Gender-Specific or Gender-Responsive? Investigating Juvenile Justice Practitioner Knowledge

• In Event: Posters II

Abstract

Scholars have documented the importance of developing gender-responsive services for girls in order to address their unique needs and reasons for entering the juvenile justice system. Although researchers have made progress in efforts to define gender-responsive services, there is still ambiguity in the literature. This ambiguity may contribute to disparities in how the justice system intervenes with girls. This study was part of a multi-method project on female juvenile delinquency and used conventional content analysis to examine data from qualitative interviews with court practitioners (n = 39) in a juvenile county court system. Practitioners shared their knowledge about and use of gender-responsivity relevant to their professional experiences. Overall, practitioners lacked familiarity with gender-responsivity, and most used the term interchangeably with gender-specificity. Despite variation in defining the construct, practitioners shared their suggestions about what gender-responsive services should incorporate and the resources needed to implement such services in the juvenile justice system. Multiple practitioners expressed a need for gender-responsive programming as well as more research on the effectiveness of gender-responsive services. In order to facilitate implementation, it is vital to maintain consistent language and develop common definitions of gender-responsivity and gender-specificity in research and practice.

Authors

• Kayla Hoskins, Michigan State University

• Valerie Rose Anderson, University of Cincinnati