Remapping Pipelines and Pathways: Listening to Queer and Transgender Youth of Color’s Trajectories Through Girls’ Juvenile Justice Facilities

Abstract

Queer and trans youth of color are disproportionately imprisoned in U.S. juvenile detention facilities where they are especially vulnerable to experiencing violence, isolation, neglect, and discrimination. While the figures of their overrepresentation are just emerging, regulation of youth sexuality and gender norms has been embedded in the logics of the juvenile court since its inception. Pathways and pipelines to incarceration have become popular metaphors in research and advocacy to explain how failed safety nets and multiple sites of punishment produce gendered and racialized patterns of criminalization; however, the overrepresentation of queer and trans youth of color has been virtually ignored within these conceptualizations. This article builds on a queer antiprison framework in examining the experiences of formerly incarcerated queer and trans youth of color in New York. Life history interviews were conducted as part of a larger community based participatory research (CBPR) project with 10 participants, ages 18–25. Findings expose the overlapping role of families of origin, foster and adoptive families, schools, and child welfare and juvenile justice systems, in a constellation of exposures to interpersonal and state violence. An alternative metaphor of a revolving door is proposed, and implications for social work are addressed.

Keywords

intersectional feminism juvenile justice LGBTQ youth transformative justice youth of color

Pathways and pipelines have become popular motifs in explaining youth criminalization patterns in the United States as sown into the unequal conditions in which young people are born, grow up, and attend school and reinforced by state investments in surveillance, policing, and incarcerating the poor, the indigenous, and communities of color. These metaphors have been drawn on particularly to explore racialized and gender disparities in youth criminalization (Alexander, 2010; Davis, 2003; Garland, 2001; Gilmore, 2007; Ross, 1998; Wacquant, 2009). Feminist theorists, for example, have used “pathways” as metaphor when reaching into the life histories of incarcerated women and girls to illuminate the role of state divestments in social welfare infrastructure and the failure to protect vulnerable youth and survivors of domestic and sexual violence (Chesney-Lind & Pasko, 2013; Espinosa, Sorensen, & Lopez, 2013). Critical theorist and racial justice activists have employed “pipelines” as analogies to describe how racism in social institutions, and particularly schools, push youth of color toward imprisonment, exposing the carceral reach and influence into multiple spheres of youth lives (Mallett, 2016; Simon, 2007; Skiba, Arredondo, & Williams, 2014). Naming these patterns of youth criminalization in terms of pipelines has been a crucial tool in exposing systematic inequities and for imagining otherwise (Meiners, 2011; Wald & Losen, 2003).

Yet forging alternatives requires a critical lens for social workers, one that is particularly attentive to experiences of multiply marginalized youth within interlocking state systems. We are in a moment of a growing and palpable demand to end youth imprisonment that originated outside of, but is increasingly embraced within, social work. Responding to the special issue’s call to imagine a world without prisons, this article follows Richie’s (2005) invocation to queer antiprison work by focusing here on the narratives of formerly incarcerated queer and transgender young people of color. In doing so, I aim to contribute to a small but growing literature on the overrepresentation of queer and trans youth of color in U.S. juvenile justice facilities by exploring how their narration of their trajectories might help inform, disrupt, and reorder current understandings of youth criminalization patterns. Specifically, consideration is given to queerness—read through the lived experiences of criminalized queer and trans youth of color—as necessary to building more sophisticated understandings of youth criminalization and to anticarceral feminist practice in social work.

Tracing Pathways and Pipelines

While the data are just emerging, the criminalization of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth may be viewed as part of a longer history of state regulation of youth gender and sexuality and the expansion of racialized mass incarceration in the late 20th century. Early juvenile court practices were notoriously explicit in framing juvenile delinquency and rehabilitation in terms of impressing the gender norms and moral (sexual) values of the Anglo-Protestant middle class (Platt, 1977; Schlossman & Wallach, 1978). Despite a relative breadth of research literature on the evolution, character, and consequences of racialized and gendered inequities in the contemporary juvenile justice system, the experiences of queer and trans youth of color have been virtually ignored. Detention rates and cases have steadily dropped in the past two decades; however, racial inequities have persisted despite federal programs to reduce disparities. According to analysis by the W. Haywood Burns Institute (2016), Black youth are 4.9 times, Indigenous youth are 4.2 times, and Latinx youth are 1.5 times more likely than White youth to be held in state detention facilities, and they also spend longer periods incarcerated.¹ Those identified by the system as “girls” comprise a growing portion of those in the system (Hockenberry & Puzzanchera, 2015), yet despite evidence that a highly disproportionate number of these youth are queer and trans, most research on girls and on youth of color in the system has ignored the specificities of their experiences.

In 2012, the first federally funded survey of youth in U.S. detention facilities to include a measure for sexual orientation produced some of the first national data on what activists and researchers had already surmised were profound disparities for LGBTQ youth (Beck, Cantor, Hartge, & Smith, 2013). Survey analysis revealed that 12% of incarcerated youth identified as LGB, including a soaring 39% of girls (Wilson et al., 2017). The figure exceeds the estimated portion of LGB girls in the general population of high schoolers (12%) by more than 3 times. Among the incarcerated youth surveyed, LGB youth were also twice as likely as heterosexual youth to indicate prior histories of detention lasting longer than a year (Beck et al., 2013). While the national data did not include a measure for trans youth, a study by Irvine and Canfield (2016) conducted in detention facilities in seven diverse counties nationwide found that when including trans and gender nonconforming youth (TGNC), 20% of youth in detention were LGB and/or TGNC and 85% were youth of color.

Queer and trans youth of color face tensions of invisibility and hypervisibility in the juvenile justice system in which they are both present and unfathomable (Irvine, 2010; Ruskola, 1996). Those who do not feel safe to express their gender or sexual identity must negotiate conditions in which they are assumed to be straight, and those who are read as queer or trans are subordinated in sex-segregated and heteronormative environments largely predicated on their nonexistence (Irvine, 2010). Parallel tensions of invisibility and hypervisibility have operated in juvenile justice research and policymaking through both indifference to queer and trans experiences (e.g., gender and sexual identities are considered inconsequential) and exceptionalism (e.g., LGBTQ youth are considered a special population). This has particularly limited the scope of research that takes account of race, gender, and sexuality as co-constituent in understanding youth criminalization patterns, as LGBTQ youth are largely presumed to be White, while research on gender and racial inequities largely ignore sexuality or assume youth of color are straight and cisgender. The established theoretical tools concerning pathways and pipelines of youth incarceration among girls and for youth of color have been useful to advocates in efforts to explain the overrepresentation of LGBTQ young people in the juvenile justice system and advocate on their behalf (Movement Advancement Project, Center for American Progress, 2017). The evidence is persuasive: LGBTQ youth experience disproportionately high levels of childhood abuse (Alvy, Hughes, Kristjanson, & Wilsnack, 2013; A. L. Roberts, Rosario, Corliss, Koenen, & Austin, 2012) and discrimination and violence at school (Kosciw, Greytak, Bartkiewicz, Boesen, & Palmer, 2012), which has been associated with higher rates of mental health stress (Bouris, Everett, Heath, Elsaesser, & Neilands, 2016; Williams, Connolly, Pepler, & Craig, 2005) and substance use (Kilpatrick et al., 2000). Researchers confirm that LGBTQ youth are also disproportionately represented in child welfare systems (Baams, Wilson, & Russell, 2019) and among homeless youth (Morton, Samuels, Dworsky, & Patel, 2018), factors that have been linked to greater police interaction and juvenile system involvement (Ryan, Herz, Hernandez, & Marshall, 2007). Family rejection of LGBTQ youth has also been associated with the high prevalence of mental health symptoms (Ryan, Huebner, Diaz, & Sanchez, 2009), and unmet health and social service needs are generally associated with young people’s contact with the juvenile justice system as well as their length of involvement (Maschi, Hatcher, Schwalbe, & Rosato, 2008). Less frequently addressed in the existing literature is evidence that LGBTQ youth experience heightened vulnerability to childhood sexual violence, dating violence, and sexual exploitation (Dank, Lachman, Zweig, & Yahner, 2014; Pettingel, 2006; Roberts et al., 2012), situating the reported overrepresentation of LGBTQ within one of the most consistently reported variable in pathways to incarceration among girls.

