Wednesday, May 10, 2017
2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Vera Institute of Justice
233 Broadway, 12th Fl.
New York, NY 10279

This event will be also live streamed

Francine Sherman is a clinical associate professor at Boston College Law School where she has taught juvenile justice, children’s rights, and public policy for the past twenty years and where she founded and directs the Juvenile Rights Advocacy Program. She speaks and writes widely about the juvenile justice system and, in particular, about girls in the justice system. She has testified before Congress, served on the U.S. Department of Justice National Advisory Committee on Violence Against Women focusing on children and teens victimized by domestic violence and sexual assault, and worked as a consultant to OJJDP’s National Girls Initiative. Her most recent report, Gender Injustice: System-Level Juvenile Justice Reforms for Girls, provides a comprehensive overview of the needs and pathways of girls into and through the justice system and details a developmental approach to current juvenile justice reforms.

Over the last decade, successful reforms within the juvenile justice system have reduced the number of incarcerated youth by half. However, the incarceration of girls nationally is falling at a slower rate than that of boys because of a lack of systematic focus on reducing girls’ confinement. Today, girls in the juvenile justice system are still being swept into custody for low-level offenses that pose no risk to public safety.

The Getting to Zero: Shutting Down Girls’ Pathways into Incarceration speaker series will feature local and national experts discussing common paths that lead girls and transgender/ gender-nonconforming (GNC) youth into the juvenile justice system—including arrest while involved in the child welfare system, family conflict or violence, and school discipline. Each speaker series event will coincide with meetings of Vera’s multi-agency Task Force on Ending Girls’ Incarceration in New York City.