Girls & Women Involved with Gangs, Violence, & the Criminal Legal System: Old Structures Dealing with New Phenomena

Session Submission Type: Complete Thematic Panel

Abstract/Description

The percentage of women in prison remains lower than men, however the female imprisonment rate has increased more than twice as fast (Fair & Walmsley, 2025). Several international instruments, like the 1985 United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Administration of Juvenile Justice (‘The Beijing Rules’), the 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, and the 2010 United Nations Rules for the Treatment of Women Prisoners and Non-custodial Measures for Women Offenders (‘The Bangkok Rules’), are intended to protect girls and women in the criminal legal system. However, they either fail to include a genuine gender perspective or are not adapted to the current phenomena of girls involved in gangs and violence. In this panel we discuss the role of girls and women in crime, community violence and gangs, and how new phenomena of violence challenge the current (juvenile) criminal legal system. We also address girls' experience in the criminal legal system. Through methods that are based in feminism, decolonization and intersectionality, the presentations in this panel shed light on under researched topics concerning the (mental) health of gang-affiliated mothers, black girls’ experience of community violence and safety, and girls and women who are disproportionately impacted by the criminal legal system.

Sub Unit

• Area VI. The Criminal Justice System / 51. The Juvenile Justice System

Individual Presentations

• Girls and Women Impacted by the Criminal Legal System: New Challenges, Old Attitudes, Hopeful Futures - Michelle Lyttle Storrod, Widener University; Ellen Van Damme, Field Research Coaching & Widener University

• Writing Against Erasure: How Gang-Affiliated Mothers Document Gendered Stressors, Survival, and Healing - Katherine Maldonado Fabela, University of Utah

• Protecting Black Girls: Understanding Safety Before and After Violence - Ebinehita Iyere, Milk Honey Bees; Sophie Arinde, Milk Honey Bees

• “Violent” Girls: How Girls in Detention and System Actors Explain, Justify, and Resist the Use of Detention - Valerie Anderson, University of Missouri-St. Louis; Nicole McKenna, John Jay College of Criminal Justice; Symone Pate, University of Cincinnati

Chairs

• Michelle Lyttle Storrod, Widener University

• Ellen Van Damme, Field Research Coaching & Widener University

Organized by a Division or external group?

Division of International Criminology
Division of Feminist Criminology