Building on pipeline metaphors has also helped garner evidence about how queer and trans youth of color may not only lack support but be targeted for punitive responses and disproportionately sanctioned, particularly in schools (Burdge, Licona, & Hyemingway, 2014; Meiners, 2011; Mitchum & Moodie-Mills, 2014; Snapp, Hoenig, Fields, & Russell, 2015). A qualitative study with LGBTQ youth in three states described how LGBTQ students perceived they had been disproportionately sanctioned at school for public displays of affection and GNC dress and held responsible when acting in self-defense (Snapp et al., 2015). An analysis of student surveys conducted in Dane County, WI, found higher rates of school suspension and juvenile justice system involvement among LGBQ youth when compared to their heterosexual peers (Poteat, Scheer, & Chong, 2016), and an analysis of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) found that nonheterosexual respondents were 1.25–3 times more likely than heterosexual respondents to have been punitively sanctioned while in high school, including criminal arrests and convictions (Himmelstein & Brückner, 2010), while both studies found no differences in youth’s reported behavior. Law enforcement present an additional source of sanction for queer and trans young people of color, especially those who are homeless or spend time on the streets. A New York City Survey of sexual and gender minority young people who trade sex for survival found that 71% of these youth had been stopped by the police and 19% had weekly or more frequent police contact (Dank, 2015). Queer and trans youth report being routinely profiled by local police such as through “stop and frisk” protocols, unjust arrests, as well as violence and mistreatment including sexual exploitation (Graham, 2014; Majd et al., 2009; Mountz, 2016). Yet empirical evidence linking the profound social and structural vulnerabilities among LGBTQ youth and their disproportionate incarceration remains limited. In one of the only studies of its kind, Irvine (2010) found that LGB/GNC youth in pretrial detention were more likely than their straight peers to have experienced homelessness, removal from home, and to be living in group homes or in foster care. They were also more likely to be charged with status offenses such as running away and truancy, as well as prostitution, patterns that parallel trends among young women in the juvenile justice system more broadly.

As research details, at the intersection of systemic, societal, and structural racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and adultism, LGBTQ youth of color are less likely to experience support from potentially supportive adults, family or otherwise, or have access to a safety net. This absence of a supportive network increases LGBTQ youth’s likelihood of ensnarement in systems and contributes to their utilization of survival strategies that either initiate or perpetuate systems involvement. The hostility of these systems toward LGBTQ youth of color’s identities may cause them to leave or be ejected (in the case of the child welfare system) or be criminalized and drawn further in (in the case of the juvenile justice system). Simultaneously, school pushout and/or dropout related to identity and the frequent movements associated with systems involvement forecloses access to education as a pathway out. As I have argued elsewhere, this dynamic is akin to a revolving door that exists at the interface of systems and the streets as youth go about the business of surviving (Mountz, 2011).

A Queer Antiprison Perspective

The present research sought youth’s own testimonies in response to the broader research question: What are the pathways into and out of the juvenile justice system for queer and trans youth of color previously incarcerated in girls’ juvenile justice facilities and how do these pathways intersect with other social service systems such as child welfare services? In advancing these narratives within social work, I evoke Richie’s (2005) call for a “queer antiprison politic” that takes into consideration race, sexuality, gender, and their intersection, that emanated from her scholarship focusing on the lived experiences of African American lesbians in the juvenile justice system. Despite the fact that there is now significant evidence that queer and trans people are disproportionately represented in the adult prison system and that queer and trans youth—particularly those of color—are disproportionately represented in the juvenile justice system, social work has not engaged Richie’s charge. Indeed, until very recently, very few scholars in queer studies, critical prison studies, or elsewhere, examined the intersection between queer and trans people and the youth or adult prison system. Those that have are primarily legal scholars and activists (Mogul, Ritchie, & Whitlock, 2011; Stanley & Smith, 2011). Although situated outside of social work, this scholarship resonates with emerging anticarceral feminist social work scholarship whose advancement is critical to social work’s embodiment of the social justice commitments explicitly stated in its code of ethics (NASW, 2008).

Method

This research drew upon critical ethnographic methods and a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach in order to address the large-scale injustices and violations experienced by participants (Madison, 2005; Wallerstein & Duran, 2006). These methods were particularly appropriate because of their embeddedness in critical social justice, postcolonial and feminist theories, for their participatory and collaborative nature, and for their utility in exploratory research that aims to uncover subjugated knowledge and illuminate relatively unexplored phenomena. A Community Advisory Board (CAB) of formerly systems-involved youth of color, activists, and practitioners was assembled to facilitate the design and execution of the research, and a community forum to share findings was hosted by the broader systems–involved LGBTQ youth advocacy community in New York City. The nuances of the CBPR approach used in this study, CAB composition, researcher positionality, and research instruments have been previously written about extensively (Mountz, 2016; Mountz, 2018).

Life History Interviewing

Life history interviews were conducted with 10 participants. A central element in the subfield of the narrative study of lives, life history interviewing, has been popularized through its interdisciplinary use and its transformative potential for both narrator and listener (Atkinson, 2001). Life history interviewing involves dialogical interactive connections being made between people as the interviewer and storyteller collaborate and produce the story together, and has a significant history of use in research with both queer and transgender young people and currently and formerly incarcerated women (Ghorashi, 2008; Ross, 1998; Welle, 1998).

