Background: the Juvenile Justice System

There is very little research available on the issue of girls in the juvenile justice system because there is a cultural assumption that boys commit more crime and are incarcerated in much greater numbers than girls.

The statistics that do exist reveal an alarming trend. In the past decade across the U.S. as the overall crime rate declined, the incarceration rate for girls grew at much faster rates for girls than for boys in all categories of crimes, including violent offenses.

Over the same period of time in San Francisco, the youth crime rate declined, as the number of girls in the juvenile justice system more than doubled. Although girls now represent 28% of the U.S. juvenile detention population, they receive only 2% of delinquency services.

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