| This dissertation uses a realist lens to examine how schooling, substance abuse treatment, and detention shaped the lived realities of young women in trouble with the law. This work is based on fifty-eight unstructured interviews with thirty-six young women housed at two youth justice facilities-- one a county-level juvenile detention center and the other a public residential drug treatment program. In this dissertation, as I map the contours of intervention for young women, I explore the social and individual challenges girls faced, including their experiences with substance abuse, poverty, crime control, and gendered violence. While not ignoring the 'bright spots' of youth justice and education, I show how our societal reactions to young women often created 'asymmetries of citizenship' through a combination of punitive 'actions' and welfare 'inactions.' I argue throughout the manuscript that this combination of 'action' and 'inaction' --a mixture which is line with neo-liberalism-- perpetuates young women's self-reliance, as girls turned away from mainstream institutions that held them to account yet failed to meet their myriad, often material needs. Implications for criminology and public policy are discussed. |
