Crossover Youth and Gender: Challenges for Girls Involved in Foster Care and Juvenile Justice Systems

• In Event: The Role of Gender in Juvenile Justice Decision-Making and Treatment

Abstract

Crossover youth are children who are simultaneously involved in the foster care and juvenile justice systems. Utilizing in-depth interviews collected during a 24-month ethnographic study among detained adolescent girls we discuss how being in both of these systems complicates their lives. Namely, we find that girls spend more time behind bars and are negatively treated in their group homes because of their dual status. Our findings shed light on this topic and also provide a much-needed discussion of the experiences of young women who are crossover youth.

Authors

• Jerry Flores, University of Toronto

• Janelle Hawes, University of Washington Tacoma