[Sidebar] June 28 - July 5, 2001

[Features]

The lost girls

Female delinquents -- the biggest new element of youth crime -- are left adrift in a system that was designed to treat boys

by Kathleen Hughes

Illustration by Mark Reusch

Building one of the Rhode Island Training School is a good distance down a dirt and gravel road from the rest of the training school complex, on the other side of Route 37 in Cranston, like a runt kicked out of the litter. The building's entrance gate is old and rusty, an apt metaphor for the 40-year-old cinderblock structure, which is generally in the kind of shape you might expect of a gas station along a forgotten road. Nonetheless, Building One is bursting with teenage girls. Bunk beds line one hallway, since there are often too many girls to fit into the 20 cells.

In one of two classrooms, Nicole, 17, Stephanie, 18, and Meagan, 17, tell me about their homes and families, and the streets of Providence and Warwick, where they've used and sold drugs, broken into a home, and driven stolen cars. The three girls are typical of female inmates at the training school: victims of physical and sexual abuse, and veterans of numerous placements with the state Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF). And although Nicole, Stephanie, and Meagan exist in a system designed for boys, they represent the biggest new wave of juvenile crime.

Meagan is a dark-haired, articulate, heroin addict with a broad, somewhat sleepy smile, who managed a 50-bag a day habit before being plucked from downtown Providence in February and sent to the training school for possession. She has hepatitis C and has tried rehab in the past, spending a half-month last summer in Caritas House in Pawtucket before going AWOL and choosing her habit and homelessness over recovery. "If I keep using," she says, "I'll be dead by the time I'm 23."

Brown-haired, freckly-faced Stephanie has a two-year-old daughter, and is on her seventh visit to the training school. This time, among other things, she violated probation, driving with a suspended license, in a stolen motor vehicle, in a restricted area between the training school and the nearby Adult Correctional Institutions, no less. "I think I did it on purpose," she says, laughing. Nicole, with lighter brown hair, is paler and taller than the other two. She was arrested last fall and delivered to the training school for the sixth time after breaking into a house and stealing money and jewelry from a friend's grandparents to cover the friend's drug debt. "I'm not happy I'm here," Nicole says. "But I think I'm here for a reason . . . And when I get out, all's I know is, I want to do good, and I don't know why it's so hard."

If the girls' plight is bewildering, it's increasingly common. Although juvenile crime has dropped since peaking in 1994, and a predicted explosion of youth violence has failed to materialize, more and more girls are getting arrested. According to a study released in May by the American Bar Association, female delinquency in America increased 83 percent between 1988 and 1997. In Rhode Island, the boys-to-girls ratio of delinquency has shifted over the last decade from four-to-one to three-to-one, says David Heddon, chief intake supervisor at the state Family Court. And yet, DCYF director Jay Lindgren says, these girls remain a neglected population -- "forgotten and overlooked."

The situation can be seen in how Building One at the training school, which was built to house 20 people, was large enough until the early '90s, but now typically holds 25 to 30 girls. There's also great lack of capacity for aiding delinquent girls who don't necessarily need placement at the training school; a monthly average of 61 girls, versus 27 boys, lived in a night-to-night placement program in 2000, according to Rhode Island Kids Count, an advocacy group, because of a basic, desperate lack of group homes for at-risk or delinquent adolescent girls.

Several theories suggest why girls are committing more crime than ever before, including the fact that today's delinquents, who mostly come from impoverished and otherwise troubled homes, were reared during the crack epidemic of the late '80s and early '90s. The ABA study also notes the differential treatment of boys and girls by police and courts -- behavior dismissed as "boys will be boys" is more alarming coming from girls, and dealt with more severely. But advocates for children and juvenile justice officials say the most significant factor is the dearth of prevention and rehabilitative programs specifically designed for girls.

"The number of programs offered to young women in Rhode Island is very scarce," says Elizabeth Burke Bryant, executive director of Rhode Island Kids Count. "What they need more than anything are positive role models and activities to keep them focused on a positive future."

Because boys have traditionally comprised the vast majority of juvenile offenders, programming has been geared toward them. It's not just training school programs that lack gender specificity. It's pervasive, from the severe lack of group homes for girls, to the extreme rarity of Pawtucket's Caritas House, which for 30 years has focused exclusively on treating female substance abusers, to the simple lack of a statistical breakdown for female delinquency in Rhode Island before 1998. "We are very uncomfortable with the level of programming for girls," Lindgren says. "It is not an acceptable level."

FEMALE DELINQUENTS remain, by and large, non-violent, says Leslie Acoca, director of the Women and Girls Institute at the National Council on Crime and Delinquency in Oakland, and most girls' violent crimes occur at home or school, with familiar people. In 1999, Family Court statistics show, violent crimes comprised only three percent of all female delinquency in Rhode Island. A full third -- and most of the increase in female delinquency -- comes from drug crimes and so-called status offenses, such as violating curfew and loitering, which are crimes because of the offender's age.

