Abstract
This article describes the process of reentry for adolescent girls and young women who experienced incarceration as adolescents in Costa Rica. The needs of adolescent girls and young women with undiagnosed and psychosocial disabilities are explored, considering existing scholarship and research gaps from Costa Rica’s legislation and policies. Literature on reentry developed in the United States were used, given that there is limited scholarship conducted in Costa Rica about girls in custody. The institutional dynamics related to reentry will be presented and illustrated through specific examples, with a focus on the opportunities and barriers adolescent girls face to create a life plan after incarceration. Reentry barriers for incarcerated youth with disabilities are described in Costa Rica’s institutional context, along with the social and employability needs for young women, with a focus on disabilities as an unexplored issue in Costa Rica’s judicial system.
In Costa Rica, when a girl commits a crime and goes to prison, her alternatives for reentry into society after her release present a significant number of obstacles. These reentry barriers may include diminished possibilities to become employed, to continue her education, and to establish a life plan with a dignified quality of life and away from recidivism. If potential undiagnosed disabilities are included in this scenario, reentry possibilities will be affected not only by the criminal history but also by a triple-layered vulnerability of disability, gender, and youth. This article describes what is known about girls and young women incarcerated in Costa Rica, the institutional expectations and practices related to reentry, and the role of undiagnosed disabilities during the final stage of incarceration: building a life plan and seeking employment. Literature on reentry developed in the United States will be used, given that limited scholarship has been conducted in Costa Rica about girls in custody and the support they need after being released.
Reentry, for purposes of this article, refers to the time when a person is released from incarceration and returns to his or her community (Unruh et al., 2009). Costa Rica’s juvenile justice system, like its counterpart in the United States, recognizes the importance of preparing youths deprived of liberty for life after incarceration. Successful reentry after correctional confinement includes employment-seeking skills (Ochoa, 2016), basic technology training, education, and interdisciplinary supports to create a life plan beyond confinement. In this article, we focus on the importance of employability for girls and young women, as key to reentry into society (Ochoa et al., 2020). Research indicates that preparing for reentry must start soon after the youth are incarcerated (Ochoa, 2016), and in theory, Costa Rica’s Ministry of Justice and Peace should begin to prepare youth to return to their community immediately upon arrival at the confinement facility (Ley 7576, 1996). However, the unit in charge of monitoring these processes was only established as recent as 2017, and practice does not yet match the progressive policies focused on reentry support.
Attention is placed on the impact incarceration has on adolescent development, particularly in the case of girls. Currently, very few supports exist to assist adolescent girls and young women with disabilities who exit incarceration to develop a self-directed life. Unfortunately, few girls are released while they are still minors; instead, they usually finish their sentences as young adults. It is for that reason this article uses both terms “girls” and “young women,” to refer to people who were incarcerated while they were minors and went through the process of reentry as young women. To explore this matter, examples from specific situations with a young woman will be presented to illustrate the inter-institutional dynamics that take place during the process of reentry in Costa Rica. These experiences serve to underscore the ebb and flow of successes and dangers of life for young women with undiagnosed disabilities after incarceration.
Agencies in Costa Rica Responsible for Reentry Support to Youth
Costa Rica’s juvenile justice processes, policies, and programs are deeply committed to a human rights approach for youth deprived of liberty through a solidarity system granted by the State that includes, among other social services, universal access to health care and access to education. However, the reentry process is a recent focus for the Ministry of Justice and Peace. Costa Rica’s Unidad de Inserción Social (UIS) [Social Insertion Unit] was founded in 2017 by Costa Rica’s Ministry of Planning and charged with providing support and resources for male and female adults when they exit correctional confinement. Costa Rica’s Patronato Nacional de la Infancia (PANI) [National Child Welfare Agency] is charged with supporting the release of all minors, but in most cases, and because of the length of sentences (Chaves, 2021), youth are released after they become adults. Reentry support for youth when they exit correctional confinement is provided by staff from the facility in which they were confined, and UIS offers support and follows up with the process of reentry only for the most severe cases and for 1 year.
