To understand why victims of childhood trauma pose a higher risk of being placed in detention, researchers point to a phenomenon commonly referred to as the sexual abuse-to-prison pipeline.

Girls go behind bars for status offenses like skipping school, drinking alcohol and violating curfew. Studies say these actions are often driven by adverse childhood experiences, including sexual abuse, neglect, family dysfunction and mental illness, leaving many girls –– disproportionately girls of color –– susceptible to arrest and imprisonment.

“Sexual abuse is a primary predictor of criminalization in girls,” said Yasmin Vafa, the executive director of Rights4Girls in Washington, D.C., a nonprofit that advocates for the rights of at-risk youth, particularly girls and gender-expansive youth.

In 2015, 81% of girls in South Carolina’s youth detentions said they’d experienced severe and repeated sexual abuse, according to “The Girls’ Story,” a report by Rights4Girls and The Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality.

In the 26 years since the founding of the Young Women’s Freedom Center, executive director Jessica Nowlan said that of the 38,000 young people the center worked with, the overwhelming majority have suffered physical and sexual violence. 

The San Francisco nonprofit provides jobs, education, healing and a voice for system-impacted youth, even visiting facilities to assist kids prior to their release.   

“We are talking about young people who have very little power in terms of our society,” Nowlan said. “These are young people that have been pushed to the margins.”

Now 41, Nowlan spent much of her childhood at the mercy of systems she now works to reform. Addiction and abuse were among the adverse experiences Nowlan often witnessed in her childhood home, though she said the child welfare system was riddled with trauma of its own.    

By age 13, Nowlan was homeless in the Tenderloin of San Francisco.  

Shoplifting and parole violations fueled the 17 incarcerations in Nowlan’s past before she found the Young Women’s Freedom Center. Through the center’s work and healing programs, Nowlan broke away from the systemic cycle. 

A sense of belonging, a safe place to go or a person to confide in can be pivotal factors in a child’s life, forces that are strong enough to even deter them away from the sexual-abuse-to-prison pipeline, Nolan said.  

“The pipeline part, it’s complicated. It’s not just ‘You get sexually assaulted at 16, you’re going to go to prison,’” said Danielle Arlanda Harris, a professor at the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Griffith University in Australia. “It’s being exposed to situations that make the likelihood of prison more possible.” 

Harris said the wide net cast by the sexual-abuse-to-prison pipeline over multiple vulnerable populations is what makes the phenomenon’s classification as a “pipeline” somewhat problematic. 

Difficult to recognize, escape or heal from, Harris said the pipeline is better represented as a colander. While not all youth impacted by sexual abuse will end up incarcerated, the chance at-risk kids receive the help they need to before passing through the strainer and falling into the system is unlikely, she said. 

The psychological impact of repeated sexual trauma during pivotal developmental years is what makes the abuse to prison pipeline sometimes hard to recognize and can occur in tandem with other adverse childhood experiences. 

Francine Sherman, a clinical professor of law at Boston College Law School and co-author of study “Gender Injustice,” said girls with histories of abuse are often dually-involved with the welfare and juvenile justice systems.

According to the 2015 report, 47% of girls involved with child-welfare were referred to court for status offense charges.

 “It’s a whole lot less about the girl’s initial behavior, than it is a colossal failure of our response,” Sherman said.  

Sherman noted that systems like welfare and education are in place to provide solutions for at-risk youth, but often fail to address the root of their trauma and behavior. This lack of understanding can push children further down the path of arrest or incarceration.

“Girls’ trauma is different. Girls’ responses are different,” said Rebecca Epstein, executive director of the Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality, an advocacy group that addresses disparities of race and class nationwide. 

Advocates like Epstein push for a more gender-responsive justice reform that addresses the needs and driving risk factors for girls who’ve been led into the system, especially policy that supports low-income girls and girls of color.

“It’s important to recognize the dual effects of girls, race and gender in examining how she’s perceived and treated and responded to in our public systems,” Epstein said.

While the driving forces behind the sexual abuse to prison pipeline tends to target girls, gender expansive, transgender and gender-nonconforming youth, experts and advocates notice and acknowledge that race heightens these risks even further.

“White girls and girls of color share certain challenges, but they’re also very unique. Girls of color and low-income girls are the voices that are most consistently absent from the conversation,” Epstein said.

Minority girls are at an increasingly high risk of sex trafficking and arrest, due to racial disparities in socioeconomic status. Even more, black youth overrepresented in the justice system, accounting for 53% percent of all prostitution arrests, according to a 2017 data report by The U.S. Department of Justice. 

“Incarceration and detention [are] never appropriate for children, particularly girls, because of their unique pathways into the system, because an overwhelming majority of girls behind bars are survivors of sexual abuse,” Vafa said.