By contrast, violent crime makes up 17 percent, and status offenses just 10 percent, of the delinquency by boys. Most pointedly, females are up to three times more likely than males to report a history of sexual and/or physical abuse, and their path to delinquency typically stems from running away or reacting to abuse on a slippery slope of terrible self-esteem, truancy, and drug use. Seen in this light, the traditional rehabilitative goal of juvenile justice takes on new urgency.

So far, though, juvenile facilities -- from community centers to group homes and the training school -- have made few or no adjustments in programming to account for these differences between male and female offenders. Although female delinquents remain greatly outnumbered by boys, the focus on treating male delinquency has, many believe, contributed to the increases in girls getting into trouble with the law.

There's little information about the recidivism rate for boys at the training school, and the effectiveness of rehabilitative programs geared to them. But the experience of Bob Dumais, assistant principal at the training school, suggests the females are faring worse of late. "Just looking at the ladies coming back here last month -- there are lots who have been here before," Dumais says.

Nicole and Stephanie both fit the profile of non-violent offenders who suffered sexual and physical abuse, which led to separation from their parents, then to a long list of status and property offenses, plus probation violations, which have brought them to the training school time and time again.

Nicole's parents are divorced, and her relationship with her stepfather is difficult. "He's mean and militant, and he hit me with the belt and stuff," she says. He also abused her mother, who is a depressive and a drug user, and Nicole says she stayed because she "didn't want to leave my brother. Who'd take care of him?" But after her stepfather "hit me bad one day -- he kicked me," Nicole called her father, and she went to stay with an aunt, while her brother stayed at home. Gradually, Nicole began drinking, which spiraled into "trying all this shit -- crack, sniffing coke, smoking pot . . . I wasn't eating." She also has tuberculosis.

Stephanie says her mother "pawned me off to my father when I was three." She says her father was always good to her, but that she still wanted to be with her mother, who usually succeeded only in breaking promises of visits and presents. Finally, when she was six or seven, Stephanie moved back in with her mother, and the house became "a drug house. Me and my cousin'd just sit on the tables and watch people shoot up and smoke crack." Her mother also prostituted herself for drug money, and Stephanie says she was abused by her grandmother's boyfriend.

Nicole, Stephanie, and Meagan are all post-secondary students looking for ways to get a good job, or start college, when they're released. "The training school -- either it's jail for juveniles, or it's a training school," Nicole says, with exasperation. "But they're not `training' you to do shit."

Warren Hurlbut, superintendent of the training school, says, "It's a struggle to create programming" for a small handful of girls, who, despite the growth in female delinquency, composed only six percent of the training school population. By contrast, there's an entire unit of boys who are post-secondary students, making it easier and more cost-effective to offer them vocational training.

Dumais says the girls are permitted to attend boys' vocational programs in the main building, which include carpentry, computer technology, and culinary arts, although Building One's marginal placement away from the central complex is a complicating factor, as the girls need transportation there and back. The only vocational course designed specially for girls, and taught in Building One, is cosmetology, which occurs once weekly. It is possible for training school residents to do college-level coursework, although the girls' sentences are either too short, or they're more interested in training that will get them good jobs, soon

But of greater concern than vocational training is the more general lack of programming within the training school or DCYF that's designed for girls' rehabilitation and education -- one that takes into account the differences between female and male delinquents, such as sexual and physical abuse, anger management, and self-image issues, all of which girls navigate differently than boys. The training school offers little or nothing for the girls in the way of anger management or counseling for sexual abuse. And Meagan, with her hefty heroin habit, went through detox in Building One, where, Hurlbut says, the available programming "is more drug education than drug rehab." Meagan received six weeks of once-weekly mandatory drug counseling, and since then, she's attended optional Narcotics Anonymous meetings. The boys, on the other hand, have a whole building dedicated to drug rehabilitation.

The inequitable treatment of girls at the training school is evident in these wider schemes, but also in something as elemental, Building One manager Ann McDougal points out, as the fact that Midol isn't available at the training school -- only Tylenol -- nor is there yet any recourse from the standard tampons described as exceedingly uncomfortable. "I wish that more was through the eyes of a female," McDougal says.

This statewide scarcity of programming is a factor of benign neglect in many ways and reflects the difficult complexity of attacking the consequences of childhood poverty, particularly for teenagers. In Rhode Island, at-risk adolescents have also been somewhat neglected while the state has poured resources into younger kids. "We're making giant strides with little kids," Lindgren says, citing the Starting RIght child care assistance program and the RItecare Medicaid program. "But not so much with adolescents . . . look at the drop-out rate. We are at best in the middle on that."

Still more benign neglect stems from therapists, workers, and agencies focusing on families as a whole, as the vast majority of the time, Hurlbut points out, delinquents come from troubled homes -- consider Nicole's and Stephanie's family life. To change juvenile behavior, it's vital to change their home environment, too, notes Susan Wallace, executive director of Caritas House, the girls' drug treatment facility in Pawtucket, which uses a nationally lauded combination of gender-specific and family therapy. "Girls never do the work they need to do unless it's in a gender-specific program," Wallace says. "But another reason we were cited as one of the best is our parent involvement -- it's absolutely critical." Despite Caritas Houses' 85 percent success rate, few agencies emulate this approach.

