Gendered Injustice

"This book successfully unravels the many family and social issues that affect troubled young girls, especially when they are held in detention facilities. When treatment is advocated and applied, then the trouble begins. Parents and practitioners often miss the source of the problem, because they fail to interview the child in an in-depth fashion. Professor Tossouni has gathered an array of evidence that taps into the "voices" of the girls, evidence that eventually helps formulate and direct interventions. In short, a human problem must involve the individuals who are central to the problem and watching them, talking to them, and listening to them is essential to understanding them, all of which are strengths of a qualitative approach."

J. Diego Vigil, Professor Emeritus, Criminology, Law & Society, School of Social Ecology, University of California, Irvine

"Grounded in feminist research Gendered Injustice gives marginalised girls hidden in the recesses of the juvenile detention a voice. It recounts stories of victimhood, abandonment, pain, isolation, but also stories of survival, resilience and hope. It explores the gap between rhetoric and reality, between saving and punishing children, and between restoring and destroying children in detention. Based on the stories of 28 girls in detention, Gendered Injustice highlights the devastating impact of the deprivation of liberty – of the daily routines of authoritarian rituals and the systemic failure to provide basic safeguards against physical and emotional abuse. The meticulously crafted study, upon which the book is based, juxtaposes claims about gender sensitive interventions designed to empower and rehabilitate girls involved in juvenile detention, with the actual reality of life inside, arguing forcefully that custodial settings are incongruent with empowerment programs. On the contrary, this book reveals just how much penal culture disempowers rather than empowers girls in detention through regimes that demand unquestioned subservience and docility, individualise their delinquency and reinforce gender normative ideas about womanhood. What is needed, insists Anastasia Tosouni, is gender justice. This book makes an innovative contribution to debates about gender and justice. It should appeal to a wide readership of students, policy makers, activists and scholars from social science, youth studies, social work, law, psychology, criminology, and gender studies."

Kerry Carrington, Professor and Head of the School of Justice, Queensland University of Technology, Australia