Complicated Lives

Girls, Parents, Drugs, and Juvenile Justice

By Vera Lopez

SERIES: Rutgers Series in Childhood Studies

Rutgers University Press

Winner of the 2019 Intersectional Book Award from the American Society of Criminology's Division on Women & Crime

Complicated Lives focuses on the lives of sixty-five drug-using girls in the juvenile justice system (living in group homes, a residential treatment center, and a youth correctional facility) who grew up in families characterized by parental drug use, violence, and child maltreatment. Vera Lopez situates girls’ relationships with parents who fail to live up to idealized parenting norms and examines how these relationships change over time, and ultimately contribute to the girls’ future drug use and involvement in the justice system.

While Lopez’s subjects express concerns and doubt in their chances for success, Lopez provides an optimistic prescription for reform and improvement of the lives of these young women and presents a number of suggestions ranging from enhanced cultural competency training for all juvenile justice professionals to developing stronger collaborations between youth and adult serving systems and agencies.

Excellent and flawlessly written, Complicated Lives is a crucial piece of work. Lopez brilliantly addresses the complex intersectional and myriad of challenges surrounding these girls, their parents, and the juvenile 'justice' system. Joanne Belknap, author of The Invisible Woman: Gender, Crime, and Justice

'Delinquency theory and research has largely ignored criminalized girls and girls of color. For this reason, Complicated Lives fills a huge void. A must read for those who care about girlhood, with all its complexities and challenges, in America.'
Meda Chesney-Lind, co-author of The Female Offender: Girls, Women, and Crime

Complicated Lives is carefully constructed, using qualitative data and an intersectional lens. Engaging and clear. Society and Gender

Complicated Lives provides the groundwork for evidence-based interventions for a population of teenage girls whose needs are often not being met effectively because of funders’ failure to hear the voices of those most affected by adverse conditions in the home, community, and institutional settings. The book deals with some of the most complicated societal issues. Lopez appreciates the larger picture and leads us in a positive direction toward overcoming the myriad of counterproductive forces that impede successful outcomes. Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work

VERA LOPEZ is an associate professor of Justice and Social Inquiry in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University in Tempe. She is the coeditor of Adolescent Girls’ Sexualities and the Media.

Introduction
1   Growing Up in a “Dysfunctional” Family
2   Mothers’ Little Helpers
3   Daddy’s Little Girl: Feeling Rejected, Abandoned, and Unloved
4   Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places
5   Doing Drugs: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
6   Parents’ Attempts to Intervene on Behalf of Drug-Using Daughters
7   Property of the State: Locked Up, Locked Out, and in Need of Treatment
8   Moving beyond the Individual toward Programmatic, Systemic, and Policy Solutions

Appendices
Acknowledgments
Notes
References
Index

Related Titles