Many social service agencies, which are doing their best to serve a highly needy population of at-risk children and families, in a role that frequently resembles shuttling buckets under drips from a very leaky roof, can nary afford to divert money from one population to another.

Meanwhile, the severe lack in Rhode Island of group homes for girls means too many at-risk adolescent females fall through the cracks, either on their way to the training school, or on their way out. "Placement facilities [besides the training school] are awful for girls," Dumais notes. "Transitioning is very difficult." On Friday, June 23, of the 36 "night-to-night" DCYF kids without placement, Dumais says, 30 were female.

THIS TIME around, Nicole and Stephanie received new uniforms -- T-shirts and pants -- when they arrived at the training school instead of the same sweats issued to the boys. They also now go to the gym once a day, rather than twice a week, and take part in life skills classes in which they learn how to cook on a budget. Stephanie also serves on an advisory board as part of a plan to develop so-called gender-specific programming for girls, which was launched after a 1999 study of the Training School. While it's hard to know whether these changes will amount to anything, superintendent Hulburt and Elizabeth Gilheeny, a juvenile specialist with the Rhode Island Justice Commission, insist that much-needed changes are on the way.

Hulburt notes that obtaining a job "is critical," although not easy, given the stigma of doing time at the training school. If girls haven't finished school, re-entry to high school can be equally difficult, since schools often feel that delinquents have burned their bridges in a community. And yet, the success and readjustment in the real world of Nicole, Stephanie, and Meagan is contingent on community help and support -- not just on themselves. "The first three months are critical," Hurlbut notes. "If a kid makes an adjustment then, the recidivist rate starts to decrease significantly."

To this end, there are several post-care programs, such as Project Hope, an intensive mentoring program based in Providence, and Youth New Futures, a collaboration between the John Hope Settlement House and Tides Family Services -- which can offer help with job readiness and alternative schooling. Neither of these programs are gender specific, but as Gilheeny points out, new girls' programs are springing up, like the Rhode Island Girls Coalition and the YWCA's My Sister's Keeper program, which aims to keep girls off the street by providing them activities, help with homework, body image counseling, parenting classes, and other needs. "There is still a lot of work to do," Gilheeny says, "but I think Rhode Island is doing a very good job . . . coming to terms with this."

Indeed, if the future daughters of Meagan, Nicole, or Stephanie end up in the training school -- a 1998 study by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency found that 54 percent of incarcerated female delinquents had mothers who'd been arrested or incarcerated -- their experience will likely be very different. The opening of a new group home with eight beds for female juveniles in Lincoln sometime this summer, is "not insignificant" in Lindgren's view, and thereafter, the construction of a whole new training school complex, due to begin this summer and finish within a year, plus a few Justice Commission studies about gender specific programming, suggest some reason for optimism.

The new training school will provide separate facilities for adjudicated or sentenced juveniles and detained juveniles awaiting trial. Currently, those populations co-exist in residential and educational space, creating a constant "chaotic" flux, Hurlburt says, that inevitably disrupts classrooms, daily routines, and programming. Secondly, the new facility, while still keeping the girls wholly separate from the boys -- program workers and administrators say mixing the populations is difficult and serves little good purpose -- will include the girls in the central facility, as opposed to their present cast-off placement outside the training school gates. A central location will mean the girls have easier access to the gym, library, and other facilities and programming. "The reality is, we're making progress, but the boys still have more opportunity than the girls," Hurlburt says.

The Justice Commission also hired a consultant to study all of the state's youth programming in January, and completion is expected by the end of the year. A call for programming proposals has also just been issued, in the hope that some new service providers will pitch gender specific programming. "We're looking for something innovative," Gilheeny says. "Hopefully, we'll get some wrap-around services . . . which can help girls leaving the [training school]."

Nicole hopes to enroll in classes at the Community College of Rhode Island when she leaves, and eventually, she'd like to be a social worker, even returning to work with training school kids. "A lot of things that I know I do -- it means I know how to survive," she says. "But they're illegal." Stephanie talks of being a paralegal or lawyer, Meagan of writing a book, being an English professor, or a facilitator of drug counseling. Still, as she awaited release, the biggest question was whether Meagan would use again. "We've tried to find something that would get her as excited as heroin does," McDougal says.

Teenagers like Nicole, Stephanie, and Meagan illustrate myriad things: the importance of early intervention programs to prevent the kind of abuse they've suffered; the difficulty of reaching society's neediest children and the cost of failing to do so; even the energy and freshness that people can muster after facing terrible adversity. In doing the latter, the girls personify hope and affirm the basic philosophy of the juvenile justice system -- that we have a collective responsibility to help wayward children. Helping these girls as if they were boys is better than nothing, but far short of what can be done.

Kathleen Hughes can be reached at khughes[a]phx.com.

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