According to staff from the Ministry of Justice and Peace, preparation for reentry should be initiated 6 months prior to the person’s release (F. Mora, personal communication, June 27, 2020; K. Carranza, personal communication, February 25, 2021). Furthermore, the law indicates that reentry supports should include sessions with a psychologist, assistance to secure housing, and employment options and transportation for the youth to return to their community of origin. In practice, however, these procedures and steps may not always take place. For example, if the date when the youth to leave changes, scheduled sessions with a psychologist may not take place or transportation for the youth may not be rescheduled in a timely manner. In addition, because each release must be processed individually to maintain confidentiality, communication with support groups for the youth who are exiting may not occur for fear that information about their release may put the youth at risk of assault from other youths within the facility. Furthermore, post incarceration follow-up services are at the discretion of the youth and cannot be mandated, given that the person has finished their sentence, so the youth may opt to decline reentry support.
Regarding social and emotional supports, in the juvenile facility Centro de Formación Juvenil Zurquí (CFJZ) [Center of Juvenile Formation Zurqui], a focus is made on the direct preparation regarding the anxiety and interpersonal challenges that are to be expected once the structured routines of the confined facility are left behind. This attention is offered through the one-on-one interventions with the psychologist.
Educational services for the juvenile population are emphasized during juvenile confinement, as mandated by law (Ley 2160, 2001; Segura & y Vargas, 2016), similar to reentry policies in the United States. Under Costa Rica’s Ministry of Education, the General Direction of Social Adaptation (Dirección General de Adaptación Social) functions through the Instituto Profesional de Educación Comunitaria (IPEC) [Community Education Professional Institute] and the Integrated Center for Adult Education (Centro Integrado de Educación de Adultos CINDEA) (Segura & y Vargas, 2016). Therefore, CINDEA and the Office of Social Adaptation are the specific offices in charge of the educational services for incarcerated youth. Two other Costa Rican public agencies are authorized to participate in public education for incarcerated populations, although their services are not mandated by law: Instituto Nacional de Aprendizaje (INA) [National Learning Institute], which offers skills and technical certificates for employment, and Universidad Estatal a Distancia (UNED), [Distance Learning State University] (Ministerio de Educación Pública, 2019).
While the educational system offers an opportunity for confined youth to become re-engaged with their education and must remain a priority, preparation for employment for young girls remains a significant need (de Mezerville et al., 2020). While the alternative sanctions’ system and some Costa Rican prisons for adults have programs to develop employability skills for both men and women, the efforts in prisons for minors emphasize academics. According to UIS staff, even if employability opportunities are arranged, they are of little use if the population is unprepared to do the basic tasks expected from employers. This preparation includes the development of basic skills such as time management, résumé preparation, basic technology training, and teamwork. For example, a woman who finished her criminal sentence had completed an educational level of 10th grade. During the time of incarceration, she set two goals for her life plan after incarceration: she wanted to have a healthier lifestyle and she wanted to pursue an acting career. No concrete plan was developed regarding employment. In this case, she met the criteria to receive services from the newly formed UIS to follow up with her, because she was already an adult, although she entered the system as an adolescent girl. She lacked family support, had a history of being homeless, and had a drug addiction.
In that situation, the UIS advocated on this woman’s behalf and negotiated with the Open Education program for her to receive 6 months of a monthly income from Costa Rica’s Instituto Mixto de Ayuda Social (IMAS) [National Social Welfare Institution]. This income was contingent on school enrollment. In addition, UIS loaned her a tablet to access online instruction. These supports became significant for her not to abandon her studies, but the IMAS income was not enough to pay for rent and food. This woman remained self-employed, making costume jewelry and selling it. Sometimes when young women leave prison they want to start their own business because they have specific skills, need the flexibility to care for other family members, and remain without a stable source of income for longer than expected.
It is common for adult females who finish their sentences of incarceration to be interested in developing personal projects to generate a source of income. Women are overrepresented in informal labor in Costa Rica. This means that they are more likely to lack Social Security medical and insurance coverage, as mandated for formal employers by Costa Rican labor laws (Rosales, 2020). Unfortunately, while the unemployment rate in Costa Rica for 2020 reached 23.25%, it was an alarming 64% for a woman with at least one child (Flórez-Estrada, 2020).
