Date Published: July 29, 2007
Felony arrests among female juveniles in Lee County nearly doubled from 2004 to 2006, and officials say a system built for boys is chiefly to blame.
That increase doesn’t bode well for a state that ranks sixth in the nation for the number of incarcerated women, according to the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. For females younger than 18, Florida is fifth in the nation.
Statistics show that overall juvenile arrests in the county increased at about the same rate for males and females over that time, while felony arrests tell a different story. Female felony arrests spiked 48 percent, while male felony arrests jumped 31 percent.
Female juvenile arrests jumped from 835 in 2004 to 1,032 in 2006, according to the Lee County Juvenile Assessment Center.
Female juvenile felonies have climbed from 242 in 2005 to 337 in 2006. Often, the misdeed is not a one-time mistake.
In 2006, the No. 1 repeat offender was a girl, said Bill Naylor, assessment center director.
The statistics do not reflect individual arrests, Naylor said, but rather individual charges. One juvenile arrest can account for several charges, he said.
Naylor said part of the problem is that jails were not built with females in mind.
“When I first got out here, we didn’t have any programs for young ladies,” said Naylor, who started at the assessment center in 2004, one year after it began. “The system was built around the needs of boys.”
While that has to change, experts at the U.S. Department of Justice stress the differences between the reasons crimes are committed by boys and girls.
The FBI supplemental homicide reports show that 89 percent of the homicides committed by girls were against a family member or acquaintance. For boys that figure was 65 percent, something the justice department found statistically significant.
Popular crimes
Kwanzaa Lawrence remembers watching rumbles between people in warring housing projects in east Fort Myers when she was a little girl.
“I saw crime all day, every day,” said Lawrence, 19, who used to live in Southward Village on Franklin Street. “I’ve seen one or two shootouts.”
But Lawrence’s mother wouldn’t let her go past the front porch unsupervised, and she spent her free time at the STARS Complex, which offers educational, athletic and self-development programs designed for at-risk youth.
Then, children usually fought with fists, and it was usually the boys. Now, children take up guns and knives, and girls get in the action more and more, Lee County statistics show.
Girls are getting arrested for popping prescription pills, burglarizing homes and businesses, and assaulting people.
Pill-popping is more common for girls than taking street drugs, said Carol Helton, the assessment center’s project coordinator. That means when children experiment with drugs, a girl is more likely to get a felony charge and a boy, caught with a marijuana joint, a misdemeanor charge.
Helton said that typically girls turn to drugs to escape problems, while boys use drugs to experiment.
“Prescription drugs and trauma are tied together, and girls more often (than boys) use prescription drugs to self-medicate,” Helton said. “We do know there is a high level of correlation between experiencing trauma and crime,” she said, citing that three-quarters of girls who enter the juvenile justice system have experienced trauma.
But it’s not just the pills.
The first four months of this year saw five girls arrested on aggravated assault and battery felonies, compared to none in the same time four years ago, assessment statistics show.
“Before, it was more petty thefts, but now we’re seeing girls with felony drug charges, aggravated assault and burglaries,” Naylor said.
Unequal treatment
Unlike their male counterparts, girls are treated more harshly once they’ve entered the system because there aren’t enough less-restrictive treatment programs for girls, according to a report released this month by the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. Boys have more options to be diverted into alternative sentencing programs, officials said.
If girls are not rehabilitated, they often become repeat offenders, contributing to the state’s high ranking in incarcerated women.
And three less-restrictive incarceration programs for girls have been closed between October 2005 and last November.
The Florida Institute for Girls, the only boot camp for girls, was shut down in October 2005 when investigations revealed dozens of instances of sexual abuse at the facility in West Palm Beach.
Sexual abuse is largely what leads girls into lives of crime in the first place, Helton said.
Abuse of any kind or witnessing something traumatic lends itself to crime later, she said.
Besides trauma and exposure to crime, girls have the usual influences that also affect boys, such as peer pressure, boredom and lack of supervision.
Tiffany Ramey, 15, said she used to skip school all the time because she didn’t feel like going. She has failed seventh grade twice and is in the system for her truancy.
“I was just lazy,” said Tiffany, a Cape Coral student who is now improving her attendance at a special school devoted to help at-risk girls.
The needs of these at-risk girls can no longer be ignored, community leaders say.
A Justice Department report on Juvenile crime made some specific recommendations more than 15 years ago. Most were never fully implemented, a later survey showed.
Among the recommendations for girls were job training, classes in parenting skills and programs that would allow a return to their families or “therapeutic foster care.” In some cases, the study said, girls should be placed in “a supported independent living” program.
“Girls respond differently to treatment than boys do,” said Debbie Webb, executive director for the PACE Center for Girls.