Sample and Recruitment

Recruitment of participants was facilitated by the CAB and took place through flyers and word-of-mouth at various LGBTQ youth–serving social service agencies and community-based organizations that perform advocacy with and on behalf of LGBTQ youth in New York City, activist groups organized by and for young queer and transgender people, LGBTQ campus centers at New York City–based colleges and universities, other community-based research and oral history projects, and Internet-based listservs. Once the interviews began, some participants referred peers to the study. A recruitment flyer was generated with the assistance of a community-based artist. Participants used a spectrum of language, identities, and conceptualizations of gender and attraction to talk about themselves, their peers, and their experiences; however, participants shared the experience of having been incarcerated in a “girls’” juvenile justice facility in New York State. This study received institutional review board approval, and all participants were compensated US$40 for each of one to two interviews. All interviewees were offered the opportunity to review their transcripts after the interview to ensure that they were comfortable with what was communicated. They also had the opportunity to delete or modify portions of their interview. Participants were additionally invited to a presentation of the findings within a community forum, providing them with an opportunity to give feedback and hear feedback from other community members, providers, advocates, and activists.

Listening Guide

The data analytic strategy utilized in this study was the Listening Guide (Gilligan, Spencer, Weinberg, & Bertsch, 2003). Conceptualized through Carol Gilligan’s early work on identity and moral development, the Listening Guide is a relational method that takes into consideration the multiplicity of voice when analyzing and interpreting qualitative interview data. Grounded in psychoanalytic theory, the Listening Guide “draws on voice, resonance, and relationship as ports of entry into the human psyche” and consists of a series of steps that are intended to systematically interpret the many layers of voice contained within a person’s expressed experience. This analytic method is designed to create intimacy, through a series of sequential listenings, between the researcher and various aspects of the narrator’s voice by situating their narration of experience within a particular relational context. The first listening is comprised of two parts: (a) listening for the plots and (b) the listener’s response to the interview. Reading through the interview text, the researcher identifies what stories are being told and the contexts in which they are embedded, paying attention to recurrent images and metaphors as well as to exclusions, or what is not being said. During this plot listening, the researcher brings their own subjectivity into the interpretive process by noting their own social location in relation to the narrator and their emotional responses to the listening, to facilitate exploration of the various connections, resonances, and interpretations one brings to the analytical process. During the second listening, the researcher hones in on the voice of the “I” in the narration by creating an “I Poem.” The objective of this second stage is 2-fold and is intended to both introduce the researcher to the distinctive cadences and rhythms of the narrator’s first person voice and to hear how this person speaks about themself. As with the other two stages, the objective is to bring the researcher into relationship with the narrator, in this case, to facilitate the researcher’s knowledge of how the narrator knows themself as rendered through the poetic free fall of association. In the third listening, the analysis is brought back into relationship with the research questions as the researcher listens for contrapuntal voices; in other words, two or more stories narrated simultaneously. Derived from the musical form counterpoint, or the combination of two or more melodic lines, the arcs and bends of separate storylines converge and are explored in relation to one another. In this final listening, the researcher identifies voices that are distinct from the “I” voice and color codes them within the interview transcript in order to create a visual display of these voices’ movement in relation to one another amid the landscape of the fuller story. As with musical counterpoint, these voices may move in harmony or dissonance with one another; regardless, the relationship generated in the movement between the voices is the focus of analysis. In the fourth and final listening, an analysis of the narrator in relation to the research question is composed based upon the previous listenings and a written narrative of woven voices is constructed. Within this study, CAB members provided feedback regarding interpretation of portions of interview transcripts.

Demographic Overview of Participants

Ten participants were interviewed for the current study. Of the 10 participants, 6 were interviewed on two occasions and 4 were interviewed just once. Participants who were interviewed only once covered all areas of the interview guide within the first interview. Participants’ sexual orientation and gender identities were sometimes presented as separate and distinct identities and other times a single identity was reflective of both participants’ sexual orientation and gender identity. Language participants used to describe their sexual orientation and/or gender identity included: AG (aggressive), stud, transgender, lesbian, butch lesbian, femme aggressive, bisexual, heterosexual, two spirit, woman, and female. Four of the participants identified as Black, three identified as Latinx (Dominican, Puerto Rican, or both), and three identified as multiracial or mixed race (Native American, Irish, German, Latino, Black, African American, West Indian, White, Dominican, Puerto Rican, and unknown). Participants ranged in age from 18 to 25. Seven of the ten participants had been in foster care and/or kinship care at some point in their lives; three participants were raised by grandparents in kinship or informal kinship placements for most of their lives before age 18, and four participants were in a combination of foster families, group homes, detention facilities, residential treatment facilities (RTFs), shelters, and other informal living or sleeping arrangements (friend’s houses, sleeping on trains and in cars, etc.) throughout their lives. Nine of the participants were living in one of the five boroughs of New York City, and one was living in Dutchess county, 2 hours north of the city.

Findings

Findings are presented in the form of mini-biographical narratives informed by interviews with three participants to exemplify some of the crosscutting experiences and differences among the study’s participants. This includes pieces of participants’ “I Poems”–—prose formed by methodologies in the Listening Guide, which serve the purpose of conveying participants embodied knowledge, experiences, and identities (Mountz, 2018). General thematic findings from across the 10 participants are then explored in greater depth. This data presentation strategy is intended to strike a balance between understanding how participants’ identities informed pivotal moments amid the larger holistic backdrop of their individual lives and the desire to tell the collective story of the community and its shared experiences. For example, despite having different racial and ethnic identities, and identifying differently within planes of sexual orientation and gender identity, the three participants whose longer stories are featured share the experience of having been child welfare involved prior to entering the juvenile justice system, of having experienced school pushout or dropout, and of surviving chronic physical and/or sexual trauma related to their sexual orientation or gender identity.
The Three Selected Narrative Biographies

Nashan: “That kept OCFS a revolving door in my life.”

Nashan’s “I Poem”

