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A DECONSTRUCTION AND CRITIQUE OF 
THE FEMALE INTERVENTION TEAM

Anita Nabha

Over the past decade, there has been a significant increase in female juvenile 
offenders resulting in a growing interest in how to best  address delinquent 
girls. In response to the changing demographics of juvenile offenders, the 
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), a part of 
the Department of Justice, has called for “gender-specific” services. In 
this paper I will take one particular gender-specific intervention lauded by 
the OJJDP as a best practice in the field, the Female Intervention Team 
(FIT), and deconstruct the theories and beliefs that ground the intervention. 
This paper argues that FIT is problematic for three main reasons: first, FIT 
essentializes being female; second, FIT constructs girls as victims; and 
finally, FIT places too much emphasis on the individual girl’s agency at the 
cost of ignoring how structural forces contribute to and affect her reality.

Girls’ involvement in juvenile crime has grown consistently 
over the past decade (Acoca, 1999). Along with this rise in 

female juvenile offenders, there is a growing interest in how to best deal 
with delinquent girls. This changing demographic in the juvenile justice 
system has contributed to a new call for “gender-specific” services. Some 
researchers suggest that girls follow a distinct pathway to offending and 
have different developmental needs that require interventions specifically 
tailored for the female offender (Acoca; Chesney-Lind & Sheldon 
1991; Peters, 1998). Gender-specific programming involves a set of 
core principles that emphasize nurturing female identity and supporting 
girls’ needs for “positive healthy relationships” (Daniel, 1999, p. 4). 
In this paper, I will take one particular gender-specific intervention, 
the Female Intervention Team (FIT), and deconstruct the theories and 
beliefs that ground the intervention. I will begin with a brief historical 
overview of the key theoretical developments that have shaped the social 
understanding of girls in society. I will then analyze three assumptions  
embedded in FIT about female offenders. Finally, I will argue that FIT is 
problematic for three main reasons. First, FIT essentializes being female, 
or attempts to create an understanding of being female that is universal 



26  Journal of Student Social Work, Volume III

female intervention team

for all girls and encapsulates all that is defined by being female within a 
bounded category. Second, FIT constructs girls as victims. Finally, FIT 
places too much emphasis on the individual girl’s agency at the cost 
of ignoring how structural forces contribute to and affect her reality.

Historical Overview

Biological theories were one of the first explanations for female criminal 
behavior. The classic delinquency text by Lombroso and Ferrero (1895) 
proposed that criminals were less evolved from normal law-abiding citizens 
and displayed certain primitive body traits. Building on the theories that 
emphasized female biology as central to women’s nature, further exploration 
into female delinquency focused more specifically on female sexuality. The 
emphasis on female sexuality set the foundation for many future theories on 
female delinquency. However, some theorists who examined the problem of 
female sexual deviance saw the potential to protect these “problem girls.” 

The beginnings of a modern theory of female delinquency used the 
concept of gender roles to suggest that differential gender role socialization 
encouraged girls to pursue success through relationships (marriage) and 
males to achieve success through accomplishments (Artz, 1998; Grosser, 
1952; Morris, 1963). Grosser was one of the first authors to relate this 
concept to female delinquency. He suggested that female delinquency was 
“relational” and reflected an aspect of female subculture similar to the way 
violent and aggressive behavior in men reflected male subculture (p. 120). 

Although socialization theorists acknowledged that much of their 
research failed to support these ideas, they continued to promote a 
stereotypical understanding of gender and female identity (Artz, 1998; 
Grosser, 1952; Morris, 1963). The theories were based on two assumptions: 
first, that female delinquency was primarily sexual and interpersonal in 
nature while male delinquency was primarily aggressive and violent. 
Second, they assumed that girls and boys experience different socialization 
processes in their early development. These socialization processes play 
a central role in the development of personality characteristics that make 
females less inclined to delinquent behavior. Ironically, although they differ 
on where essential female qualities originate, socialization theories seem 
to come to the same conclusions as biological theories regarding female 
delinquency. 

In response to theories that emphasized female difference from males, 
liberal feminists (Friedan, 1965; Wollstonecraft, 1975) challenged that 
women were similarly capable of reason and rational thought as men. 



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   Journal of Student Social Work, Volume III   27

They argued that women were not by nature intellectually inferior, more 
prone to hysterics, or more emotional or relational. They suggested that 
in the absence of social and economic equality, women were subjected 
to oppression and marginalization that rendered them more vulnerable 
to poverty and discrimination, which could explain a turn to deviant 
behavior (Chesney-Lind & Sheldon, 1991). These feminists demanded 
equality as a solution to the problem of being denied agency and rights. 

