Girls constitute the largest growing segment of the juvenile justice system and now account for nearly one-third of all juvenile arrests in the United States. Disturbingly, girls in the juvenile justice system are treated differently than similarly situated boys, and girls of color are treated much differently than white girls.

The raw statistics that are beginning to emerge come as little surprise to those of us who have witnessed the disparate treatment of girls in general and girls of color in particular. The data mirror what we have suspected anecdotally and witnessed empirically for some time. Still, the facts are jarring, even for those of us “in the know:”

In 1980, girls accounted for roughly 11 percent of youth in the juvenile justice system nationally; now, the number is around 30 percent.

Girls of color are far more likely than white girls to be pushed out of the educational system and pushed into the juvenile legal system.

Girls of color are 2.7 times more likely than their white counterparts to be referred to the legal system, 20 percent more likely to be formally petitioned and 1.2 times more likely to be detained than white girls.

Once in the legal system, girls of color are much more likely to become deeply involved in the system—so confinement has greater long-term consequences.

Girls of color at 2.5 times more likely to be disciplined for disobedience, three times more likely to be disciplined for serious disruptive behavior (such as fighting and bullying) and twice as likely to be disciplined in school settings for minor violations compared to white girls.

Girls are four times as likely as boys to suffer sexual abuse in the juvenile legal system, and nearly twice as likely to experience complex trauma.

Data specific to New York State are spotty, in part because a child’s race information is not yet systemically collected and accessible. But research by Shabnam Javdani, PhD., an associate professor of applied psychology at New York University, clearly establishes that girls of color are grossly overrepresented in all processing points of the juvenile legal system and particularly likely to receive confinement.

Last October, the first gender-and-trauma-responsive court continuum in the state was launched in Westchester County after a three-year effort and partnership including the courts, the New York State Permanent Judicial Commission on Justice for Children and several community-based organizations.

The “GRIP” (Gender Responsive Initiatives and Partnerships) Court is a dispositional court whose mission is to “promote healing and provide opportunities, justice and support that improve outcomes for girls, in particular for girls of color who are at risk or involved in the juvenile justice system.”

It pursues that mission by assigning sensitized judges who are eager to approach these cases holistically by including all the various stakeholders—the presentment agency, the attorney for the child, the probation department, social workers—and attempting to drill down, figure out what is going on in this girl’s life and understand how her different experiences and different background may require a different form of intervention to achieve the goal of enabling this child to become all that she wants to be and can be.

In the brief time the GRIP Court has been operating, we have seen a dramatic change in the girls. They are establishing trusting relationships with everyone on the team, from the judge to the court officer, and beginning to understand that we all care and we all have a stake in their success. Although this initiative remains quite new, it shows considerable promise, and we are hopeful that other regions will embrace a similar approach and deal head-on with twin demons of disparate treatment and disparate outcomes that we routinely see with girls in the juvenile legal system.

Kathie E. Davidson is the administrative judge for the Ninth Judicial District. Karen K. Peters, the retired presiding justice of the Appellate Division, Third Department, chairs the New York State Permanent Judicial Commission on Justice for Children.