Often the needs of incarcerated victims of rape and abuse go untreated and ignored while in detention, leaving kids at a heightened risk of revictimization. 

Girls tend to lash out in response to retriggering events while incarcerated, pushed further into the justice system through a process that Vafa refers to as “bootstrapping.”

“It is retraumatizing to incarcerate them,” Vafa said. “Things like being forced to strip and cavity searches…constantly having your movements controlled by others…being subjected to really harmful techniques like isolation and solitary confinement.”

Girls disproportionately represent 76% of all “prostitution” charges, despite being younger than the legal age of consent, according to a 2015 report by the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

Survivor advocate Withelma “T” Ortiz Pettigrew said harmful conditions inside of many juvenile detentions often mirror the environment that sex traffickers subject their victims to.

“Many times when they’re put in a detention facility, it’s almost like a dog in a kennel,” Pettigrew said.  

Pettigrew, along with Rights4Girls, launched the “No Such Thing as a Child Prostitute” campaign in 2016 that successfully eradicated the terminology “child prostitute” in the media. For youth justice advocates and survivors, the change is big step towards understanding young victims of sex trafficking.

“It changed the idea that these are willing participants, it changed the idea that they were complicit in and in agreement,” Pettigrew said. “It allowed people to understand that this is something that’s happening to them, not something that they’re willingly participating in.”

In doing this, Vafa said these systems would have to acknowledge and address the intersectionality of girls who are impacted by the sexual-abuse-to-prison pipeline. 

“It’s really a matter of getting systems to understand the connection between childhood trauma, abuse and incarceration,” Vafa said.

The post What fuels the sexual-abuse-to-prison pipeline? appeared first on Kids Imprisoned.

A total of $49 million has been granted to 157 departments for school-based policing, the highest such grant allocation since 2011, according to data from the Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.  

New York City is by far the largest recipient of 2020 grant money. It will receive $11.56 million to hire 100 new officers. Other major recipients include El Paso, Texas ($2 million for 16 officers) and St. Lucie County, Florida, ($1.25 million for 10 officers).

These grants come as a handful of school districts, such as Milwaukee and Minneapolis, have voted to remove officers from schools. 

Data visualization by Brody Ford

But this is only a fraction of schools with police officers, or school resource officers, in the country. In the 2017-2018 school year, 42,100 schools reported the presence of a school-based officer. With these grants, that number will likely grow.

Critics of school policing believe the presence of officers increases the chances for students, particularly students of color, to be disciplined or arrested, while providing no demonstrable safety benefits.

Since 1994, the Department of Justice has issued grants to hire school police. According to documents from the DOJ, $926 million has been allocated through this program. This number is likely higher, as data is not available for some years. 

This spending had been trending down since the early 2010s and halted entirely in 2018 and 2019 due to a lawsuit. In a reversal of this trend, 2020’s grant allocation is the highest since 2011.

Meanwhile, federal grants for school counselors through the Elementary and Secondary School Counseling Program were cut in 2015. 

Amir Whitaker, policy attorney with the ACLU of Southern California, said funding decisions promoting police are troubling, particularly when school budgets are so tight, and police officers often make more money than teachers.

“In LA last year, teachers were striking because 80% of schools didn’t have a full time nurse,” Whitaker said. “Yet over half of schools have a full time police officer.”

Whitaker is the author of Cops No Counselors, an ACLU report which found that 14 million students were in schools with police but no counselor, nurse, psychologist or social worker in 2017.

This $49 million grant package for school resource officers is only part of the total money awarded. In total, 2020 COPS Hiring Program grants from the Department of Justice amount to nearly $400 millionfor focus areas like “Criminal Gangs” and “Illegal Immigration”. A total of 596 law enforcement agencies across the country received grants, which will fund the hiring of 2,732 additional officers. 

Additionally, $50 million was awarded through the School Violence Prevention Program (SVPP), which subsidizes school security such as metal detectors, security camera systems or law enforcement training. 

The post $49 Million Dollars Granted for School Police in 2020 appeared first on Kids Imprisoned.

Charleston White, like millions of American children, grew up in a father-absent home. Although his mother was his main caretaker, he said nothing could replace a father’s presence.

“I know what abandonment is,” White said. “I know what it’s like to feel unloved. I know what it’s like to feel unwanted. I know what it’s like to feel rejected as a child.”

An estimated 19.7 million youth live in fatherless homes, according to 2017 data from the U.S. Census Bureau.  Family structure, specifically single-parent or father-absent homes are factors in a child’s overall development and well-being, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation. 

Research from the National Fatherhood Initiative shows that father-absent households are more likely to experience poverty and financial hardships. Fatherless children are more likely to have behavioral issues like depression, and engage in illegal activities like using drugs and drinking alcohol. 

