Consider being a 16-year-old girl convicted of an adult felony, and sentenced to state prison. You find yourself at a prison designed for adults, surrounded by women decades your senior. Because you are the only girl in the adult prison for women, you spend up to 23 hours a day in isolation, in a small cell, with a guard stationed outside your door. This is because of federal regulations designed to protect you, which require that you be “sight and sound” separated from adults. You receive minimal schooling, and you only occasionally interact with the other women prisoners. This experience is not hyperbole. It is the lived experience of girls in adult jails and prisons that we have come to know as advocates at the Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project, and it is a story we seek to both share and address.

Girls under the age of 18 represent a small yet concerning population in the adult justice system. While the overall number of youth in the adult justice system has decreased, the number of girls in the adult justice system has not slowed at the same rate. For example, from 1996-2011 girls arrest rates declined less than did boys arrest rates (42 percent versus 57 percent).

In Pennsylvania, the number of youth sentenced in adult court has declined by 52 percent since 2008. While the decrease in overall numbers is encouraging, it is difficult to celebrate because of a dearth of updated data on the demographic breakdown of youth charged as adults, particularly along racial and gender lines. Rough estimates from state agencies indicate that in 2015, there were 10 girls incarcerated in Philadelphia's Riverside Correctional Facility (RCF), the county jail for women. The total number of girls incarcerated as adults at RCF in 2016 is estimated to be between 10 and 15 girls. Because girls charged as adults represent such a small population at the adult jails compared to boys, adult men and adult women in the adult justice system, they tend to be overlooked and underserved.

All youth, and particularly youth of color, entering the adult justice system face challenges stemming from systemic inequality, racism, poverty, educational inequity and over-criminalization. These challenges are magnified for girls charged as adults, based on their trauma histories, which tend to include gender-specific experiences. For example, girls are more likely to have experienced physical and sexual abuse in their childhoods, may be pregnant while incarcerated, and are more likely to be the primary caretaker of a child who is left at home without them, triggering child welfare system involvement.

In discussing the different impact of adult incarceration on youth by gender, it is important not to approach the topic in a strictly binary fashion. Differences in gender identity and sexual orientation impact both the prevalence and experience of youth charged as adults. LGBTQ youth, and particularly those of color, are more likely to be arrested, charged, detained and incarcerated than are their straight peers. They also are disproportionately subjected to adult court prosecution. Once in the justice system, LGBTQ youth are vulnerable to isolation, unsafe conditions and staff who are insensitive or hostile to their identities. Several contributing factors have been identified for the disproportionate justice system involvement of LGBTQ youth, including that lesbian girls often are stereotyped as hyper-masculine, aggressive and delinquent and thus deserving of harsher punishment. In the adult justice system in Pennsylvania, transgender individuals are not automatically incarcerated in a prison consistent with their gender identification. Instead, a review is required: the Department of Corrections' (DOC) Transgender Administrative Gender Review Committee is tasked with evaluating transgender prisoners who request to be transferred to a facility consistent with their gender identification. As of July 28, there were 160 self-identified transgender individuals incarcerated in the DOC system. The Pennsylvania DOC has said that they provide hormone treatments, facilitate transgender inmate support groups via video conference every month, and other services as needed for transgender individuals.

The traumatic experiences that girls charged in the adult criminal justice system have faced prior to their arrest and incarceration are compounded by the conditions of confinement they endure while in custody. In Philadelphia, girls facing adult charges generally are held at Riverside Correctional Facility (RCF) until their case is resolved (and they are either charged in the juvenile system, or sentenced or acquitted in the adult system). At RCF, girls under the age of 18 are held in a separate unit with extremely limited access to anything off the unit. Because of the small numbers of female youth at RCF at any given time (between 0 and10, per the data presented above), girls often are held alone at the facility for months at a time, resulting in extended periods of functional solitary confinement. In contrast, and because of the relatively larger population, boys charged as adults in Philadelphia are held at the Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center (PICC), where they are provided with significantly more programming than their female counterparts. The boys attend a Philadelphia School District school inside the facility, whereas the girls have a few schooling hours in the day room of their unit, where select teachers travel from the boy's school at PICC to teach them. Put simply, girls do not have the same educational experience nor do they receive the same amount of programming as do boys facing similar adult charges.

If a girl facing adult charges ultimately is convicted and sentenced to adult prison, she will face similar issues of isolation, limited programming, and educational opportunities, as compared to her male counterparts. In Pennsylvania, girls under the age of 18 sentenced to state prison are separated from the general population and are provided with few age-appropriate programs. They experience increased isolation due to the more remote geographic locations of state prisons (in Philadelphia, the closest state prison for women is over three hours away), and struggle to maintain connections to family. Department of Corrections disciplinary measures are not adjusted for youth in custody, and teenage girls therefore are subjected to the imposition of punitive solitary confinement for behaviors that often stem from the intersection of unaddressed trauma and age.

The difficulties related to adult justice system involvement do not end when a girl is released from an adult jail or prison. Reentry into the community after a period of incarceration in the adult justice system is very challenging for any young person, but especially so for girls. Although a girl convicted as an adult may be subject to adult probation or parole upon release from incarceration, the services provided through such monitoring programs are limited and not age or gender-specific. Moreover, if a girl is detained pre-trial for several months and ultimately found not guilty, she will be released without more than bus fare to return home. In those instances, her life has been severely disrupted and she is released into the community without any additional supports to help get her back on track, or to address the challenges she may have had upon entering the adult justice system. Moreover, if she was arrested and charged as an adult because of a dangerous or abusive familial or romantic relationship, or because of a situation where she may have been the victim of human trafficking, she will be more susceptible to returning to those traumatic scenarios if she is released from jail with no ongoing supports, and no actionable plan for the future.

In addition to the challenges of reentering the community from adult incarceration, the impact of an adult felony conviction is long lasting and wide reaching for girls, as it is for boys and all formerly incarcerated individuals. This impact is pronounced for girls and young women in distinct ways. For example, girls and young women are more likely to serve as caregivers, and the barriers they face to employment resulting from their criminal records make it even more challenging to provide for their families. Many fields traditionally welcoming for women, such as nursing, home health care and child care services, preclude applicants with even minor convictions. As a result, many young women and their families struggle to survive on little to no income, further impacting the lives and future prospects of the next generation of children.
Undercompensated attorneys representing girls in adult court by court-appointment often do not have the training or resources to fully address the gender-specific dimensions of their youthful female client's case. To properly advocate for her needs, the attorney must become familiar with any underlying trauma history, the opportunities for rehabilitation available to her in different correctional settings (in both the juvenile and adult systems), and how her gender may be relevant to the role she is alleged to have played in the underlying offense (particularly in cases involving human trafficking). To address this need, the Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project (YSRP), with generous support from the Stoneleigh Foundation, has developed a set of resources for attorneys representing girls facing adult charges in Philadelphia. Scheduled to be released online by the end of 2017, the resource, ”Girls Matter: A Toolkit for Attorneys Representing Girls Charged as Adults,” includes comprehensive background information about the gender-specific experience of system-involved girls, along with a series of “practice pointers” covering issues from effective interviewing and attorney-client communications to reentry. With the introduction of this resource, we hope to improve the quality of advocacy provided to girls facing the most serious charges, at the most vulnerable times. For more information about the support YSRP provides to youth facing charges in adult court, visit www.ysrp.org.

Joanna Visser Adjoian and Lauren Fine are co-founders and co-directors of the Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project (YSRP) in Philadelphia.