--
HELP HAS ARRIVED
In the past two years, three programs have started that directly aim to prevent, intervene or rehabilitate troubled girls in Lee County:
• Trauma Resolution through Understanding and Education (TRUE Girls Program) started August 2006
• Girls Advocacy Program (GAP) started in Fort Myers on Feb. 1
• Practical Academic and Cultural Education Center for Girls (PACE Center for Girls) started in Fort Myers in February
True Girls
TRUE Girls is a Lee County prevention program through the Children’s Advocacy Center that enables teen girls to overcome their wounds through counseling and seminars.
Traumatic experiences often lead to emotional and mental disorders, which can contribute to delinquent behaviors, said Kellie Rausch, TRUE Girls program supervisor.
Referrals to the program come from the Department of Juvenile Justice, as well as any agency or private family.
Recently, 10 out of 14 girls in Lee County’s temporary juvenile detention center referred themselves to the program, Rausch said. The goal is to keep them from becoming repeat offenders.
Through the program, the girls get 10 weeks of group participation seminars, individual support and after-care.
It’s necessary to tailor the program exclusively to girls because when girls experience a trauma, they tend to internalize the pain, while boys tend to externalize it, Rausch said.
But, “You can only pack in so much pain and anger before it explodes,” she said.
Rausch said she tries to create an atmosphere of trust without judging the girls.
She added: “You can never look at just the girl. You have to look at her entire environment.”
The program has served 47 girls in Lee County from Aug. 1 to June 30. Referrals have more than tripled over the past year, Rausch said.
GAP
GAP is the only voluntary intervention and education program in Florida specifically for girls while they’re in detention.
There are several locations statewide, said Lynn McNichols, the Fort Myers GAP facilitator.
Girls stay in detention an average of 11 days, according to the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice, but many stay longer while waiting for placement.
“Before, they’d sit idly in cells, besides school,” McNichols said.
“There was no rehabilitation or treatment that was gender-specific.”
McNichols uses the help of volunteering community leaders to conduct four group sessions a week, two hours each.
They discuss topics such as conflict resolution, sexuality, independent living skills and victimization.
She then pairs the girls with outside agencies so they can continue getting the help they need once freed.
The help from GAP can last for eight months for girls waiting to be transferred to a high-risk residential facility because there are so few of these facilities in the state, she said.
Most of the girls are receptive, she said.
“Some are hardened, but most with me are like little girls,” McNichols said. “When they’re in detention, they’re very vulnerable. It’s a good time for them to reflect.”
But the process is arduous, and sometimes one of the eight-to-15 girls in a session will sit part of it out because the topic touches too close to home.
Several of the detained girls are raised in households where their mothers have physical brawls with boyfriends, McNichols said. They learn through example the incorrect ways to handle their feelings, and abuse seems normal to them.
Also, girls are dating the boys committing the crimes so they often witness violence.
“They have a wall around them sometimes 8-feet thick,” she said. “But with most of the girls, you can start to chip that away, little by little.”
PACE Center for Girls
Girls are more likely to be victims of physical or sexual abuse early on and are more likely to be runaways, research shows.
That’s why the PACE Center for Girls in Fort Myers is so important, said Debbie Webb, PACE executive director.
The prevention program tries to catch at-risk teen girls before they get into too much trouble.
“PACE is a place where they can go to learn how to make the right choices so they don’t go deeper into the juvenile justice system,” Webb said. “Women need support from other women, and a lot of these girls don’t get that.”
It is a year-round school of more than 70 girls who get comprehensive one-on-one counseling, group sessions and individual academic teachings to help them catch up to their grade level.
Many of the girls are three years behind in school.
Girls are referred to PACE by the Juvenile Justice Department, Department of Children and Families and school social workers.
Tiffany Ramey, 15, was referred by her school counselor.
While tapping her navy Converse sneakers covered in markings of rainbows and messages, Tiffany said she failed seventh grade twice.
She skipped 50 days of school last year, lives with her boyfriend and her mother, who is engaged to a man in prison.
But the small classes and individualized, female-oriented attention have helped her catch up in school and to think about her future career.
“Here, we work at our own pace,” said the heavily eye-lined teen. “We talk to the teachers like they’re our friends.”
When girls act out during class, they’re pulled out for a one-on-one session with their counselors to find the root cause of their behavior.
On a recent school day morning, behavior ranged from one girl sulking in a chair by the front desk, dozens of girls in various classrooms, one girl grumbling on her way to a counseling session and another yelling that nobody understands her pain.
Patti Gens is one of those counselors who handles the drastic highs and lows of teenage girls.
Gens said it’s important that the program is gender-specific.
Girls are getting caught up in the juvenile system now more than ever and are being treated like boys, she said.
“Here, we’re trying to get them to think of things in a different way and giving them the life skills to do it.”
AMY SOWDER
Southwest Florida's News-Press
July 29, 2007
asowder@news-press.com Source: Southwest Florida's News-Press |