“Sometimes One Does That With Blinders On”: Revisioning Care for Violent Girls

Abstract

When girls use violence to discharge their rage, the first response by law enforcement and treatment providers is to stop the behaviors through control of the offender. This article examines extant juvenile justice and child welfare policies and practices that function as social control and surveillance mechanisms of girls who violate behavioral expectations and/or social norms through violent behaviors. Case studies reveal tensions between punishment and mental health and underscore compounded psychological trauma, when girls’ behaviors are considered within a psychodynamic theoretical framework that explains cognitive impairment and other traumagenic effects that challenge providers’ expectations of girls’ normative behaviors. Dynamics of vicarious trauma among staff suggest the perilous impacts of trauma upon the quality and duration of attachments that troubled workers are able to form and maintain with their clients. Instead of a policy framework of social control and top-down silos of prescriptive services (protocols like dialectical behavior therapy), responses to girls and violence as a public health problem must be grounded in developmental theory and within realities of social-cultural context.