"Violence Intervention Programs Are Not For Girls"

• In Event: Intervention with Girls and Women Involved in Gangs and Violence

Abstract

This paper explores how diversion routes away from the criminal legal system in the form of violence intervention programs are blocked for girls. Based on an ethnographic study with girls in the juvenile justice system and the practitioners who work with them, this paper will demonstrate that girls continue to enter the criminal legal system through often minor acts of violence which if carried out by boys would be referred to or interrupted by violence intervention programs and credible messengers. Gendered narratives around who credible messengers should be and who they should work with will be explored. This research will show that girls are disadvantaged by lack of access to violence intervention programs when entering the system and again when exiting the system as they are denied the opportunity to be credible messengers.

Author

• Michelle Lyttle Storrod, Widener University