I came out around 14 I just had no other choice I kissed a girl that they liked I always wanted to be with this one woman from church I looked at this other young lady from my church I had made a rainbow bracelet I just cried, cried, cried I read the Bible from front to back and could not see anything In the Bible that stated that homosexuality was against god’s way. I felt that god made you the way you are for a reason I got put into a group home I got into foster care I generally share my story I’m with it I wasn’t scared I told her I wasn’t scared I knew I was comfortable with who I was I just knew she wasn’t comfortable
Nashan identifies as multiracial (Black/White/Native/Puerto Rican) and two spirit and was 23 years old at the time of the interview and was raised by an adoptive mother from the age of 5 months until the age of 14. Nashan’s family story is one of intergenerational child welfare involvement. As they understand it, Nashan was stolen from their birth mother by their adoptive mother, who felt justified in taking Nashan into her care because of their mother’s drug addiction. Nashan’s adoptive mother did not formalize the adoption with the Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) until she’d had Nashan in her care for at least 1 year. Nashan’s adoptive mother became physically and emotionally abusive toward Nashan when Nashan was outed by their brothers at the age of 14. At this point, Nashan’s mother filed a Person in Need of Supervision (PINS) petition, and Nashan was placed in a congregate foster care facility or group home. Nashan described physical and emotional abuse that ensued as a result of their identity prior to their mother filing a PINS petition that resulted in their placement in foster care:
I came out around 14, and it wasn’t done with me wanting to do it, actually. I just had no other choice. My brothers stole my diary and gave it to my mom because I kissed a girl that they liked or whatever have you. The jealousy thing. So that’s how my story, me coming out actually happened, but that was just part one of it. So maybe a year or so after that particular situation and my mother started realizing certain things…and being in a Pentecostal home, that tended to get my mother really riled the fuck up. So she just basically asked me one day, “Are you gay? Because I know what those beads mean,” because I had made a rainbow bracelet. And she copped it, she took it. It was my first rainbow bracelet. It’s a horrible coming out story. She took my rainbow bracelet and I just cried, cried, cried. And she was like, “I know what that means. Are you a lesbian? Da da da. You can’t serve—” What did she say? “We can’t serve two masters. You can’t have one foot in the door of heaven, one foot in the door of hell.” But me being the type of kid that I was read the Bible from front to back and I could not see anything in the Bible that stated that homosexuality was against god’s way. And I felt that god made you the way you are for a reason, so we got into a big altercation and then I got put into the group home. So that’s how I got into foster care.
Nashan’s entry into foster care initiated a repeated cycling through foster care placements, RTFs, and juvenile justice settings. In each context, Nashan experienced chronic abuse and harassment related to their sexual orientation and gender identity. For example, shortly after being placed in a congregate foster care facility, Nashan experienced corrective rape perpetrated by the visitor of another resident. That resulted in a pregnancy. Nashan was moved to a residential treatment center (RTC). Shortly after arriving at the RTC, they experienced a homophobic assault carried out by a group of youth after encouragement by staff at an RTC who feared Nashan’s sexuality was “contagious.” This assault resulted in a miscarriage and a lifelong condition—epilepsy. Nashan reports having shoplifted as a means of survival after their own clothes were burned at the RTC following the assault, which resulted in a criminal charge. They spent the next several years of their life cycling between foster care, RTCs, and the juvenile justice (JJ) system:
That kept OCFS as a revolving door in my life…It’s serious though. Like if you go through one door, next thing you know if you’re not detained, then you’re in a residential treatment center that’s sort of kind of like a detention center. Or then you go to a diagnostic residential treatment center for like 90 days. So basically you have no phone calls, no nothing, no outside. So it’s like you’re jailed in different spectrums of being detained. And like that was a problem for me. So I went to a non-secure, then I went to secure, then I went to the Brooklyn center upon aging out of OCFS. They made me age out of OCFS when I was 18 because they could not keep me until I was 21 because I wasn’t committing any crimes. So they had to let me go at 18. (Nashan)
Nashan is now a dedicated community organizer and activist, peer educator, and a parent. They studied psychology and law extensively while in detention and met their birth mother at the age of 21. At this point, Nashan also learned that their own mother had had a very similar history of growing up in and between the foster care and the juvenile justice systems:
Something similar happened to my mother. When she was a kid at 2 years old, she got separated from her mom because my grandfather was very abusive and a drunk. And he made my grandmother miscarry one of my aunties or whatever, so she ran with the other baby, which is my aunt, up to New York and left my mother and aunty down south with their grandmother. And then they came up and they was in group homes and everything. My mother had a story very similar to mine. She was back and forth in group homes, custody situations and everything because she had an abusive parent and guardian…it’s like 20 years of not knowing me and 40 years of not knowing her own mother.

Justice: “Come on, you letting her get away with it because she plays the part of what a girl is supposed to act like, but I don’t get away with it because I’m gay.”

Justice’s “I Poem”

I was only 13. I didn’t know. I didn’t know everything and all the steps to go about, you know, getting something to be done. I left. I slept on trains, slept in cars. I would stay anywhere. I just used to tell her I don’t want to be here no more I’m like, “Grams, it’s not you. I just don’t want to be here.”
Justice, 23 years old at the time of the interview is a Black woman who identifies as a butch lesbian. Justice was placed in kinship care with her maternal grandmother at birth because of parental drug addiction. Her cousins, aunt, and her aunt’s husband lived in her grandmother’s house as well. After being sexually abused by her aunt’s husband, and disclosing the abuse to her aunt, who was unwilling to acknowledge that the abuse was happening, Justice elected to leave the house:
I slept on the trains, slept in cars. Slept at a friend’s house when they could sneak me in, but you know, they’re my age, so they not having that. “Let me speak to your family before you could stay over.” So I would stay anywhere. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter. Then when my grandmother realized that I wasn’t coming home, she would—actually, I never really told my grandmother that this guy was messing with me. I just used to tell her like I didn’t want—you know, I don’t want to be here no more, and she always thought it was her. And I’m like, “Grams, it’s not you. I just don’t want to be here.” But she didn’t understand and I didn’t like want to break her heart, you know. So I’m getting a little emotional when I think about it, yeah. So yeah. So my grandma would call, you know, the cops and put out a PINS warrant on me because at this point I wasn’t going to school.
Justice acquired her first charges for robbery and assault, with a group of other youth from the group home, shortly after being placed in the child welfare system. She spent the next 5 years cycling in and out of group homes and detention centers. A few years after initially leaving her home, Justice’s grandmother was hospitalized with terminal illness; Justice described pain around all of the things that she was not able to discuss with her grandma, including her sexual orientation. Justice, who moved between various juvenile justice and foster care placements from ages 13 to 18, eventually got her general equivalency diploma while in the adult prison system and became a community organizer working against the criminalization of queer and trans youth of color and engaging in “know your rights” trainings in the era of stop-and-frisk in New York City.
Crystal: “This Would Never Have Happened if I hadn’t Put You in There”

Crystal’s “I Poem”

I didn’t like her to come I was like you know that hurt me I only had one court date I had been on good behavior I had to do time and a program I’ve done nothing I had a good, good, good reason for it I remember I had this judge I remember my mom sitting there I was going to be released I was going to be released to my mother I was happy I was sad I went back
Crystal, 21 years old at the time of the interview, identifies as a Dominican and Puerto Rican transgender woman. Crystal’s mother, initially resistant toward Crystal’s efforts to express her gender identity, became more accepting over time. While Crystal was ultimately discharged to her mom after being placed in detention for shoplifting, she accrued the charges that resulted in her detention while living in a boys’ group home after her mother filed a PINS petition. The PINS petition was filed in response to Crystal’s increasing efforts to express her gender identity in her mother’s home, which her mother read as disobedience.
When I finally figured out I wanted to be a woman, it’s when my mom was in church and I’ve seen her get dressed up. And I wondered to myself, I was like, “Oh, why can’t men dress like that? What’s wrong with that?” And when my mother left, I remember going into her closet, and taking her little extra Sunday dress out, putting on a pair of pumps that she said was like 8 times bigger than my feet. And I remember walking around saying, “I’m pretty, I’m pretty, I’m pretty.” And my dad walked in and he was like, “What are you doing? Take off that [sic].” I don’t know, he was like “take that off” and he was like, “you’re a boy, you’re not supposed to dress like that. You’re not supposed to do that.” And I kind of felt like—I felt down because, you know, I always wanted to ask my father why. And if I remember, that was around 13. I wanted to be a transsexual.
Crystal was placed in the boys group home and presented with boys clothing. She was denied access to hormones she had been taking, was bullied and harassed at school, and then was caught shoplifting in an effort to acquire clothing consistent with her gender identity. Crystal was given a 6-month sentence and placed in a secure detention facility. While there, she was tormented by peers and staff and, ultimately, sexually assaulted by another inmate. Five years later, Crystal reflects upon her discharge and the role that family preservation services and an opportunity for her parents to receive support and education around gender identity might have played in allowing her to avoid placements in institutional settings from which she continues to carry formidable trauma and a criminal record:
I took a shower. I drank some coffee. I rested in my bed. And I cried because, you know, I felt like I’d been through a journey and I was only, what, 14, 15 years old. I was young. I felt like I did my whole lifetime story in a matter of just a year. From going to the group home and then my mom was crying because she was just like “I’m sorry. This would have never happened if I hadn’t put you in there…” My family needed education because if my mother would have understand [sic] that I was transgender, I mean that I was transitioning, maybe my mom felt as if I was being disobedient. You know, she felt like I was going against god, against her, against, you know, everything.