When the second wave of feminism emerged, these new radical 
feminists pushed the equality argument in a different direction (Chodorow, 
1978; Gilligan, 1982). They countered that the sameness doctrine that 
emphasized how women and men were equals obscured the social realities 
of women’s experiences as mothers, daughters, partners, and the myriad 
other roles they held (Chodorow; Gilligan). Out of this understanding of 
the distinct social reality of women, radical feminists created a difference 
doctrine that emphasized women’s unique voice as caring and nurturing 
beings (Gilligan). Two centuries after the first theories on female 
delinquency suggested that females were inherently different from males, 
and that their maternal role and nurturing capacities were central to their 
identity as women, the second wave of feminism continued to support many 
of these assumptions. In fact, this feminism was not that radical after all.

The Female Intervention Team

The Female Intervention Team is one example of an intervention 
that has come out of the radical feminist movement to acknowledge 
the “universal experience of womanhood” (Daniel, 1999, p. 14). FIT 
is a program designed by the Maryland Juvenile Justice system to work 
specifically with girls in Baltimore City’s juvenile justice system. All 
of the participants in FIT were adjudicated as delinquents in Baltimore 
and would have been alternatively placed in secure confinement. Their 
crimes range from drug offenses and theft to simple assault and gang- 
related violence. The Female Intervention Team’s mission is to “restore 
hope to young women who have lost their direction and focus and lack 
goals” (Daniel, p. 4). It accomplishes this through a variety of programs 
and services designed specifically for the female offender (Daniel). 

There is Not a Universal Female Perspective
One of FIT’s core programs is called Rites of Passage. This program is 

designed to help girls “make a positive transition to womanhood” (Daniel, 
1999, p. 19). Through the program girls learn to “celebrate womanhood 



with symbols, rituals and spiritual awareness” (Daniel, p. 19). The idea 
of celebrating womanhood is somewhat new in the treatment of female 
juvenile offenders. Historically, the onset of puberty and menstruation has 
been stigmatized as something that is impure and causes females to be more 
hysterical (Birke, 1986). However, the idea of embracing and celebrating 
the “passage to womanhood” places the female adolescent experience of 
puberty as a defining point in a young women’s identity formation. The Rites 
of Passage program attempts to honor the female perspective, yet little is said 
in the program to explain what is involved in a female perspective (Daniel). 
This idea is grounded in many of the earliest biological theories that began 
to study female delinquency. By creating a binary of male and female that 
presumes these are the only two sexes that exist, girls are forced to act within 
the confines of the female sex, however female is defined by society (Butler, 
1990). Delinquency has traditionally been constructed as a male activity. 
When girls act delinquently, theorists have argued they were acting male and 
rejecting their female nature. Programs such as the Rites of Passage, with its 
emphasis on celebrating womanhood, assume that when these problem girls 
were engaging in delinquent acts, they were rejecting their core femininity.

Female Adolescence Poses Girls with Unique Challenges
The Female Intervention Team designed its programming to work 

only with girls because the task force and staff believed that girls face 
“distinct challenges during adolescence because of their gender” (Peters, 
1998, p. 5). The intervention emphasizes female sexuality as a central 
component of female difference and delinquency. The Female Intervention 
Team also is reminiscent of the early 19th and 20th century movements 
to save deviant women. The program provides a safe space for girls,  
removed from their home environments, where they can learn how 
to avoid negative peer influences and become more resilient (Daniel, 
1999). The Female Intervention Team assumes girls are controlled by 
their sexuality; however, by providing a “female friendly environment 
that promotes positive change” (Daniel, p. 22), FIT attempts to 
undo the effects girls experience from their environments.

Females Need Relationships for Positive Development
During staff training and designing of FIT programs, professionals 

were keenly aware of the idea that “relationships are central to girls’ 
lives” (Daniel, 1999, p. 7). The idea that girls are relational is another 
component of the assumption that there is an appropriate way to act 
female. Staff attempted to model healthy relationships for the girls and 

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28  Journal of Student Social Work, Volume III   



required mandatory participation in a conflict resolution class (Daniel). 
This class attempted to teach the girls how to “get along in their families, 
neighborhoods, and communities” (Daniel, p. 19). The Female Intervention 
Team’s programs suggest that those females who lacked certain female 
characteristics such as the ability to nurture and maintain healthy, positive 
relationships, were at risk of becoming more delinquent. This assumption 
is gender-biased and suggests that delinquency is inherently masculine.

Negative Aspects of the Intervention

The Problem of a Universal Woman
The Rites of Passage program is a clear example of how FIT privileges 

one understanding of womanhood. Although the program description 
does not offer an explanation for how FIT defines the experience of 
womanhood that the participants are supposed to embrace and celebrate, 
the underlying concept is that there is an essential woman. Establishing 
a category of femaleness is problematic on many levels. For girls who 
feel unable to fit their experience of what it means to be female into the 
constructed understanding of femaleness, this category may feel exclusive 
and confining. The Female Intervention Team’s attempt to address the issue 
of female delinquency by creating a program that is “responsive to girls’ 
needs” places gender at the center of the female identity (Daniel, 1999, p. 
9). Ironically, while interventions such as FIT seek to challenge and move 
past the stereotypical constructions of girls and female deviancy that were 
posited throughout much of the 19th and 20th centuries, FIT does not 
stray far from the traditional constructions of girlhood. Indeed, the theories 
behind FIT reify many of the stereotypes about girls its creators hoped 
to defeat.