A Description of Costa Rica’s Incarcerated Girls and Young Women
Few scholarly publications refer to incarcerated people in Costa Rica. For example, Estado de la Nación (2015), Costa Rica’s nationwide comprehensive research report on human development, does not include any information about people deprived of liberty. This becomes magnified when referring to women and underaged girls. In order to understand the specificity of this population, a description will be offered, and illustrated in Table 1, about the proportion of female minors and young women within the total of Costa Rica’s incarcerated population.
Young Adult and Minors Incarcerated Populations in 2017 Compared to Total Incarcerated Population in Costa Rica, Indicated by Gender.
Source. Ministerio de Justicia y Paz (2017).
Note. CFJZ = Centro de Formación Juvenil Zurquí.
According to the Ministry of Justice and Peace (Ministerio de Justicia y Paz), Costa Rica’s correctional system held a total of 36,291 people in confinement in 2017 (Ministerio de Justicia y Paz, 2017). Of these people, 33,547 were men, while 2,744 were women. From this total, the CFJZ housed young adults (i.e., ages 18–25) and minors (i.e., youth under the age of 18). The total number of women of all ages incarcerated was 8% of people in confinement. Young women from 18 to 25 represented 0.02%, and adolescent girls below 18 years of age represented 0.008% of the total population (see Table 1). By 2021, CFJZ had seven women who were young adults and one minor (S. Segura, personal communication, October 15, 2021). Although the rate of female incarcerated youth is low in Costa Rica, there are few supports to assist these youth with reentry and achievement of a self-directed life.
The small population of incarcerated girls may be due to Costa Rica’s Law 7576, which offers a range of alternatives for adolescents as a way of keeping them from incarceration. Minors who become incarcerated represent the most severe and violent criminal cases among youthful criminals, given that the severity of the crimes exclude their cases from being eligible for alternative measures and they often lack support networks in their communities. According to the CFJZ director, the population of incarcerated youth receives fewer visits from their families in comparison to adult facilities (S. Segura, personal communication, June 9, 2020), a reflection of the lack of support networks that may negatively influence their preparations for reentry. According to Chaves (2021), 78% of confined adolescents are serving sentences for homicide. Sentences for minors can go up to 15 years of imprisonment, and compared to the average incarceration of youth in other countries like the United States, youth in Costa Rica experience significantly longer sentences (Chaves, 2021).
The crimes typically committed by incarcerated girls are crimes against life or property, including homicide (74%), drug trafficking (21%), and armed assault (3%) (Mecanismo Nacional de Prevencion contra la Tortura [MNPT], 2021; Ministerio de Justicia y Paz, 2017; Villegas et al., 2019). For example, a 17-year-old adolescent who enters the CFJZ for attempted homicide, and exits 3.5 years later as a female adult, may receive the UIS support through finding temporary housing for her. In this case, the now 21-year-old woman reported that she faced difficulties with issues like knowing how to use public transportation or basic technology skills. She also mentioned mental health struggles like anxiety. She repeatedly reported feeling confused about the reasons why the financial assistance from IMAS was contingent on attending school.
It is possible that girls and young women in similar situations present undiagnosed disabilities—such as mental health disabilities, emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD), and psychosocial disabilities—due to the interaction between psychological processes and environmental dynamics. It is for this reason that the next section will focus on exploring these concepts and present the impact of undiagnosed disabilities on Costa Rican girls’ processes of reentry.
Reentry, Employment, and Disabilities
There is a high probability that youth engaged in delinquency come from deprived environments (Brendtro et al., 1990) and that girls and women have been subject to gendered violence (Sagot, 2020). Adverse childhood experiences are often associated with adverse community environments (Ellis & Dietz, 2017), and many incarcerated girls and young women suffer from developmental deficiencies related to high-risk contexts and exposure to trauma (Armstrong, 2010; Jensen, 2009). Research indicated that youth with disabilities are overrepresented in juvenile justice (Kubeck et al., 2020). Community reintegration, reentry into school after confinement, and gaining employment after incarceration are particularly difficult for youth with disabilities (Ochoa, 2016; O’Neill et al., 2020).
