girls

Officials in Santa Clara County say girls brought into court can be better managed outside of lockup settings like camps and juvenile halls.

The NoVo Foundation is taking a simple approach to tackling the extremely complicated issue of sexual exploitation: decrease entrance ramps, and increase exit ramps, to “the life.” The New York-based grant maker has committed $10 million over three years to fund programs and services that help to achieve that goal.

Girls make up a larger proportion of juvenile arrests than ever before, and are far more frequently locked up for low-level offenses than boys, according to a research bulletin published recently by the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP).

Recently, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) abruptly cut short grants for the Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) Program. These cuts will affect more than 80 institutions and organizations that reach some of the most at-risk youth across the country.

A plan released by the Los Angeles County Probation Department this week calls for shuttering six of the county’s juvenile detention camps over the next two years. The proposal would also relocate girls currently housed in the other camps into the eagerly awaited Campus Kilpatrick facility, a move that drew the ire of some commissioners at today’s Los Angeles County Probation Commission meeting.

About 20 years ago, Leslie Acoca was sitting in a California courtroom, waiting to testify as an expert witness in court. What she saw changed the course of her life. That day, Acoca watched a young woman, barely five feet tall and eight and a half months pregnant, waddle into the courtroom, fully shackled.

A new report by the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality suggests that yoga and mindfulness programs may be the best way to help girls in the juvenile justice system handle the impact of trauma.

I was disappointed to read Kiersten Marek’s recent column in The Imprint. In it, she complains that the “movement and infrastructure for funding of initiatives for men and boys of color far outpace the support for women and girls of color.”

When Sasha was in high school, she was raped. Two years later, she had dropped out of high school and was arrested on petty theft charges. According to a recent report entitled “The Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline: The Girls’ Story,” Sasha’s experience at school in the assault’s aftermath was the catalyst for these consequences.