Young women's intimate partner relationships and institutional responses inside a California Juvenile Detention...

This paper examines the experiences of girls who engage in intimate partner relationships behind bars and describes how institutional actors respond to these partnerships. Current research on sexuality in prisons and detention centres largely focuses on the experiences of men. Those studies that focus on women largely ignore the experiences of underage women. Moreover, current theoretical and empirical work in this area demonstrates how monitoring sexuality is a form of social control and is largely punished behind bars. We discuss how this process works and how girls negotiate relationships in one California Juvenile Detention Centre, drawing on two years of ethnographic research and interviews with incarcerated women. We find that correctional staff often ignore sexual relationships behind bars and provide little or no sexuality and sexual health education. Additionally, we discuss the benefits and challenges to girls participating in relationships in secure confinement. Our work contributes to the small but growing body of research on sexuality behind bars.