MANHATTAN, Kan., Sept. 24 (UPI) -- A sociologist at Kansas State University believes the juvenile justice system fails girls at least partly because they commit fewer crimes.
For example, L. Susan Williams says that Kansas has only one juvenile prison for girls and several for boys. Therefore, many girls will be completely separated from their families during incarceration, making their reintegration into society tougher.
Williams has been studying female juvenile offenders as part of a project called "The Going Home Initiative for Re-entry of Serious Juvenile Offenders." She presented her findings at an August meeting of the Society for Study of Social Problems in San Francisco.
"Overall, girls are treated more harshly for doing the same things or lower-level offenses," she said. "And girls generally stay in custody longer, because our tolerance is much lower for girls to get into trouble."
She also said that many officials have a mistaken notion of equal treatment.
"They're interpreting equality to mean 'the same,' but girls and boys are not the same," she said. "They don't have the same needs and they didn't get there the same way. It's not always responsive to the unique needs of adolescents in general and certainly not to the unique needs of girls."