Prominent post-structuralists such as Brown (1995), hooks (1984), 
and Lorde (1985) question why it is necessary to insist on a single,
static construction of “female” subjectivity. As Brown argues:

After all, the most ardent feminist poststructuralists do not claim that 
women’s pervasive economic subordination, lack of reproductive 
freedoms, or vulnerability to endemic sexual violence simply evaporates 
because we cannot fix or circumscribe who or what woman is or what 
it is that she wants. Certainly gender can be conceived as a marker of 
power, a maker of subjects, an axis of subordination, without thereby 
converting it to a center of selves understood as foundational (p. 41).

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   Journal of Student Social Work, Volume III   29



The model of gender-specific programming is flawed because 
it succumbs to pressure from the liberal tradition to reveal and rely 
upon a universal truth. In order to garner recognition for gender bias in 
juvenile court and a paucity of alternatives to detention services for 
girls, advocates and practitioners have resorted to a limited definition 
of what it means to be a girl (Kempf-Leonard & Sample, 2000).

Gender-specific programming places gender at the center of a girl’s 
life and constructs meaning out of a girl’s behavior and life experiences 
based upon her gender. Yet, theorists such as Butler (1990) have 
suggested alternative ways of understanding gender. Butler writes, 
“gender is the repeated stylization of the body, a set of repeated acts 
within a highly rigid, regulatory frame that congeal over time to produce 
the appearance of a substance, of a natural sort of being” (p. 33). While 
it may seem threatening to the girls’ rights movement within the juvenile 
justice field to suggest eliminating the notion of a universal female, the 
possibilities for understanding girls’ experiences are much broader when 
subjectivity is constructed as a constantly varying and dynamic process.

Victimization and Dependency
After gender-specific programs such as FIT create an essential female 

for girls to aspire to and celebrate, the program model teaches girls about 
productivity and dependency. On the surface, the creators of FIT purport to 
be teaching girls to be self-sufficient through educational interventions and 
to be productive by encouraging work, skills training, and the value of 
contributing to society (Daniel, 1999). However, careful analysis of the 
program reveals the creators’ understanding of emotional dependency 
as acceptable and financial dependency as unacceptable. The emphasis 
on teaching girls to be in healthy, positive relationships suggests that 
relationships are important to society and that females have a responsibility 
to maintain relationships in both families and communities. If only 
the model of gender-specific programming valued the liberal, rugged 
individual, it would not place so much importance on girls’ ability to 
successfully maintain relationships with adults. 

Clearly, society has a vested interest in producing a girl who is not 
only productive but also caring and nurturing. As evidence of this interest, 
during the early stages of designing the intervention, the Department of 
Juvenile Services (DJS) reported that they must “view these girls not only 
as individual teenagers but also as mothers and potential mothers” (DJS, 
1992, p. 5). DJS viewed the FIT program’s responsibilities as going beyond 
treating the girls but also molding their children and future children. A 

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30  Journal of Student Social Work, Volume III   



key component of the teen parenting group was teaching the girls how 
to nurture (Daniel, 1999). Raising young women who are caring and 
nurturing towards their children and families serves society well. These 
girls may grow up to care for their elderly parents, maintain intact families 
without public assistance, and pass along the value of taking care of one’s 
own to their children (Folbre, 2001; Peterson, 2001). As Folbre notes, 
“high quality care creates benefits that extend well beyond the immediate 
recipients…Parents who raise happy, healthy and successful children create 
an especially important public good” (Folbre, p. 50). Folbre and Peterson 
suggest that society is not only interested in producing productive citizens 
(individuals who have jobs and can support themselves financially), 
but is also interested in producing citizens who care and nurture. 

It is important to note that the individuals who advocate for gender-
specific services are in fact well-intentioned people who are using 
these constructions to serve society. Their motivations are not only to produce 
a certain type of female, but also to create sympathy for this often 
invisible population (Acoca, 1999). The practitioners of FIT unfortunately 
fall prey to the double-edged sword of having to construct this population 
as victims in order to justify state intervention. In many ways, the identity 
politics employed by radical feminists calls for a universal womanhood 
and also relies upon victimization to garner support. Brown (1995) applies 
the example of consciousness raising or other confessionals that attempt to 
convey the woman’s experience as a way of using a collective identity to 
legitimize victimization. 

