Often statistics and media coverage of current events continue to mirror the decades-old assumption that “men” means everybody. Rather than exploring the distinctions between how a system responds to women and girls and how it responds to men and boys, the reflections and projections are simply presented and the lack of clarity continues without anyone even recognizing that the information is incomplete. And that, because it is incomplete, the information is actually unhelpful. We just keep it out there as those it is the latest piece of truth about whatever the issue is.
This week, the results of a disturbing study in the US shook what we had already recognized as a tragically flawed system and further eroded confidence in it. The sexual abuse of girls is a causal factor in their future incarceration. Yep. That’s what it said. If girls are sexually abused, they are far more likely to become part of the judicial system, victims of their own victimization.
“The common justifications for girls’ arrests are minor offenses such as running away, substance abuse, and truancy—all of which are common responses to abuse,” states the study. “The connection between the sexual abuse of girls and their ultimate incarceration is not coincidental; sexual abuse is a direct, contributing cause of their detention.”
Once we face that fact, others fall into place alongside and are tragically representative of the race related aspects of these issues.
Girls of color are disproportionately locked up within the U.S. juvenile system. While youth of color comprise 45 percent of the general population of young people, girls of color account for roughly two-thirds of girls who are incarcerated. African Americans constitute 14 percent of the youth population, but account for a third of incarcerated girls, the study finds.
It is too easy to look to countries out of which come horror stories about child marriages, death caused by the pregnancy of girls too young to bear children, the suppression of access to education. With this report now on the table, I wonder how long it will take for governments to pass legislation that prevents the incarceration of victims and ensures that access to places of safety and programs geared toward both the prevention of abuse and the healing from it are mandated and funded.
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Here in the U.S. There is also a problem with children of color being expelled from school at higher rates than white children. Like our police, educators need sensitivity training. It is very hard to root out this kind of racism.
On both sides of the political divide there seems to be a willingness to reform our prison system. I hope that happens. The drug war and mandatory minimum sentences? All of that happened for purely political reasons. It is shameful. We have in essence created political prisoners.
Here in Canada, we have seen the signs of the beginning of a prison-industrial system that follows the pattern of what has been built in the US. We have closed our agricultural minimum security prisons, built large new ones, and the government has been trying to impose mandatory minimums. One attempt regarding guns laws was quashed in April by the Supreme Court which found that ”
We have a hugely disproportionate number of First Nations people incarcerated and a hugely disproportionate number of First Nations women missing or murdered, requests for investigation into the latter situation have been denied by the federal government. It is a sad intersection of realities.
Thank you for posting, Nancy!
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