Thematic Findings

Thematic findings for this study include: (1) the role of family rejection and acceptance in systems involvement; (2) schools as sites of discipline and pushout and the child welfare as a funneling system; and (3) streets, systems, and families as sites of sexual violence and trauma

Participants’ narratives described experiences of being funneled into various systems, then ping-ponged between, and systematically abused within them. The participants’ stories outlined above were characteristic of other participants, in that significant periods of their lives were spent circulating between families—of origin, foster, adopted, and by choice; institutional residences—congregate foster care facilities, RTCs, homeless shelters, and juvenile and, in some cases, adult detention; and on the street or in temporary, informal living situations. Family fracture of varying types and degrees often initiated by previous child welfare involvement and perpetuated or sustained by family rejection ran throughout participants’ narratives of constant movement between systems and settings. Bullying and sanctioning within schools, paired with the constant changing of schools that often accompanies systems involvement and frequent movement between placements, foreclosed opportunities for educational completion and contributed to reliance on survival strategies such as shoplifting for clothing consistent with their asserted gender in order to assure safety.

The role of family rejection and acceptance in systems involvement

Familial responses presented as key features in shaping participants’ trajectories, and incidents of family rejection and acceptance of participants’ sexual orientations and gender identities emerged as key turning points that signaled major shifts or changes in direction within participants’ lives, often resulting in systems involvement. This frequently happened through voluntary placement in the foster care system through the filing of a PINS petition or less formal ejection or departure of youth from their homes that contributed to the likelihood that youth would eventually experience juvenile justice involvement. In fact, a number of families utilized PINS in the present study. The role of PINS petitions in participants’ lives is an example of what Kumashiro (2001) refers to as the management of difference by individuals or communities—in this case parents and caregivers in conjunction with the State—to “not only denigrate the sexually different, but also to compel them to conform to social norms (p. 15).”

Ejection or departure from the home did not always occur through a formal court-based mechanism such as a PINS. For example, after outed to her mother by a family member, Michelle, a 23-year-old woman who identifies as AG and Puerto Rican described her mother’s rejection as so painful and uncomfortable that she left the home to live with her girlfriend in the house of a drug dealer. Within this context, she and her girlfriend experienced regular homophobic sexual harassment by visitors to the house, and both developed addictions. Notably, Michelle’s mother was also in recovery from addiction. Michelle describes one of the earliest confrontations by her mother after being outed:
You know, I mean, everybody else, their opinion counts, but the most to me, is my mom’s so once she knows, it’s like the world—that’s it, the world knows. It’s over. So what can I do then? Her very first reaction, she yelled at me. Like she scolded me. She was like “You don’t know what you want! You’re confused! And I was just lookin at her, and I’m like “What are you talking about?” Because I know—I knew what she was talking about, I just wanted to play it off like I didn’t. And I’m just looking at her, she’s like, “Yeah, D. told me,”…and I’m like, “Told you what?” “That you like girls! What’s wrong with you” That’s nasty! That’s against god!
Family rejection additionally impacted participants’ ability to reunify or establish permanency within immediate and extended family networks. This was the case for, Tasha, a 21-year-old bisexual Puerto Rican woman, who was raised by her maternal grandmother and grandfather due to maternal substance abuse and paternal incarceration. Tasha described rejection and a fractured relationship with both her grandfather, who was unaccepting of her bisexuality, and her birth mother, whose identity she did not know until she was in her teen years. She describes a visit with her birth mother:
I was 14, I went and I just met her. We had known each other for a year and I was like “Mom, I like girls.” And I introduced her to my girlfriend. It did not go as well as I thought it’d go. Her and my girlfriend clash…And when my mom seen that we had matching tattoos, it was just not a good day. It just all fell apart. Like it started out good, we were in a restaurant, hanging out. My mom doesn’t live here. She lives upstate. She came here for a weekend and we’re hanging out, chilling. We’re cool. And the drama started. My mom called her a lesbian or my mom called her a dyke, told her to stay away from me. It was too much stress on me and I was like “You both need to stop.” My mother still hasn’t accepted the fact that I like females. She just thinks it’s a phase…Yeah we fought over my girlfriend, that she called my girlfriend a dyke. And I was in a really bad mood already, so I punched her in the face.
Nashan describes rejection and a halted relationship upon meeting their birth father, who had not been in their life earlier because of addiction issues, as a young adult after a series of child welfare, juvenile justice, and RTF placements:
I had joked around the time of first meeting him and telling him, you know, “At least you may have gotten your wish more than you thought you did,” because I have an older sister with him or whatever. But we don’t have the same mom. And he doesn’t have any sons, so I had a joke as you know, trying to lighten the mood. But I guess that didn’t f”ing work. But I was like “You know, at least you got your wish. You got a son and a daughter in one.” He did not like that at all. He was expecting to see a real, really pretty girl because he tells me I remind him of my mother so much at this age. Like I look so much like my mother and he was expecting the long, flowy hair because he knew I had a goddess of a mom and the prettiness and embracing femininity. And that was just not the picture he got when I showed up.

