Pioneers

So many women have dedicated their careers to improving the lives of girls and young women caught in the juvenile justice and child welfare system.

Leslie Acoca, national expert, researcher. Currently Principal Investigator and Director of the National Girls’ Health Screening Project; Founder and President of In Our Daughter’s Hands.
Linda Albrecht has more than twenty-five years of experience working with and on behalf of juvenile female offenders, working most recently in program development for the state of New York. Previously she ran a secure program for girls in Colorado, worked in program development for several private companies specializing in juvenile correctional programming, and was the director of the New York state secure correctional facility for girls for many years. Linda has provided training and technical assistance related to female responsive services and related juvenile justice issues in several states as well as for the American Correctional Association, the National Institute of Corrections, the National Juvenile Detention Association, and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
Leslie Balonick, Senior Policy and Program Development Administrator for the Illinois Department of Corrections where she is responsible for developing innovative management and programmatic solutions that improve community safety. Thirty years experience in administration of substance abuse services; senior administrator in nonprofit and for profit juvenile justice and residential corrections.
Martha Barnett, former ABA President and former chair of the ABA Section of Individual Rights and Responsibilities was recognized in 2008 with the Father Robert F. Drinan Award from the American Bar Association. This award honors those committed to the preservation and advancement of human rights, civil liberties and social justice. During her tenure as president of the ABA, Barnett devoted time to programs addressing the unique needs of the increasing number of young women in the criminal justice system, as well as calling for a national moratorium on the implementation of the death penalty. While president of the ABA, she and Evett Simmons, president of the National Bar Association, released the report “Justice by Gender The Lack of Appropriate Prevention, Diversion and Treatment Alternative for Girls in the Justice System”.
Barbara Bloom, Associate Professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Sonoma State University and Co-Director with Dr. Stephanie Covington of the Center for Gender and Justice. Her research and policy interests include women and girls under criminal justice supervision and gender-responsive interventions and services. Dr. Bloom is a recent recipient of the American Society of Criminology Division on Women and Crime 2006 Saltzman Award for Contributions to Practice which recognizes a criminologist whose professional accomplishments have increased the quality of justice and the level of safety for women.
Vicki Burke In the early 1980's professionals working in the juvenile court system in Jacksonville, FL realized that girls involved in delinquent activities were either not being held accountable, being placed in boys' programs, or placed further into the system for their own protection. There were no effective alternatives. The PACE concept was developed and implemented by founder Vicki Burke in 1985. Guided by the research-based recommendations of the Valentine Foundation which called for gender responsive programming, PACE created a new alternative to institutionalization or incarceration. PACE designed an effective method to meet the needs of the adolescent at-risk female.
Marty Beyer is a nationally-recognized juvenile justice and child welfare consultant. She assisted in the implementation of statewide strengths/needs-based child welfare practice in Alabama and Oregon, served as an expert in Dupuy v. Samuels in Illinois concerning family-centered safety planning techniques, and in Rosie D. in Massachusetts concerning the use of Medicaid funds for intensive, home-based services for children. She is assisting the New York child welfare agency to implement visit coaching, and also serves on the Katie A. Panel implementing foster care reforms in Los Angeles. She assists states in designing delinquency services, focusing on the impact of a young person's cognitive, moral and identity development, experience of trauma, and and disability upon his or her offense, competence and potential for rehabilitation. Ms. Beyer has a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Yale University.
Meda Chesney-Lind, Ph.D. is Professor of Women’s Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She has served as Vice President of the American Society of Criminology and president of the Western Society of Criminology. Nationally recognized for her work on women and crime, her books include Girls, Delinquency and Juvenile Justice which was awarded the American Society of Criminology's Michael J. Hindelang Award for the "outstanding contribution to criminology, 1992", The Female Offender: Girls, Women and Crime published in 1997, and Female Gangs in America, published in 1999. She received the Bruce Smith, Sr. Award "for outstanding contributions to Criminal Justice" from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences in April, 2001, the Herbert Block Award for service to the society and the profession from the American Society of Criminology, the Donald Cressey Award from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency for "outstanding contributions to the field of criminology" and numerous other awards. She has also received funding to conduct research on the unique problems of girl's at risk of becoming delinquent from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Finally, she has also recently been tapped by the Hawaii Department of Public Safety to serve on an advisory panel on the problems of women in prison in Hawaii.
Stephanie Covington is a clinician, author, organizational consultant, and lecturer. Dr. Covington specializes in the development and implementation of gender-responsive services. She has conducted seminars worldwide on addiction, sexuality, families, and relationships for health professionals, business and community organizations, and recovery groups. She is also the co-founder of The Center for Gender and Justice.
Marian Daniel, Administrator for the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services for over 30 years; Founder of the Female Intervention Team (FIT), a nationally recognized and replicated probation model for girls.
Dr. Barbara Guthrie, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at Yale University School of Nursing, researcher, published author, national speaker, consultant on gender-specific programming for girls (with a specialty in health and youth of color) in correctional systems.
