Connecticut's Juvenile Justice Care for Girls Has Faltered

Connecticut built a reputation over two decades as one of the more progressive states in the country on juvenile justice reform, particularly for girls. That reputation, experts now say, has eroded.

At a meeting of the state’s Juvenile Justice Policy and Oversight Committee last Friday, a panel of researchers and advocates made a pointed case: Connecticut has stepped back from its commitment to gender-responsive care for girls in the juvenile system, and the numbers are starting to show it.

The figures aren’t subtle. In 2022, 1,370 girls were involved in the juvenile justice system in Connecticut. By 2024, that number had climbed to 2,510, according to a report released last month by the Tow Youth Justice Institute. Girls still enter the system at far lower rates than boys. But the trend line is moving in the wrong direction.

A funding cut that left a gap

The state started building what practitioners call “gender-responsive” programs roughly 25 years ago, strategies tailored to the distinct needs of young women, including specialized probation models and targeted intervention services. The approach was considered a national model.

Then came 2007. The General Assembly decriminalized certain “status offenses” like truancy, which was the right call. But the state also cut funding for the programs that had been serving those girls. Erika Nowakowski, executive director of the Tow Youth Justice Institute, said that was where Connecticut went wrong.

“What we needed to do is, instead of eliminating them, we probably needed to keep them and open up a different access door to them,” Nowakowski said at Friday’s meeting.

So the girls who previously might have been channeled into support programs through the juvenile system no longer had that entry point. And no equivalent replacement was built.

Mental health, trauma, and a system that wasn’t built for them

Of roughly 700 girls who were either placed in a detention facility or under juvenile probation supervision in 2024, just over half were found to have significant mental health needs, the Tow Youth Justice Institute report found. About a third were dealing with substance abuse, family distress, or anger and aggression.

That’s a population with acute needs being processed through a system not designed with them in mind.

Stephanie Covington, a researcher specializing in trauma-informed and gender-responsive programs who has worked with Connecticut, told the committee that trauma has to be the starting point for any program serving girls. She pointed to something more basic than programming: relationships.

“Relationships are key. How do we provide girls with relationships, pure relationships and adult relationships that they can count on?” Covington said.

Not a rhetorical question. An actual gap in how the system currently functions.

Tracie Bernardi Guzman, founder of Reentry Solutions CT and herself formerly incarcerated as a young adult, said mentorship matters from the very first day a girl enters the system. Not after she’s processed, assessed, and assigned to a program. Day one.

“We should give girls an opportunity to open up, because when they feel safe and relieved and not judged, that’s when they are more willing to talk,” Bernardi Guzman said.

Caught between two systems

About half the teenage girls admitted into a Connecticut detention facility in 2024 were also under the care of the state Department of Children and Families, according to the Tow Youth Justice Institute’s data. That dual-system involvement is a well-documented pressure point in juvenile justice reform. Kids bouncing between DCF and the juvenile justice system often fall through the cracks of both, with neither agency feeling full ownership of the outcome.

Connecticut isn’t alone in this. But it used to be better at managing it.

The Juvenile Justice Policy and Oversight Committee was created precisely to track these intersections and push for coordinated responses. Friday’s panel, which Nowakowski moderated, was a signal that advocates want the committee to treat this as a live priority, not a settled one.

CT Mirror first reported on the Tow Youth Justice Institute’s findings and the Friday committee meeting, which surfaced the broader concern among practitioners that Connecticut is losing ground.

What comes next

The General Assembly is in session now. Whether any legislation emerges from Friday’s discussion is unclear. The Tow Youth Justice Institute’s report gives lawmakers something concrete to work from, both the data on rising numbers and the specific call to restore funding for programs that were cut after 2007.

Watch the Juvenile Justice Policy and Oversight Committee’s next meeting for any formal recommendations. And watch whether the governor’s office engages. This is the kind of issue that tends to move only when there’s sustained pressure from advocates with data behind them. The data is there now.