Globally, we are witnessing increasing rates of girls’ and women's imprisonment. Although they represent a small proportion of overall prison populations—between 2% and 9%—it is only in recent years that governing bodies have acknowledged the gendered discrimination and human rights violations they experience in their interface with the criminal justice system. In 2010, the United Nations approved the Bangkok Rules, marking the first clear and specific U.N. standards for the treatment of women prisoners and non-custodial measures for female offenders. The Bangkok Rules include 70 principles to protect and safeguard the different needs and vulnerability of these female prisoner groups from the point of admission to registration, allocation, personal hygiene, medical screening and gender-specific health care services, safety and security, contact with the outside, and institutional training for personnel.
Protection from violence is a priority area in addressing the special needs of children but especially girls in detention, as mandated in several U.N. protocols (Reference SheahanSheahan 2014). This mandate for their safety is in recognition of the prevalence of their violent victimization before, during, and after incarceration, observed across developing and developed countries (Reference ManjooManjoo 2013).
Caught Up fits squarely within this global call for the protection of justice involved girls and young women. Jerry Flores’ ethnography speaks to the harsh realities girls and young women experience in the pathway from home and on the street through school and incarceration in a Southern California locale. Drawing from 2 years of fieldwork, focus groups, and interviews with justice involved girls (the majority of whom were Latinas), teachers and correctional staff, we learn how violence has an omnipresence in this pathway, exacerbated by the hyper surveillance and control embedded in alternative schools and detention. Flores’ entry in to, what he aptly describes as, wraparound incarceration was driven by his questions around girls’ entry into the justice system, their experiences, and the attendant consequences. These questions, often addressed in the context of young men's experiences, take a different form for girls—one framed around (frequently conflicting) institutional, familial, and peer valuations of girlhood and femininity.
At issue are the policy goals of protection and rehabilitation, where in California, “wraparound services” are seen as a vehicle for this. Wraparound services refer to the integration of detention and alternative school to provide “support” for transitioning to a “normal life.” Flores walks us through the path into and through this system of wraparound services, and describes how far from a supportive policy, the realities are such that the girls face an ongoing regime of surveillance. This hyper surveillance surrounds the girls, and with this, constant evaluations often result in further “crimes” and punishment. Wraparound incarceration is, in essence, an inescapable system of surveillance, control, and punishment.
The girls’ entry into detention was often linked to trouble at home with many reporting physical, emotional, and/or sexual abuse by a family member (Chapter 1). As a survival response, girls might run away or be moved to foster care, or develop romantic relationships for emotional solace. The latter often led to further conflict with parents. Substance use was seen as an escape route and was frequently the reason for their arrest and entry into detention.
Paradoxically, while the rationale for placement in juvenile detention is to remove these young women from violence at home and on the street, violence remains a prominent theme in Life Behind Bars (Chapter 2), and importantly, becomes a key tool for surveillance and control. Violence, as Flores illustrates, is a mechanism to establish reputation and status among the girls in detention, but also a means for detention staff to exercise total control (fighting leads to lock downs, and order). So although they enter detention for non-violent offenses, fighting becomes the basis for their extended stay in detention.
The girls’ may progress to the community day school, Legacy, and its special Recuperation program—designed to provide “wraparound services” as part of its rehabilitation goals (Chapter 3). A particular feature of the program is police presence, drug testing, and reports from adults linked to the detention center. Combined these features create an untenable environment as the girls are subjected to constant surveillance and violated for behaviors which would be dealt with informally in a traditional school environment. Teachers and other staff may be well intentioned, but the institutional framework creates conditions that counter this. The environment is all the more tense as the girls face reputational contests and sexual harassment on the bus, and wind up having to physically defend themselves (and end up violating probation and return to detention).
Some girls are able to transition back to a traditional school, but wraparound services have ill prepared, and in some instances, disadvantaged them from succeeding, and consequently, find themselves dropping out, thereby violating probation and returning to detention (Chapter 4). Flores describes the stigmatization and insensitivity the girls face in their interactions with teachers, principals, and peers at traditional schools who, in various ways, make clear that “girls like her” are not welcomed. Moral assumptions about her character color their interactions with her. Peers are likely to egg her on to fight to protect her reputation and honor, thereby resulting in a violation, and return to detention. Some teachers are dismissive and insensitive to their circumstances, resulting in public humiliation, with Flores’ recounting a young woman's experience with a teacher insistent on her wearing gym shorts, exposing her electronic monitoring device.
Despite the dismal outlook, Flores is somewhat optimistic, as he describes how some girls are able to move away from the clutches of wraparound incarceration (Chapter 5). Key “hooks” or turning points, he observes from his study, include cognitive transformation of practitioners’ as supportive allies, pregnancy, and experience as a “normal” person free from the criminal justice system (113). These turning points are linked to a stable home environment, and relatedly being able to complete formal probation.
But these “hooks” do not work for everyone, as Flores sadly underscores the maddening irony, of some young women's inability to get out from under the system, often related to boot-strapping or technical violations. As he reflects, “the key finding is that young women require as little contact as possible with the criminal justice system and wraparound supports if they are to eventually escape this broader system” (114). For policy makers and practitioners, this is a call to rethink how the “system” can help free these young women from violence and control.
Caught Up is a testament to the global call for the protection of females in custody. It is a passionate and compelling analysis of the violence that girls and young women face in the crime and criminal justice pathway, the expansion of surveillance and control over their lives through the link between education and incarceration, and the spiraling consequences of this system.