Rebecca Maniglia is currently the Director of RLM Associates, specializing in consulting services related to juvenile justice and female offenders. She has provided training and technical assistance related to female offenders and at-risk girls to more than 45 states as well as the National Institute of Corrections, the American Correctional Association, the National Juvenile Detention Association, the Coalition for Juvenile Justice, and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
Pam Patton, President, Coalition of Advocates for Equal Access for Girls and co-author of "How to Implement Oregon's Guidelines for Effective Gender-Responsive Programming for Girls". Her organization, the Coalition of Advocates for Equal Access for Girls helped pass a bill that resulted in Oregon becoming the first state in the nation with a that requires state agencies serving children under 18 to ensure that girls and boys have equal access to appropriate services, treatment, and facilities. State agencies are also required to implement plans to ensure girls are receiving equal access to social, juvenile justice, and community services statewide; that barriers to these services are removed; and that the services provided are gender-specific.
Patricia Puritz has worked as a child advocate in the juvenile justice system for thirty years and currently serves as executive director of the National Juvenile Defender Center, an organization dedicated to ensuring excellence in juvenile defense and promoting justice for all children. Ms. Puritz was director of the American Bar Association Juvenile Justice Center from 1985 to 2004, where, among other projects, she led the creation of the National Juvenile Defender Center, which was created to serve as a clearinghouse, backup, and resource center for lawyers who defend children. She has worked in a number of advocacy and community-based organizations; and she has been involved in designing, implementing, managing, and monitoring programs to reform the nation's juvenile justice systems. Since the early 1990s, Ms. Puritz has emphasized developing strategies to ensure that children have adequate access to competent counsel throughout the duration of the court process. In her role at the National Juvenile Defender Center, Ms. Puritz oversees a range of training, technical assistance, leadership, and capacity-building activities designed to improve juvenile indigent defense systems. She was appointed in 2003 by then Governor of Virginia Mark Warner to serve on the state's Board of Juvenile Justice, and she co-chairs the Juvenile Justice Committee of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL). In recognition of her work, the NACDL named Ms. Puritz the "2004 Champion of Indigent Defense," and the American Bar Association honored her with the 2006 Livingston Hall Juvenile Justice Award.
Paula Schaefer Paula is the former Director of the Planning for Female Offenders Unit for the Minnesota Department of Corrections. Paula now has her own consulting business and continues to work with a variety of state and national stakeholders to promote female and culturally responsive services within the juvenile and criminal justice systems. She is a consultant for the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), as well as the National Institute of Corrections.
Paula has worked as a practitioner with children, adolescents and families for over twenty years in community and residential based services. Paula was the Program Coordinator for St. Croix Girls Camp, a 50 bed private correctional facility for court ordered adolescent girls. Paula learns a great deal from girls and women and is inspired by their indomitable spirits andresiliency, this fuels her passion and advocacy work on their behalf.
Francine Sherman is a clinical professor and Director of the Juvenile Rights Advocacy Project at Boston College Law School. She speaks widely about girls in the justice system and contextual legal services for system involved youth and is doing ongoing research into the pathways girls take into and through justice systems as well as effective practices for attorney’s representing girls. She is a founding member of the Girls’ Justice Initiative and the author of their recent report, Girls in the Juvenile Justice System: Perspectives on Services and Conditions of Confinement. She is a regular contributor to “Women, Girls & Criminal Justice” where she has written about runaway girls, probation practices, and teen prostitution, and legal strategies for attorneys representing young women. She was a contributor to the 2001 ABA and NBA publication Justice by Gender: The Lack of Appropriate Prevention, Diversion and Treatment Alternatives for Girls in the Justice System, and to the 2001 ABA publication America’s Children Still at Risk. She is an ongoing consultant to the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative on strategies to reduce the detention of girls nationally and is lead consultant to the Hyams Foundation Girls’ Initiative in Boston. She is the author of the Girls’ volume of the Pathways to Detention Reform series published by the Annie E. Casey Foundation (2005). She is co-author, with Marsha Levick, of "When Individual Differences Demand Equal Treatment: An Equal Rights Approach to the Special Needs of Girls in the Juvenile Justice System," 18 Wisc. Women’s L. J. 9 (2003).
Barbara Stepanik, RNC, LHRM Ms. Stepanik has worked in residential and day treatment juvenile justice and adolescent Behavioral Health facilities for more than 38 years. Her most recent experience has been opening female juvenile rehabilitation programs in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Florida where she developed, trained and managed a gender responsive program for adjudicated female felony offenders. Known for her gender specific program development and training abilities, she is often called upon nationally to provide expert juvenile justice services and consultation and was a guest presenter at the Girls Symposium for the city of Philadelphia and for the Adolescent Treatment Issues Conference sponsored by the Florida Juvenile Justice Association. Presently, Barbara is working in partnership as the Director of Operations of Passion Flower Productions, Inc. in ministry to “at risk” adult females.