Follow the Incarcerated Girls Bill of Health

Highlights from a recent youth workers' and advocates' conversation prompted by the screening of Girl Trouble (http://www.girltrouble.org):

Fifty girls recently wrote an Incarcerated Girls Bill of Health Rights. #1: We believe that the girls in Cook County Detention Temporary Detention Center should be able to see their children more than once a week, and without a judge's special permission. Girls should be allowed to see their immediate family members, regardless of age. Because it's important for our health to be able to talk with our families." Read the girls' other nine rights at www.hmprg.org.

Advocates and youth workers agreed:

We must keep emphasizing an end to incarceration. Too often we talk about how to provide more support to incarcerated young people without talking about abolishing prisons. While responding to immediate needs, we have to stay conscious of and act on our shared, longer term, more fundamental agenda for justice.

We need to talk candidly about young people who act violently. We must stop pretending it doesn't happen. There's a real absence of support for young people in youth programs when they are violent. Young people need to be supported in their lives, not ignored or judged when they come for support. They need true support, not romanticized denial. There's an assumption -- sometimes unspoken, others, explicit -- that youth development programs have failed when young people participating are violent. We reject this. Youth workers who want to support young people in confronting and changing their behavior don’t know what to do or where to go. We all agreed that these resources need to be created in Chicago.

We must find ways to talk with each other more often. We come from many arenas, and have many reasons for working with and for girls in the prison system. Those working in the system are often advocates and our allies, and need to be invited to participate in conversations to make conditions better now, to advocate for alternatives, and to end incarceration.

What do you think? contact@girlsbestfriend.org