Schools as sites of hostility and pushout, child welfare as a funneling system

Participants’ narratives revealed the multitude of ways in which both schools and the child welfare systems act as pipelines facilitating the funneling of youth into the juvenile justice system; they also illuminate the ways in which schools continue to be sites of hostility and violence for queer and trans youth and how youth in foster care commonly have inadequate support in negotiating what are often new school placements. The intersection of these circumstances—in combination with juvenile justice placements that removed participants from the public school system for extended periods of time—made finishing high school difficult for many participants. Monica, a multiracial (Black and Native) bisexual cisgender woman, moved between foster homes and various forms of institutional residences for most of her life noted:
I went to so many schools, like, to be honest, I don’t ever really remember just being in one school. And in the school I finally remember just being in, I was at an age where school wasn’t my interest. Money more was, so, then I was too young smoking bud and stuff so I didn’t wanna go to school. The school in my campus, I felt like as a child and um and like special ed and stuff, we get less. They don’t wanna teach us. They already think we have issues. They already think we have problems. So they don’t really want to sit down and teach us the way they should. And in special ed, I was never really interested in going to class and stuff because the teachers were so boring…I started at a program called (youth empowerment focused agency with a GED program). Every time I get closer and about to take the test, I get scared and I lose faith in myself. So I dropped out of the program or whatever.
Participants’ narratives revealed instances in which being read as queer or trans resulted in their being bullied or unfairly targeted for disciplinary action by school officials. Oftentimes, this took the form of educators and administrators turning a blind eye to chronic and persistent bullying and subsequently misinterpreting responsive acts of self-defense. Justice describes her experience of being bullied, beaten up, and excessively punished in elementary school for being GNC and the impact it had on her relationship with her 60-year-old grandmother, her primary caregiver:
This goes back to elementary school, man. Yo, it was like—it was tough, like I was—I’m being raised by a 60-year-old woman, old school lady, I don’t have the up-to-date clothes. On top of that, I’m gay. I used to get baggy pants, I’m still wearing baggy pants. Like my grandma would put me in a dress, I would make sure I would pack my book bag. If I got to change on that street corner before I get in that school, I’m changing. I don’t give a damn. I’m not wearing no dress. So I’d wear baggy, big baggy pants, Payless sneakers that light up, you know, shit like that. Yo, I used to get teased a lot, like teachers ain’t like me. Peers ain’t like me. Nobody liked me, and they used to tease me…I was bullied all the time, all the time, all the time. Beat up by boys. Boys. Like you know, it was so embarrassing. Aw man, one day I got beat up so bad. You know, because I thought I was a little boy. You couldn’t tell me I wasn’t a little boy back then. I got beat up so bad, I had like [inaudible] on my eye like for the longest time. Yo, this kid like really showed me like, “Yo, I’m going to teach you how to—you want to be a boy? I’m going to show you what a boy can do…” School was really tough.
In response to the question of whether she ever felt like she was being punished in school for her gender presentation?* Justice responded:
All the time, all the time. She would always get phone calls home for me. And I’d tell her like, “Yo, I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it.” Sometimes I didn’t do it, sometimes I did do it. But sometimes it would be so petty that I really didn’t need a phone call home, like, “Come on, you letting her get away with it because she plays the part of what a girl is supposed to act like, but I don’t get away with it because I’m gay?” Like yeah, just like school was crazy. Yeah, and I used to get beatings. I used to get a lot of beatings. Every time I got a phone call home, I would get a beating, you know what I’m saying? My grandma didn’t understand. To this day, I don’t say she was wrong for nothing, I just wish that she was younger.
Another form this took was truancy resulting from daily harassment. Jasmine, a 20-year-old biracial (Black/White), femme aggressive lesbian–identified woman describes being badly bullied in school during the ninth grade when her sexual orientation was discovered by her peers. She described a school environment in which queer and trans students had little to no support from teachers and administration and no means of recourse when experiencing homophobic harassment. At the end of her freshman year of high school, she was placed in a juvenile detention center after repeatedly being caught shoplifting. When she was discharged from detention and returned to her parents’ house, she changed schools in order to “get a fresh start.” By contrast, she describes the powerful difference an affirming school environment can make with regard to self-esteem, a sense of self-efficacy, general well-being, and academic success. When asked if there were key turning points in her life in terms of how she understood and related to her identities, Jasmine responded:
Probably going to my second school and being able to identify with everybody, including teachers, and that being teachers, guidance counselors, staff members, and they being totally fine with it. And like having other kids slowly come out of the closet and tell me that they were able to come out because I was out to teachers and I didn’t care, and I was just so open about it. And I guess that was a big turning point in my life.
The majority of participants had had some child welfare involvement in the past, and a few had spent the larger portion of their lives shuttling back and forth between foster care and juvenile justice placements. Entry into the foster care system frequently coincided with changing schools and/or worsening experiences in schools and a general lack of support. This was the case for Crystal, a trans woman whose placement in a boys group home in the foster care system coincided with a school transfer. She described the interaction of factors that contributed to her truancy from school and eventual incarceration for shoplifting feminine clothing that the boy’s group home she had been placed in refused to purchase for her:
I wouldn’t be in the place that I was in if I hadn’t been left being in the men’s facility, being pushed to wear men’s clothes and not given an option. I would have understood if they said, “Okay would you like us to buy you female clothes or would you like us to buy male clothes?” No, like they were just like, “Here’s your size, here’s your shoes, here’s your shirt. Go to school.” When you have—I was a little skinnier, don’t get me wrong. I was a little lighter. When you have breasts like a woman, but a flat stomach and, you know, you look a little womanish but you still have manly features and you wear boy clothes, come on. The jokes start as soon as you walk through the door, as soon as you walk through the door. I actually had someone spit on me in school before. Yeah, the person got suspended, but I actually had someone spit on me and call me a disgrace. Called me—told me I was going to burn in hell. That’s the reason why I started cutting school. After that, because the first few days there was—you know, there were jokes and laughter, but after I got spit on, I was just like “I can’t do this no more.”
Although their trajectories were varied and complex, it is also clear from their stories that foster care placements and RTFs, paired with schools, commonly created a slick path for juvenile justice involvement. For example, Monica grew up with her five sisters in the foster care system from the age of 2, following their mother’s passing from breast cancer. The sibling group was initially placed together, then were separated and reunited and separated again at various points in their lives. After being sexually abused in her first foster care placement, Monica and one of her sisters were moved to the home of a woman who would eventually adopt then. However, she was being badly beaten by her adoptive mother and was taken aside at school and disclosed the abuse to concerned teachers and administrators. Following disclosure of the physical abuse at school, she and her younger sister were placed with another foster family where she was, again, sexually abused. She and her sister were then returned to the home of her adoptive mother who lets it be known that she does not wish for Monica to be a part of the family, at which point they engaged in a physical altercation that is the catalyst for her first hospitalization and eventual placement at a RTC that began a long period of institutionalization in various settings. She describes the circumstances and incident at the RTC that eventually lead to the charges that resulted in her placement in juvenile detention:
They didn’t want me on the campus no more because…nobody understands…I was on that campus for 7 years, I was abandoned on that campus by my adoptive mother for 7 years. So, I know how to talk to people. I know how to get what I want. I learned how to get what I want. And I learned how to—you know—from being on the campus I learned…knew how to control the girls. So it was like—you know—they got tired of me cause, they’s like, for her to be the youngest and to have this much control over the older people and everybody, it’s like—alright, we gotta take her away. I was having my cottage OP every night in groups, cause I was on the campus for a minute, you know, I done watched people get discharged, I done grew relationships with people, you know. I done…lived there. So I was like, alright, “we family.” I would tell the girls in the cottage “we family” and you don’t hurt your family. They staff gonna stick together when they want to…they gonna always be together. Why can’t we stick together? You know…I always knew how to talk…so it was easy for me to round up groups and start games and stuff…so…I used to have the girls in my cottage run out of program. They’d run out…be out all night. Go to school when we want to…smoking weed on the campus, drink on the campus. And I stopped taking my medication and everything. Then one day I was running, they was chasing me or whatever, they tried to restrain me or whatever. But when they did restrain me it was funny cause they was just disrespecting me like “you a ho,” calling me all types of names and stuff, talking about my mother and stuff. Cause at group homes that’s how they get to you, they try to get your weaknesses to get you more upset.
Monica was charged with wielding a screwdriver in the mid of this incident by direct care staff who she believes framed her because they wanted to “show me a lesson.” She described being placed in solitary confinement in the detention center, then again when she returned to the RTC. She was eventually discharged to her biological aunt’s house, where she lived for 4 years before moving into her own apartment.

