Our vision is a gender-responsive juvenile justice system.

The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Committee, through its Female Services Subcommittee, is in the process of developing a coordinated response to move beyond the rhetoric of gender-responsiveness, to the reality.

The juvenile justice system has largely been designed to handle males because the vast majority of offenders involved in the juvenile justice system are males. Although, thankfully, their numbers are relatively small, girls involved in the juvenile justice system should not be an after thought. They will not be an afterthought as long as we consciously take girls into account in the development of juvenile justice policies, practices, programs, services and outcomes.