Girls in Trouble with the Law

Juvenile arrest rates in the United States have declined over the past decade, yet the percentage of girls in trouble with the law increased. Girls now enter the juvenile legal system for violent offenses in addition to minor violations for which previous generations of young women have always been detained. In Girls in Trouble with the Law, sociologist Laurie Schaffner takes us inside female detention centers and explores the worlds of those who are incarcerated. Across the country, she finds that an overwhelming majority of court-involved young women are from ethnic or racial minority groups, and most have experienced some sort of sexual and physical assault. Focusing on the girls’ experiences of early adolescent sexualization, increased social violence, and the inequities of the juvenile court system, Schaffner explores three central questions: How have changing social norms of sexuality and emotional expression influenced the way that society sees adolescent girls’ transgressions? How do young women experience and understand their involvement in the juvenile legal system? What role do gender and race play in the increasing reliance on arrests to solve social problems?. Offering a critical assessment of what she describes as a gender-insensitive juvenile legal system, Schaffner makes a compelling argument that current policies do not go far enough to empower disadvantaged girls so that they can overcome the social limitations and gender, sexual, and racial/ethnic discrimination that continue to plague young women growing up in contemporary United States.