Streets, Systems, and Families as Sites of Sexual Violence and Trauma

Sexual violence foregrounded many youth’s experiences prior to being incarcerated within the juvenile justice system. Participants often identified their sexual orientation and/or gender identity and expression as contributing to their having been targeted. Within the privacy afforded by relatively opaque spaces such as foster homes, RTFs, and other residential settings, several participants experienced various forms of sexual assault and abuse. Some participants described experiences in which they felt targeted for their sexual orientation and gender identities and described scenarios of corrective rape and attempts of corrective rape.

These experiences, however, were not limited to institutional settings, for example, Tasha, a 21-year-old bisexual Puerto Rican woman described attending a house party in the community in which she survived an attempted corrective rape. At the time, she identified as a lesbian, she describes:
See, back when I was a lesbian, there was this boy who had a really big crush on me and I never liked him. I didn’t like him. There was something about him I just didn’t like. So one time I went to a party with a bunch of friends and we hung out. And we was hanging out, he was recording me and I was drinking a lot. And I was with my friends and he tried to rape me that same night. And he didn’t get away with it. My brother stopped him. He was on top of me and I was intoxicated. My brother punched him in the face…That’s because the fact that I was gay. And guys sometimes like doing that shit, like, “Oh you haven’t had dick.” It was just the fact that he was trying to take advantage of me because I was drinking. And he wanted to record it because I was a lesbian at the time and he was like, “Oh, she’s not really a lesbian. He was going to rape me and record it and put it on video.”
Targeted harassment within public spaces was also a daily reality in the lives of many study participants. Street harassment, grounded in sexism, homophobia, transphobia, racism, and their intersection, was a part of many participants’ experiences of moving from place to place. For example, Trina, a 19-year-old woman who identifies as Black and AG or stud, shared the daily experience of being harassed:
I’ll get this a lot. People look at me weird, like I get all these strange looks and they look at me because I’m dressed like the way I’m dressed like. And then I’m Black on top of it. So they just like, “Oh, they don’t know what to do with their lives,” or they just look at us like we’re disgusting or nasty, and I get cursed out a lot sometimes. I really do, and I always have to argue with somebody because they trying to talk to my girlfriend, and I just let them know like, “That’s my girlfriend,” but they don’t respect it. They just—and it’s kind of hard, though, but I get through it. I try to get through it, at least.
Trina went on to explain the turn the harassment often took when she asserted her relationship to her girlfriend:
“Oh, ma, you looking nice,” or “Oh, can I talk to you for a minute?” or—and I just turn around and be like, you know, “That’s my shorty.” They be like, “Oh, get out of here with that. That’s nasty. Girl-on-girl is disgusting. You—she needs a man in her life.”
Alethia, a 20-year-old Puerto Rican woman who identifies as AG also described the experience of homophobic catcalling while walking in the community with her girlfriend:
Yeah, people will be like, “Can I get between you all?” And we’ll just nod our heads and walk away. And they’d be, “Oh you stupid dumb dykes” And it was like—and we just had to laugh it off if, you know, you just can’t really hold a grudge against it. And it’s just like, you know, we learn to—I feel…well, we learned to ignore people. From time to time, she’ll get annoyed, and she’ll sit down and argue with them. And I’m like, “There’s no point. Your not going to get anywhere. What’s going to come out of this is you guys are going to argue, he’ll probably put his hand on you, you’re going to press charges. He’s going to be locked up. If he come and he finds out where you live or whatever,” you know, it’s just best to avoid those, keep walking.
In An Archive of Feelings, Ann Cvetkovich argues that the field of trauma studies is limited by a rigid division between the public and the private, and that this binary, as well as the eclipsing of the ordinary and everyday by the domain of catastrophe, has resulted in the oversight of the experiences of women and queer people. Participants’ experiences of public and private racialized and sexualized forms of violence and harassment constitute a constellation of trauma and survivorship that need to be considered within our broader understanding of queer and trans youth of color’s systems involvement and community-based experiences. Methods of coping with the sexual trauma and its aftermath inform choices and survival strategies in the world and are present within the broader nexus of experiences informing youth’s entry into the system, where existing traumas are often triggered and a series of new traumas are perpetrated by law enforcement and within facilities (Mountz, 2016). Cvetkovich argues, also, for the recognition and archiving of trauma as a catalyst for the politicized acts of resistance evident in participants’ activist commitments and community organizing work. To this end, it is equally important to recognize the ways in which survivorship and critical consciousness emanating from survivorship, in addition to creating injury, also, often, catalyzed participants’ political commitments, activism, and creative forms of resistance (Mountz, 2016).

Discussion

Data from this study queer and complicate the linearity of pipeline and pathway motifs, substantiating, instead, the more circular metaphor of a revolving door previously theorized (Mountz, 2011). This different heuristic framework calls for a differential set of responses and strategies to tackle and ameliorate LGBTQ youth of color’s disproportionate representation in systems. For example, participants spoke of the distinct ways that family fracture either prompted or further deepened their involvement within systems. The use of PINS petitions by participants’ parents to sanction or manage sexual identity and/or gender identity and expression is a striking example of families’ inability to address the conflation of their homophobia and transphobia with their difficulty in working through very real concerns related to their children (truancy, running away). It is also reflective of the State’s inability or unwillingness to support them in doing so. PINS petitions, referred to in some states as Child In Need of Services (CHINS) petitions, began to be embraced by many states in the 1960s to recognize status offenders as a class of youthful offenders engaged in noncriminal misbehavior (Baruch Bush, Hershman, Thaler, & Vitkovich, 2009). In the decades since, policy regarding PINS- and CHINS-classified youth and their families has variably oscillated between relying on out of home placement and treatment of PINS and CHINS youth’s “offenses” as predictive of future lawbreaking behavior and a recognition that families of these youth are in need of community-based services and strengthening of relationships (Baruch Bush et al., 2009). Within a greater context of a historically insufficient network of community-based services to meet the complex needs of families filing PINS and CHINS petitions (Baruch Bush et al., 2009), recognition of and services for the specific needs of families who are rejecting toward their LGBTQ children are particularly absent. Also lacking is a recognition that PINS and CHINS petitions filed by the parents and caregivers of LGBTQ youth often conflate identity, and/or survival strategies related to hostility toward one’s identities, as “misbehavior.” Toward this end, I recommend that therapeutic tools aimed at reducing family rejection and promoting family acceptance, such as those advanced by the family acceptance project (FAP; Ryan et al., 2009), should be funded and implemented in various settings and contexts with which LGBTQ youth of color and their families interface, including family court, schools, and community-based clinics. The FAP model was developed based on a mixed-methods participatory research project examining how youth well-being correlates with the behavior of parents who demonstrate rejection and acceptance as understood on a spectrum (Ryan et al., 2009). FAP’s research and counseling model focuses on family adaptation, risks, strengths, and resiliency and was designed to facilitate family support and child well-being among ethnically, religiously, and socially diverse families. Although it will not heal or resolve every family conflict related to youth sexual orientation or gender identity—nor may it alleviate the structural inequalities that result in low income families and families of color’s disproportionate representation in child welfare systems—the likelihood that opportunities for this type of family therapy can cultivate some degree of healing and reconciliation for some families that will result in youth being more likely to grow up outside of systems and institutions warrants its expanded use in child welfare, family court, and community-based contexts. This necessitates training in the FAP model within schools of social work and in ongoing training and coaching among child welfare workers and service providers within other agency contexts.

