CJCJ’s Mike Males discusses the mistreatment and criminalization of Black girls in the juvenile justice system with WPFW Crossroads host, Roach Brown.
“I think theres definitely discrimination within the policing system because poorer populations are policed more. Women are policed in domestic settings more than men are, so you’re going to get more arrests of both women and girls for lower level offenses. And I think theres harsher treatment for women for lower level offenses.
“I think there’s this image that women and girls are not supposed to cause any trouble, and when they do, they’re ‘terrible delinquents’ and ‘they’re getting worse,’ and all these kinds of awful consequences follow. Girls are no supposed to commit crime, and so they’re subjected to harsher treatment for lower level offenses, especially status offenses … where you get arrested simply for doing something that would not be a crime if an adult did it.”— Mike Males
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San Francisco’s Disproportionate Arrest of African American Women Persists