Incarceration during adolescence disrupts the normal developmental process, and many incarcerated youth face barriers in gaining employment after they leave correctional confinement. Employment and economic independence are social expectations that mark the transition from adolescence to adulthood, and they usually represent a significant part of the building of a life plan after incarceration (Unruh et al., 2009). However, becoming employed and economically independent manifest differently depending on gender (Rosales, 2020; Sagot, 2020) and on the mastering of basic skills that, without the appropriate social supports, may exclude people with disabilities (Arguedas, 2021).
Formerly incarcerated youth experience cumulative disadvantages, particularly in the areas of employability (Gagnon & Barber, 2019). Prison education programs can help improve the odds of securing employment (Flatt & Jacobs, 2018) in a way that the population develops these skills before leaving incarceration and while their housing and basic needs are met by the facility. Yet, only a small amount of pre-employment training seems to take place in a prison setting, adding to the disadvantage of incarcerated youth. Also, youth who completed a quality employment program after they were released from prison were more likely to be employed compared to youth without post-release employment training.
One of the women to whom the UIS provided support indicated that, once in the community, she looked for options to finish her high school diploma through distance learning, as part of the life plan created prior to her release. Staff from UIS offered to support her in looking for employment training through INA. However, in the months following her release, several skill deficits became evident. For example, she did not know how to use websites or fill out online forms, and the financial limitations became readily visible. She remained unemployed 1 year after being released, despite receiving some basic technology training and some mentorship supports offered through an incipient coordination between UIS and Universidad de Costa Rica. After that 1 year, UIS support was discontinued.
According to Costa Rica’s First National Survey on Disability (INEC, 2018), 95.5% of people with disabilities did not receive support in their educational process, resulting in lower levels of formal education. A majority (i.e., 53%) of this population was living in poverty in the lowest quintiles of the national ranking of family income (Arguedas, 2021; INEC, 2018). Arguedas (2021) found that people with disabilities living in Costa Rica continue to experience multiple forms of discrimination and exclusion in education and employment. According to Costa Rica’s Law 7948, disabilities are defined as all conditions that result from the interaction between people with physical, mental, intellectual, or sensory long-term deficiencies and the barriers caused by attitudes and environments that impede their full and effective participation in society with equity of conditions (Ley 7948, 1999). Costa Rica’s justice system also defines psychosocial disability as a person’s limitations to fully participate in society due to the interactions between the individual’s ongoing psychological and affective processes, and all the environmental barriers related to societal attitudes of fear, ignorance, and stigma (Poder Judicial de Costa Rica, 2013).
Any psychosocial disability entails adversities that may include social isolation, communication difficulties, trouble in managing basic elements from their own culture, and disruptive human relationships (Grajales & y Lizarazo, 1997). For adolescents, they may include learning difficulties related to the sensitive developmental age of their nervous system (Grajales & y Lizarazo, 1997). The consequences of poverty, lack of social determinants of health, and gendered violence illustrate the impact of environmental and attitudinal barriers that relate to physical, mental, intellectual, or sensory long-term deficiencies that limit girls and young women from participating in society fully and effectively after incarceration.
Psychosocial disabilities resonate and align with other concepts, such as emotional disturbances (ED), a concept that Costa Rica’s juvenile facilities have incorporated (Ochoa et al., 2019), or EBD as defined by Kauffman et al. (2007). However, even when emotional disturbances or EBDs may be empirically identified in some youths by CFJZ teachers, there are no psychometric protocols in existence to diagnose girls and young women during incarceration (de Mezerville et al., 2020).
Ochoa et al. (2019) found that behaviors commonly exhibited by incarcerated youth (e.g., difficulty in problem solving, geographical disorientation, confusion when making decisions, impulsivity, and poor conflict management) are common in those with EBD. As an example from the UIS, one of the women who was offered support presented symptoms that would suggest an EBD: She disclosed her difficulty using the telephone and accessing the internet to search for information. Also, she reported suffering from anxiety and would frequently get lost when going from one place to another, because she could not find her way around the city. She said that she felt geographically disoriented. She forgot about her first meeting with a technology-trainer volunteer and thus missed it. Also, her housing placement was quickly terminated due to disruptive behavior.
