ABSTRACT
This concluding chapter summarizes the analysis presented in the previous chapters and assesses the findings in light of past research and legislation. It juxtaposes the juvenile justice system’s rhetoric and legislative commitments to juvenile justice agents’ and institutions’ actions and attempts to relate the latter to their causes and their consequences. It offers suggestions for reform toward a system that is truly “responsive” to girls’ needs. Such a system, the author argues, does not currently exist within carceral settings, not even those that claim to “protect” rather than “punish”; it never did, and never will, despite well-meaning intentions. This study’s data suggest that gendered justice is unfeasible within the framework of juvenile corrections because it is antithetical to its coercive penal control structure and culture. Given the traumatic life experiences and offending profiles of system-involved girls, effective, gender-responsive, empowering treatment must take place outside jail. The author notes, however, that one ethnographic study does not provide enough convincing evidence to garner the widespread support needed to advance the proposed radical reform it advocates. It is argued that more penal ethnographies are needed that examine the lived realities of incarcerated individuals, especially young women who remain largely invisible. Last, the author argues that gendered justice for system-involved women will be truly feasible when and if gender equality becomes a reality in all social institutions that extend beyond legal capacities, a social change that requires both top down (policy) as well as bottom-up (cultural) transformation.
