Connecting Policies, Girls, and Violence

Abstract

Violence of girls is not the primary focus of this chapter in the way it is in most chapters of this book. Rather there is an examination of the trend towards restrictive welfare and punitive justice policies that increases the vulnerability of girls to violence especially if living in low income communities. The restrictions limit the capacity of girls to develop and live as citizens. Concern about the trend is illustrated in a dramatic event that took place in a city thousands of miles away from where Kimberly died. Although restrictive welfare and punitive judicial policies negatively affect boys as well as girls (e.g., Platt, 2001), the author will not compare the impact of policies on girls versus boys nor examine who is more unjustly treated. A focus on gender differences or discrimination diminishes the opportunity to clarify the submerged and missing experiences of girls. Furthermore, concentrating on girls and comparing changes in policies over time rather than by gender, can have fruitful implications for research and policy changes benefiting both girls and boys. The concept of 'policing girls' (Reitsma-Street, 1998) frames the examination of changes in Canadian and American welfare and youth justice laws. Policing processes regulate and enforce particular attitudes and behaviors. They include informal activities that reinforce behaviors through shame or praise, and formal institutional processes produced through policies and laws. Policing processes are engaged in by everyone. Historically policing processes included policies and practices that limited girls access to education and adequate paid work, pushed them into performing a disproportionate amount of relational and provisioning work for those they love, while making invisible the attendant costs of economic dependency, the burden of unpaid heavy work, and the devalued status of less productive citizens (Brown & Gilligan, 1992; Kostash, 1987; Sharpe, 1994; Smart, 1976). Informal and formal policies have changed over time. There is even cautious optimism that policing girls to fulfill narrow expectations about beauty, femininity, and dependency have eased with increased access to education, respect for diversity, and public denunciation of relationship violence (Bhavnani, Kent, & Twine, 1998; Rosenberg & Garofalo, 1998). But, girls and women are now pressed to become responsible for the double future of homemaker and laborer (Kearney, 1998; Walkerdine, Lucey, & Melody, 2001) and the triple obligations of domestic, employment, and volunteer community work (Hancock, 2002; Neysmith & Reitsma- Street 2000). In anti-poverty and anti-violence programs it is girls who are expected to shoulder the extra responsibilities for ensuring peaceful relationships, consensus building, and developing social capital as well as human and financial capital (e.g., Rankin, 2002). When pressures to fulfill multiple obligations increase at the same time policies restrict opportunities, girls find themselves working harder to defend their limited options, sometimes using illegal and violent activities to do so. The chapter explores the trend towards increased use of restrictive social policies and punitive youth justice laws to police girls. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)