The Ley de Igualdad para Personas con Discapacidades (i.e., known as Ley 7600; or Law 7600 henceforth, and applied through the protocols passed in Costa Rica’s Law 7948) is Costa Rica’s special education law that shares two important similarities to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA, 2004; Ochoa et al., 2019). The first similarity between the two federal laws is that they both have a categorial system that serves as the mechanism to provide special education to students whose disabilities necessitate services. Another important similarity between the two special education laws is that interventions designed for students with disabilities can focus on academic needs but also on behavior needs. Both laws acknowledge that education is important even during the time of incarceration. However, unlike the IDEA, which explicitly requires and monitors the delivery of special education services for incarcerated students with disabilities (Ochoa, 2016), Law 7600 is unclear about the special education requirements for incarcerated youth. As such, while the IDEA is clear about special education service delivery during the incarceration period for students with disabilities and requires all educational and mental health services, including evaluation if there are any indications that the youth in correctional confinement has a disability, Law 7600 lacks that clarity. In fact, de Mezerville et al. (2020) noted that the current situation in juvenile correctional facilities is the lack of mechanisms to carry out a special education evaluation if an educator (or anyone else) in the correctional facility suspects the existence of a disability recognized by Laws 7600 and 7948 (i.e., learning disability or emotional disturbance). That is to say, currently, Law 7600 does not explicitly require evaluations of disability needs for incarcerated youth nor does it monitor if students with disabilities are receiving special education services during the time of incarceration.
A relatively unexplored topic such as people with disabilities within Costa Rica’s correctional confinement system requires a specialized understanding of disabilities, where most of these youth have not had the conditions to receive specialized attention to their social, emotional, and cognitive struggles. For example, according to United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA, 2021), in one of the very few studies about people with disabilities’ perceptions in Costa Rica, female study participants report that medical facilities’ infrastructure does not respond to their needs, in violation of Costa Rican Accessibility Law 7600, and medical staff lack training on how to treat them appropriately. Arguedas (2021) indicated that Costa Rica’s public health care institutions still follow a hierarchical and dominant model of attention based on the symbolic power health care professionals exercise over their patients and specially toward populations like the elderly or people with disabilities.
These issues have not been explored in the context of incarceration and post-incarceration services, although staff from the Ministry of Justice and Peace report that adolescent girls and young women are often infantilized by security officers (A. Chavarría, personal communication, September 25, 2021), a phenomenon also observed by the Costa Rican Observatory of Torture Prevention (MNPT, 2021), a branch of Costa Rica’s Defensoría de los Habitantes [Citizens Department of Defense]. To treat adolescent women as children who need to be constantly controlled and assisted prevents them from developing the skills necessary for an autonomous sense of self and upholds a patriarchal culture within the justice system that minimizes the agency of adolescent girls and young women over their own lives.
It is possible that the symbolic power experienced by women with disabilities in the medical system also manifests in a similar manner in the judicial system and the processes of preparation for reentry. However, research with a gender-responsive perspective that intersects Costa Rican women in confinement who are also minors, and who present any kind of disability, does not exist. Apparently, the current correctional system identifies psychosocial disabilities in theory but neglects actively treating the emotional and behavioral needs of youth under their custody with trauma-informed services and with a gender-responsive approach (Sagot, 2020; Webster, 2020). Thus, these girls and young women are not prepared to build a life plan for life beyond incarceration that makes it possible for them to become economically independent and to have an improved quality of life.
Recommendations for Juvenile Institutions and Agencies Responsible for Reentry
Recommendation 1: Integrating Three Critical Components
In some of the few published articles about incarcerated youth in Costa Rica, de Mezerville et al. (2021) identified three critical components that are often lacking in preparing youth for reentry. First, youth need to build a support network with peers and resources that create a structure of belonging and social support. This is especially important for adolescent girls and young women, considering the need to have a support network that constitutes a protective factor from gendered violence (Rosales, 2020). There is a paucity of support groups that offer a sense of belonging and that establish relational supports before the end of incarceration, yet this resource could be explored through sobriety groups (e.g., Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotic Anonymous) and the strengthening of emotional support from family and peers.
