Sexuality and Justice Paper (Essay Sample)

Damaged Daughters: The History of Girls' Sexuality and the Juvenile Justice System
By
Ntenga Moitui
Damaged Daughters: The History of Girls' Sexuality and the Juvenile Justice System
In spite of the legal changes in the justice system in America, the constitution of the female juvenile offender population remains intact. Girls are commonly judged based on their moral behavior and sexual conduct. This paper reveals the historical treatment of female sexuality in the justice system. It examines how juvenile courts and correctional institutions have controlled girls’ sexuality.
During the infancy of the juvenile justice system, there was little distinction between teenage offenders and their adult counterparts, with the former receiving punishments commensurate with the latter. Since incarceration with adult lawbreakers had little effect in terms of discouraging youth from criminal behavior, reform schools were founded. Their main purpose was to discipline and educate incorrigible adolescents with undesirable character (Pasko, 2010). This served as a mechanism to protect young offenders from themselves and their environment.
The movement to establish distinct institutions for young offenders was spurred by a movement that was concerned about social and moral misdemeanors, such as sexual indiscretion and prostitution. Even though, juvenile courts originally considered those under sixteen who had broken the law as delinquents, girls were unfairly considered as such based on moral behavior, which many have argued should not constitute a violation of the law.
Many of the operations of the early juvenile courts focused on monitoring the conduct of young girls to prevent their straying from the morally accepted sexual behavior. During this period, the concerns with female sexuality were moral. Several categories of behaviors were clearly labeled as sex offenses. Those guilty of such offenses were often sentenced to reform school.
Working-class young women who pursued opportunities for social and sexual liberation were condemned to police holding cells and juvenile reform schools for their offensive conduct. Reform efforts aimed at protecting girls from rogue men were ineffective. These exact girls faced judicial penalties for such sexual encounters, even when they were coerced into them. Their male partners, on the other hand, received little to no social or legal blame. Justice professionals often questioned whether female victimization was because of promiscuity or weak conduct.
During the early twentieth century, the majority of delinquent girls confined to institutions were charged with incorrigibility. Girls were more susceptible than their male counterparts from being institutionalized for sexual immorality. Consequently, most girls who had sex with multiple partners were institutionalized. Sexual immorality in girls was due to economic motivation.
Girls’ prostitution has often been an outcome of their engaging in such behavior because of feeble controls at home and school. Indeed, remarkably few prostitutes come from homes with good family life, financial security, and the chance for education. Their fathers normally earn meager incomes. Prostitution is, therefore, a means for supplementing their financial needs.
An analysis of various cases in New York during the mid-twentieth century revealed that there were considerable concerns with a specific statute. This statue brought girls to court simply for disobeying parental orders or because of moral disobedience. Many young women were being charged merely for engaging in sexual activity. Nevertheless, consensual sexual intercourse between individuals of the appropriate age is illegal, which begs the question of why there is a legal sense of sexual misbehavior in females aged over eighteen in some cases.
Similar studies of the juvenile courts during the second half of the twentieth century suggest that judges and other correctional officials directly participated in the enforcement of strict heterosexuality. Sexual misdemeanor still largely constituted female delinquency during this period. In the mid twentieth century, more girls than boys were appearing for status offenses in the juvenile court. Furthermore, girls, as compared to their male counterparts, received harsher sentences for status offenses.
Many radical changes have occurred in the juvenile court since the 1960s. First, joint efforts were made at the federal and state levels during the early 1970s to deinstitutionalize status offenders. Those states that received delinquency prevention money from the federal government were required to divert and deinstitutionalize their status offenders and stop detaining noncriminal adolescents. This provision was, however, inconsistently enforced and resisted in some states. Nevertheless, girls were the main beneficiaries of the reform. As such, they could no longer be incarcerated for noncriminal offenses.
During the decades following the passage of this directive, the commitment rates of female offenders in juvenile correctional centers throughout the country dropped. This was in stark contrast to the past trends of the century. This provision also addressed the scope of services offered to female offenders within the system and opened up funds for female-specific research.
Secondly, occurring at almost the same time, various social and legal processes concurred to reduce support for rehabilitation for a juvenile correctional system that commonly used various forms of state social services as a means of re-socializing noncriminal young offenders. Consequently, courts gradually improved their perception of the youthful offender from vulnerable dependent to a responsible person. The various movements of the 1970s effectively merged their agendas. As such, commencing juvenile courts’ redefinition of who is considered a dangerous adolescent sex offender. That is from the girl engaging in prostitution to the sexually offensive boy.
Historically, juvenile sexual offenses committed by adolescent males were considered by law enforcement as the experimentation and curiosity of teenage boys experiencing adjustment reactions to puberty. Due to their reluctance to label the teenage boys sexual offenders, society often preferred to define their sexual misdemeanors as naughty behavior. Typically, punishment for such behavior was the responsibility of the family. However, for more serious offenses, the boy was often referred to a short stay in a boys’ home institution. The juvenile courts continued to view the most serious juvenile sex transgressions as resulting from girls’ associations with sexually immoral behavior.
This judicial attitude changed by the 1960s. Increasing levels of research and media accounts of child abuse flooded popular reads. Additionally, various other factors such as a sexual liberation movement and the development of sexuality research, as well as the push to define sexual victimization as a serious offense all led to several discoveries. First, sexual victimization is a serious cr...