It is additionally important to acknowledge the well-established fact of racial disproportionately within the child welfare system and its relationship to historical trauma (Evans-Campbell & Walters, 2006; Garcia, Aisenberg, & Harachi, 2012; Hill, 2006; Hines, Brook, & Conway, 2004; D. Roberts, 2002). Scholars, practitioners, and activists working with systems-involved LGBTQ youth of color must resist the idea of family rejection as a singular, uncomplicated narrative decontextualized from the historical and intergenerational impact of the child welfare system’s regulatory and disintegrative role and corresponding family fracture within communities of color (Evans-Campbell, 2008; Jones, Mountz, Trant, & Quezada, 2019; D. Roberts, 2002). Rather, facilitating family acceptance is part and parcel of drawing an end to the intergenerational family fracture and weakening of ties facilitated by historical trauma. Other restorative practices such as peacemaking circles have proven themselves integral to this strengthening of family relationships (Boyes-Watson, 2005). For example, peacemaking circles, grounded in indigenous ways of knowing, are a traditional method for solving problems and restoring harmony when troubles arise or harm has been enacted within families and communities (Boyes-Watson, 2005). Presenting an egalitarian approach to conflict resolution, the circle is grounded in an understanding of collectivity and interdependence and is sustained by the idea that if one person is out of balance, then the whole community is out of balance and that the community holds collective wisdom regarding how to restore balance (Boyes-Watson, 2005). Peacemaking circles have been used with PINS/CHINS cases in child welfare contexts as a way to support family in identifying and leveraging their own strengths and solutions and to create a more expansive network of support and solutions to restore harmony when harm has taken place (Boyes-Watson, 2005).

Other community-based restorative and transformative justice models and methods exist and have been implemented and studied. Community collectives, such as generationFIVE, have also proposed alternative approaches to State intervention using transformative justice approaches. For example, generationFIVE’s mission is to end childhood sexual abuse within five generations by working to “mend the intergenerational impact of childhood sexual abuse on individuals, families, and communities.” In their 2007 report Towards Transformative Justice: A Liberatory Approach to Childhood Sexual Abuse and Other Forms of Intimate and Community Violence, generationFIVE outlines a blueprint for the creation of “processes and institutions for individual and social justice that confront State and systemic violence” by developing campaigns to challenge the circumstances and social conditions that perpetuate all forms of violence and by addressing intimate, interpersonal, and community violence in ways that do not collude with State and systemic violence. GenerationFIVE’s transformative justice framework is grounded in five core assumptions that (1) ending child sexual abuse requires ending other forms of oppression and violence; (2) a changed world requires and supports individual, community, and political transformation toward liberation; (3) true justice in cases of child sexual abuse and other forms of violence requires that we transform and do not perpetuate the very conditions—State violence and community injustice—that allow child sexual abuse to continue; (4) integration of anti-oppression practices; and (5) innovation, evaluation, reinvention.

There is a growing movement toward trauma-informed practice within social work practice, generally, and child welfare, specifically (Council on Social Work Education, 2018; Strand & Sprang, 2018). It is critical that this movement within social work examines the root causes of violence and abuse and the aspects of our culture that facilitate their pervasiveness. Specifically, social workers must acknowledge the ways in which an ethic of violence is built into the structures of so many systems in which social workers practice and is an extension of colonial violence and trauma. This work calls for an end to this cycle and for the transfer of resources and investments away from prison expansion and carceral mechanisms and toward increasing community capacity. This includes the investment of funds in primary prevention, alternatives to incarceration, and organizations that facilitate access to education and employment among currently and previously systems-involved youth. Investments should be made in community, agency, court, and school-based restorative and transformative justice programs that seek solutions outside of systems in order to build family, youth, and community. Trained in the art and skill of facilitation, social workers are particularly well suited to play a role within restorative and transformative justice practices; however, they are often unfamiliar with these specific practices because they largely have not been meaningfully integrated into curricula within schools of social work.

Another critical role for social workers to take on is working in alliance with the robust organic efforts of queer and transgender youth activist groups that exist nationally and internationally, and their projects of documenting their own histories, and advocating for and creating support networks within their own communities. A commitment of this nature necessitates the confrontation of adultism within practice, policy, research, and activist domains, and calls for the forging of intergenerational collaboration that centers the experiences of queer and trans youth of color and recognizes and builds upon their leadership capacity. Systems involved queer and trans youth of color’s narratives and experiences should be centered within social work training and curriculum, where they have largely been absent or erased. For example, Human Behavior and the Social Environment² textbooks and curricula continue to primarily engage developmental paradigms and models that are grounded in the experiences of White, straight, and cisgender youth and adults. While efforts have been made to lend visibility to the experience of queer and trans youth within child welfare practice, policy and research situated within social work, there is severely limited focus on the intersecting experiences of queer and trans youth of color in juvenile justice systems within social work. Social work classrooms should therefore be established as spaces within which professional accountability can be taken for social work’s multiple historical legacies, including our professional implication in practices that have resulted in family or community fracture vis-à-vis child welfare systems and the criminalization of LGBTQ youth of color via systems of mass incarceration. This necessitates a radical social work praxis with a visionary collective eye toward empowerment-based liberatory legacies and futures within the social work imagination, including a world without prisons, and a world in which emerging social work students might reimagine their roles and commit to a queer antiprison politic (Richie, 2005).

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank Sid Jordan for help with an early draft of this manuscript and Kimberly Hudson for reviewing a later draft of the manuscript. She also wishes to thank Community Advisory Board members Gus Klein, Avery Irons, Tenaja Jordan, Jenni Gunnell, Imani Henry, Kirsten Holme, and Saybra Hall. Finally, thank-you to the participants who entrusted me with their stories.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Pride Foundation (111201).

ORCID iD

Sarah Mountz

Notes

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