National Efforts to Address the Needs of the Adolescent Female
Offender Before the passage of the Juvenile Justice and
Delinquency Prevention (JJDP) Act (42 U.S.C. 5601 et. seq.) in
1974, individual practitioners and programs were striving to
make sure the needs of the adolescent female offender were met.
However, with the passage of the JJDP Act, specific policies
began to affect the way the juvenile court approached and
processed this population. At first, the effects were
coincidental at best. In recent years, however, in conjunction
with Federal programs, Congress has made more deliberate strides
to make sure this population is represented in current juvenile
justice policy and program development. Juvenile Justice and
Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 The original JJDP Act, as
passed in 1974, contained two specific requirements that States
needed to meet in order to access Federal juvenile justice
monies. The first was the removal of all status and nonoffenders
from secure confinement, and the second wa