Structure, Agency, and Rational Choice
While gender-specific programming does construct the girls as victims, 

the model of intervention also identifies the girls as individuals with agency 
to change their position in society and make better choices (Daniel, 1999). 
For example, one component of the FIT program is the use of simulated 
baby dolls in the pregnancy-prevention program; young mothers are 
also invited to talk to the participants about the hardships of balancing 
work, school, and family at such a young age. The stated purpose of the 
intervention is to “provide girls with information they can use to make 
choices” and “to help girls decide if they are ready to be parents” (Daniel, 
p. 7). The program is problematic because it presumes teenage pregnancy is 
the result of a rational choice. The idea is that if FIT staff provides girls with 
information they will make better choices, such as to avoid sexual activity 
and pregnancy. The model of gender-specific programming attempts to 
teach girls to make choices that do not drain society financially, which 

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   Journal of Student Social Work, Volume III   31



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32  Journal of Student Social Work, Volume III   

allows them to produce public goods both economically and socially 
by providing care and support to both family and community. Little 
consideration is given to the role societal structures play in constructing 
the lives of the FIT participants. 

Conclusion

Returning to the original mission of FIT to “restore hope to young 
women who have lost their direction and focus and lack goals” (Daniel, 
1999, p. 15), this analysis shows that FIT had very specific ideas in mind 
for which direction the girls’ lives should follow and what goals the girls 
should have. The idea of providing better services for girls may be a noble 
one, but social workers must be wary of what exactly these services entail. 
Gender-specific services for girls in the juvenile justice system are spreading 
throughout the country with the endorsement of the federal government. 
However, many questions are still left unanswered. Are we certain the 
services defined as needed for girls would not also be useful for boys? What 
effect does constructing girls as relational, sexual, and maternal beings have 
on our understanding of masculinity and male juvenile delinquency? Social 
work practitioners who work with delinquent girls must move beyond the 
rigid stereotypes that have been used throughout the last two centuries to 
understand female delinquency. Social work should acknowledge all girls as 
unique individuals and examine how society’s expectations should or should 
not influence girls’ sense of what it means to be successful or complete human
beings.

References

Acoca, L. (1999). Investing in girls: A 21st century strategy. Juvenile 
Justice Journal VI (1), Washington, DC: Office of Juvenile Justice
Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and
Delinquency Prevention.

Artz, S. (1998). Sex, power, & the violent school girl. Toronto, Canada: 
Trifolium Books. 

Birke, L. (1986). Women, feminism and biology: The feminist 
challenge. New York: Methuen.

Brown, W. (1995). States of injury: Power and freedom in late modernity. 
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 

Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of 
identity. London: Routledge.



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Chesney-Lind, M. & Sheldon, R. (1991). Girls, delinquency, and 
juvenile justice. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks Cole.

Chodorow, N. (1978). The reproduction of mothering. Berkeley, CA: 
University of California Press. 

Daniel, M. (1999). The female intervention team. Juvenile Justice, 6(1). 
Department of Juvenile Services (DJS) (1992).

Department of Juvenile Services (DJS). (1992). Female population report, 
1992. Baltimore, MD: Department of Juvenile Services. 

Folbre, N. (2001). Chapter 2: The care penalty. In The invisible heart, 
(pp. 22-52). New York: The New Press.

Friedan, D. (1965). The feminine mystique. London: Penguin.
Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and 

women’s development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Grosser, G. (1952). Juvenile delinquency and contemporary American 

sex roles. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Harvard University. 
hooks, b. (1984). Feminist theory: From margin to centre. Boston: 

South End Press. 
Kempf-Leonard, K. & Sample, L. (2000). Disparity based on sex: Is 

gender-specific treatment warranted? Justice Quarterly, 17(1), 89-
127. 

Lombroso, C. & Ferrero, W. (1895). The female offender. New York
       Philosophical Library. 
Lorde, A. (1985). I am your sister: Black women organizing across   

sexualities. New York: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press. 
Morris, R. (1963). Comparison of female and male delinquency. 

Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan. 
Peters, S. (1998). Guiding principles for promising female programming:

An inventory of best ractices. Retrieved March 31, 2004, from  
http://www.ojjdp.ncjrs.org/pubs/principlescontents.html 

Peterson, P. (2001). A graying world. The dangers of global aging.
Harvard International Review, 23(3), 66-70. 

Wollstonecraft, M. (1975). Vindication of the rights of woman. London: 
Penguin. 

Anita Nabha is a second year master’s student at CUSSW
concentrating in the Advanced Generalist Practice and 
Programming method within the Contemporary Social Problems 
field of practice. Her current field placement is at Sanctuary 
for Families, where she works with battered women and helps 
facilitate the Mentors Program, an outreach and advocacy 
program for former clients. She holds a bachelor’s degree in 
Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought from Amherst College. 
Her email address is an2119@columbia.edu.