Second, youth need interdisciplinary services during and after incarceration (Ochoa, 2016). Interdisciplinary services should include crisis intervention, special education, vocational guidance, substance treatment, health services, and basic instruction about their own citizen rights. Third, youth need to reintegrate into work and education, which requires training that includes basic technology training and employment seeking skills. Given the current state of services within juvenile correctional facilities, young women who experienced incarceration as adolescent girls commonly exit having received minimal career and technical education (Gagnon & Barber, 2019). A gender-responsive perspective is necessary when training for employment, to empower young women and adolescent girls to reclaim control over their own lives.
As this article has noted, there is little scholarship on adolescent girls and young women during the processes of reentry in Costa Rica with a focus on psychosocial disabilities and the identification of a potential undiagnosed disabilities. This combination of factors represents a way for these girls to better understand themselves and a way for society to create pathways that bring Costa Rica’s human rights’ discourse and progressive legislation into practice.
Recommendation 2: Expand Existing Employment Programs
Although some mechanisms for social insertion through employment have been developed in Costa Rica for youth engaged with delinquency, they are focused on non-incarcerated populations or are very new. For example, Costa Rica’s Direction of Restorative Justice has developed recent protocols for employment and social reintegration (Dirección Nacional de Justicia Restaurativa, 2020) and new models announced by the Ministry of Justice and Peace (Ministerio de Justicia y Paz, 2021), but these protocols are being introduced only in the framework of alternative sanctions and are still in preliminary stages. Through these recent protocols, CFJZ can develop employment programs that focus on the empowerment of adolescent girls and young women leaving correctional confinement.
Recommendation 3: Training for Girls
Adolescent girls and young women with psychosocial and undiagnosed disabilities in the process of reentry represent a small population with very specific needs. A lack of a scaffolded process to develop autonomy and life skills might be one of the reasons why adolescent girls and young women leaving the facility feel unprepared for the sudden shift from the total structure while they are incarcerated to a complete absence of structure or support (Ochoa et al., 2021). Even with a system with limited resources, the small size of the population offers an opportunity to identify these needs and create supports that may increase the possibilities for these girls to build a life plan with better possibilities for economic independence (de Mezerville et al., 2021). The supports offered in Costa Rica to young women by the Ministry of Justice and Peace, and specifically by the CFJZ and the UIS, struggle with the fact that these populations’ basic needs for housing, food, and employment are compromised when they are released. A halfway house could offer this population opportunities for skill development and decrease recidivism.
Specialized preparation for adolescent girls and young women before leaving the facility poses an opportunity for Costa Rica to develop comprehensive reentry life plans with focused and concrete strategies for each young woman who started serving a criminal sentence as a minor. In addition, the plan must offer the supports that are needed for young women who have continuing emotional, educational, and behavioral challenges so that they can be better prepared when they reenter a community (Ochoa et al., 2020). A gender-responsive perspective would significantly benefit incarcerated girls and their specific needs for personal growth (Rosales, 2020; Sagot, 2020). Girls leaving correctional confinement must be engaged in the process of identifying their own needs, gaps, and necessary supports to respond in a way that builds from their lived experiences.
Recommendation 4: Training for Staff
Every staff member who works with adolescent girls and young women, including interdisciplinary professionals and security officials, needs specialized training in gender-responsive approaches and how to offer dignified attention and support toward all kinds of disabilities (Arguedas, 2021).
Conclusion
Support for adolescent girls and young women with disabilities leaving correctional facilities remains a challenge in Costa Rica. However, successful reintegration that includes the building of a life plan with economic independence and social support for psychosocial and undiagnosed disabilities is critical to lower the rates of recidivism. Preparation for reentry needs to become ever more planful of the basic development of employability and life skills necessary to make a successful transition from confinement, considering the internal and external resources available to them. This process of preparation needs to include interdisciplinary services and approaches, as well as support networks to consider housing, training to become employable, psycho-pedagogical assessments, and psychosocial diagnosis to create personalized supports. Successful reentry for adolescent girls and young women who experienced incarceration as minors can only take place if it begins as a process within the judicial institutionalization that de-stigmatizes disabilities, develops a gendered perspective, and empowers every girl and woman to build a life plan outside of prison and away from delinquency.
Footnotes
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) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