His mother worked long hours to support White and his brother, which left time for the two siblings to get into trouble. 

White, who is now 43,  said he was eager to find a place where he belonged and searched for affirmation from the men in his Arlington, Texas, neighborhood. He ultimately became involved in gangs at an early age, committing crimes for acceptance.

“When I was presented with something to be a part of whether it was good or bad, I just wanted to be a part of it,” White said. “I wanted to have a family, and I felt like I didn’t have a family.”

Gang activity led White to the juvenile justice system when he arrested for murder at age 14. He spent about 6 1/2 years in the Texas Giddings State School. White’s experience is not an isolated one. 

“There are so many children who make mistakes as children because they’re in pain,” White said. “They don’t know how to process the pain.”

Fatherlessness has been identified as a “key contributor to juvenile delinquency,” according to a University of California, Irvine study. 

The more opportunities a child has to interact with their biological father, the less likely he or she is to commit a crime or have contact with the juvenile justice system, a Boston College study stated.

Tierre Webster, executive director of Damascus Way Reentry Centers in Minnesota, said fatherlessness is “one of the top social epidemics this nation is facing,” alongside mass incarceration. 

“Fathers matter, and they matter for so many reasons,” Webster said. 

Certain groups are impacted by fatherlessness at higher rates. Youth of color are more likely to live in fatherless households, Webster said. 

“If you break down the data, two in three Black homes, one in three Latino or Spanish-speaking homes, one in four white homes [are fatherless],” Webster said. 

Edgar Ibarra, a 27-year-old advocate with MILPA, a nonprofit in Salinas, California, said his father was incarcerated for 13 years. This led him to look for male guidance elsewhere.

“There was really no real father figure around for us,” Ibarra said.“The people that we looked up to [were] just kind of like the guys hanging out around our blocks, around the neighborhood. They didn’t even know how to navigate life.” 

Parental criminal behavior is also related to delinquency, Webster said. 

“That data tends to really be increased if a child has a father that’s incarcerated,” Webster said. 

Ibarra’s first arrest at age 15 for assault and robbery felt like a normal step in his life, he said.  

“This was kind of like [my] trajectory,” Ibarra said.“This is what’s supposed to happen.” 

A child’s relationship with a father is important for both individuals — especially for children with incarcerated parents. Fathers who have a meaningful relationship with their child are less likely to reoffend, Webster said. 

“We can’t assume that just because a father has failed in one area of life, [they’re] going to be an unsuccessful father,” Webster said. 

White, now 43 and a father himself, founded Hyped About HYPE (Helping Young People Excel), a youth outreach program with a goal to keep kids out of the juvenile system. He uses his platform to speak about the changes he hopes to see in the Fort Worth, Texas, community he serves. 

“So how do you restore the fathers back to the heart of the children?  And how do you restore the children back to the hearts of the father?” White asks, answering his own questions.  

White’s said delinquency prevention starts at home with positive male guidance.  

“That’s where your justice lies, not in [the] program. Not in [the] institutions,” White said. 

The post How fatherlessness contributes to juvenile delinquency appeared first on Kids Imprisoned.

For the project “Kids Imprisoned,” the team of student journalists will investigate disparities in sentencing and jail time, conditions of juvenile detention facilities and the impact on families, communities and victims. The stories will be published as a multimedia project online and shared with industry publishing partners across the country. Previous investigations have been published by major news organizations, including The Washington Post, NBC News, the Center for Public Integrity and USA Today, as well as many nonprofit news websites.

“In this moment, with what’s going on in the world, with the Black Lives Matters protests, I feel like we’re reporting in a historic moment and on a historic topic,” said News21 fellow Chloe Jones, an Arizona State University graduate student.

Headquartered at ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, News21 was established in 2005 by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to demonstrate that college journalism students can produce innovative, in-depth multimedia projects on a national scale. The initiative is led by Jacquee Petchel, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and a professor of practice at the Cronkite School.

“Across the country, tens of thousands of children are incarcerated for crimes ranging from larceny and vandalism to assault and murder. This project will investigate how states and local jurisdictions are dealing with youth crime and violence, from arrest to detention,” Petchel said. “It’s a topic critical to the future of children and teens, not to mention their families and their victims.”

Normally, students travel from Phoenix to as many as 30 states during a summer News21 reporting project, but the COVID-19  pandemic has compelled remote reporting this year. From their hometowns or campuses, the students hold a daily videoconference with Petchel, other faculty advisers and their own reporting team members.

Previous News21 projects have included investigations into voting rights, post-911 veterans, guns in America and drinking water safety, among other topics. The projects have won numerous awards, including five EPPY Awards from Editor & Publisher, the IRE student journalism investigative prize and a host of other honors.

