All Ellas: Girls Locked Up

IF YOU GO TO THE WEB SITE of the Florida State Department of Cor rections (DOC), you will find a color photo of Jessica Robinson, a thir teen-year-old at the time of her offense. She went from the streets to Florida adult prison with no time in juvenile corrections.' (Her criminal history is available on the web page.) Like most of the 465 other children incarcerated in adult Florida prisons, she was arrested with older teens and adults, she did not have a weapon, and she intended to commit a property crime but was convicted of a capital felony-kidnapping. Her release date is June 15, 2006.2 It seems a travesty of every fundamental principle of juve nile justice to have her photo, name, and record available for anyone to peruse. I imagine the redoubtable women of Hull House-Julia Lathrop, Florence Kelley, and Jane Addams-looking at her electronic image; I con template Ida Barnett Wells, one of the first probation officers at the world's first juvenile court in Chicago, noting as she scrolls down her computer screen that more than half of the girls locked up are African American in 2000; I picture Judge Mary Bartelme, who invented and presided over the first Girl's Court, identifying the massive prison industry in which girls remain marginalized a century later.3 The juxtaposition of this naked trafficking of the photos of locked-up children with the persistent invisibility of girls behind bars is startling. Be cause girls in custody constitute only 15 percent of the incarcerated juve