input from young people, should

• proactively collaborate to offer alternative, community-based ways to meet girls’ and gender expansive young people’s needs and build their strengths;
• develop cross-agency standards, such as when it is and is not appropriate to call law enforcement to group homes, mental health facilities, schools, and other congregate settings, and ensure that law enforcement is never used to enforce rules or discipline young people;
• establish shared well-being outcomes for girls and gender expansive youth that support restorative approaches to discipline and eliminate practices that criminalize adolescent behavior;
• develop services that allow girls and gender expansive youth to stay in their homes and communities whenever possible, prioritizing family/homelike settings over institutional settings;
• adopt a multifaceted approach to address bias and discrimination, including ongoing training, race-neutral and gender-responsive assessments, and regular data collection and analysis regarding detentions, sentencing, and probation by race, ethnicity, and gender; and
• ensure all professionals who work directly with youth are trained in adolescent development, the impacts of trauma, crisis de-escalation, and other subjects that will allow them to understand and respond to behaviors that are normal for adolescents (including those who have experienced adversity) in supportive rather than escalating ways.

Collaboration between systems and community programs is crucial to addressing the complex needs of girls and gender expansive youth while ensuring that they are not pushed from one system to another to meet their needs.

Incarceration to Liberation: Policy Briefs

The following policy briefs offer practical insights and strategies for ending girls’ incarceration, centering the distinct experiences of girls and gender expansive youth. Together, they highlight gender-responsive principles, promising programs, policy reforms, and interventions that address the systemic drivers of incarceration while charting pathways toward safety, equity, and community-based solutions.

A Gender-Responsive Approach to Working with Girls and Gender Expansive Youth
This brief recognizes the different experiences and needs of girls encountering the legal system while lifting up the importance of a gender-responsive framework through specific program principles and strategies that best serve girls and gender expansive youth. Click to read more.

Putting Gender-Responsive Principles into Practice
This brief highlights three gender-responsive programs that have developed model programs within the field and implemented the principles and various strategies outlined in A Gender-Responsive Approach to Working with Girls and Gender Expansive Youth to successfully serve girls and gender expansive youth within their communities. Click to read more.

Youth Justice Policies to End Girls’ Incarceration
This brief serves as a resource for policymakers and advocates looking to end girls’ incarceration—while ultimately reducing all youth incarceration—through evidence-based legislation within proven youth legal system reform efforts. Click to read more.

Understanding Criminalization of Girls and Gender Expansive Youth Impacted by Commercial Sexual Exploitation
This brief describes how commercial sexual exploitation (CSE) drives incarceration of girls and gender expansive youth, identifies gaps in the legal system, and highlights opportunities for change and intervention that can reduce criminalization of youth harmed by CSE. Click to read more.

Addressing Housing-Related Drivers of Girls' Incarceration
This brief lays out key steps communities can take to understand and address housing-related drivers of girls’ incarceration as well as housing program models for girls and gender expansive youth. Click to read more.

Conclusion

Not only is ending the incarceration of girls and gender expansive youth possible, but it is also necessary for promoting safety, well-being, and freedom for some of our most marginalized young people. Systems must move beyond punitive approaches and invest in community-based support systems that uplift rather than punish. By adopting Vera’s Advancing Freedom Principles, communities can replace harmful practices with restorative, equitable solutions that center on safety and healing.

Now is the time for leaders, policymakers, and advocates to take bold action, including eliminating unnecessary confinement, building robust community supports, and fostering inclusive collaborations across systems. Together, communities can transform the juvenile justice system into one that values dignity, equity, and true justice. With these changes, a future where every girl and gender expansive young person can thrive free from incarceration is possible.

Acknowledgements

Vera Institute of Justice would like to thank the following individuals and organizations who contributed to the development and writing of this project.

Authors

Lindsay Rosenthal (Vera)
Mahsa Jafarian (Vera)
MiKayla Green (Vera)
Chamone Marshall (Vera)
Doreen Govari (Vera)
Lisa Pilnik (Child and Family Policy)
Shabnam Javdani (New York University)
Erin Godfrey (New York University)
Mae Ackerman-Brimberg (National Center for Youth Law)
Kate Walker Brown (National Center for Youth Law)

Consultants/Thought Partners

Joanne Smith (Girls for Gender Equity)
Jeannette Pai Espinosa (Justice and Joy)
Shakira Washington (Justice and Joy)
Jill Ward (Center for Youth Policy & Law at Maine Law)
Sydney McKinney (National Black Women’s Justice Institute)
Tenaj Moody (National Black Women’s Justice Institute)
Maria Conrearas (National Center for Youth Law)
Abigail Richards (Reimagine Freedom)

The authors would also like to thank Margaret diZerega, Cindy Reed, Ariel Goldberg, James Cui, and EpsteinWords for editing, and Karen Ball, andrew uhrig, and Kristina Koliesnikova for design.

This project was funded with support from The California Wellness Foundation, David Klafter and Nancy Kestenbaum, the Pershing Square Foundation, and the Advancing Girls Fund, a fund of the Tides Foundation.