The last two projects, “Hate in America” in 2018 and “State of Emergency” in 2019, won the prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Award in the college journalism category. The award honors outstanding reporting on issues that reflect Kennedy’s passions, including human rights, social justice and the power of individual action in the U.S. and around the world. “State of Emergency” also won the top Investigative Reporters and Editors award for student journalists.

Fellows are selected for the highly competitive, paid summer fellowships based on nominations submitted by journalism deans and directors from across the country as well as how they perform in a spring seminar at the Cronkite School, during which they prepare by deeply immersing themselves in the topic.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation provides core support for the News21 program. Individual fellows are supported by their universities as well as a variety of foundations, news organizations and philanthropists that include The Arizona Republic, Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, Knight Foundation, Murray Endowment, Diane Laney Fitzpatrick, Myrta J. Pulliam and John and Patty Williams.

The ASU fellows, their named fellowships and their hometowns are:

– José-Ignacio Casteñeda – Phoenix, Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation Fellow 

– Kelsey Collesi ­– Shaker Heights, Ohio, Buffett Foundation Fellow 

– Daja Henry – New Orleans, Donald W. Reynolds Foundation Fellow

– Delia C. Johnson – Phoenix, Donald W. Reynolds Foundation Fellow

– Chloe Jones – Tempe, Arizona, Donald W. Reynolds Foundation Fellow*

– Franco LaTona – West Bend, Wisconsin, Don Bolles/Arizona Republic Fellow

– Haillie Parker – San Diego, California, Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation Fellow

– Kimberly Rapanut – Mesa, Arizona, Buffett Foundation Fellow 

– Jill Ryan – Bear, Delaware, Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation Fellow*

– Calah Schlabach – St. Michaels, Arizona, Buffett Foundation Fellow

– Katherine Sypher – Orono, Maine, Donald W. Reynolds Foundation Fellow

– Anthony J. Wallace – Gilbert, Arizona, Donald W. Reynolds Foundation Fellow

This year’s fellows from other universities are:

– Butler University – Sorell Grow, St. Louis

– DePauw University – Joslyn Fox, Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Byron Mason II, Chicago, Myrta J. Pulliam Fellows

– Elon University – Victoria Traxler, Oakton, Virginia

– Kent State University – Gretchen Lasso, Amherst, Ohio, Diane Laney Fitzpatrick Fellow

– Morgan State University – Chloe Johnson, Baltimore 

– St. Bonaventure University – Layne Dowdall, Little Valley, New York, and Jeff Uveino, Perry, New York

– Syracuse University – Michele Abercrombie, Boston and Patrick Linehan, Derry, New Hampshire

– University of British Columbia – Braela Kwan, Vancouver, British Columbia

– University of Colorado Boulder – Lindsey Nichols, Strasberg, Colorado

– University of Illinois at Chicago – Brody Ford, San Diego, California, and Nicole Sroka, Chicago

– University of Iowa – Mikhayla Hughes-Shaw, Rock Island, Illinois, Murray Endowment Fellow

– University of Mississippi – Matthew Hendley, Madison, Mississippi 

– University of Nebraska – Morgan Wallace, Gering, Nebraska, James Wooldridge, Kansas City, Missouri, and Ike Somanas, Bangkok, Thailand

– University of Oklahoma – Jana Allen, Muskogee, Oklahoma, Abigail Hall, Stillwater, Oklahoma, and Molly Kruse, Houston, Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation Fellows

– University of Tennessee – Gabriela Szymanowska, Knoxville, Tennessee, John and Patty Williams Fellow

*Chloe Jones and Jill Ryan are part of the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism, supported by the Scripps Howard Foundation.

Past investigations and information on the Carnegie-Knight News21 program can be found at news21.com.

John S. and James L. Knight Foundation: The Knight Foundation supports transformational ideas that promote quality journalism, advance media innovation, engage communities and foster the arts. 

Carnegie Corporation of New York: The Carnegie Corporation of New York, which was established by Andrew Carnegie in 1911 “to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge and understanding,” is one of the oldest, largest and most influential American grant-making foundations. The foundation makes grants to promote international peace and to advance education and knowledge.

Donald W. Reynolds Foundation: The Donald W. Reynolds Foundation was founded as a national philanthropic organization in 1954 by the late media entrepreneur for whom it is named. During its 60-plus years of operation, the foundation was a major supporter of journalism and journalism education, with commitments of more than $115 million nationwide.

Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation: The Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, headquartered in Oklahoma City, was founded by Edith Kinney Gaylord, the daughter of Daily Oklahoman Publisher E.K. Gaylord. Ms. Gaylord created the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation in 1982 to improve the quality of journalism by supporting research and creative projects that promote excellence and foster high ethical standards in journalism.

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