Vera Lopez: Complicated Lives: Girls, Parents, Drugs, and Juvenile Justice

Excerpt

Complicated Lives: Girls, Parents, Drugs, and Juvenile Justice features real interviews with adolescent girls that are involved in the juvenile justice system. In the book, Vera Lopez sits down with 65 girls to discuss the life experiences that led them to where they were at the time of the interviews. These adolescents were between the ages of 14 and 18, had involvement with drug use, and resided in either a correctional facility, a treatment center, or one of three group homes. In their interviews with Lopez, the girls opened up about their relationships with their parents, significant others, and other inhibitors in their environment that ultimately contributed to their involvement in these institutions. This book aims to change the narrative surrounding the circumstances and situations that entangle adolescent girls in the juvenile justice system. Lopez attempts to illuminate factors that society often ignores or misrepresents when attempting to explain the behaviors that these teens have exhibited. By shedding a light on some of the less obvious, deep-rooted sociocultural issues, Lopez aims to educate “students, practitioners, researchers, policy makers, and others with a deeper appreciation of system-involved girls” so they can work on attaining social justice for these young women (Lopez 2017, p. 188). She hopes that these people will use this resource to demonstrate to those who are unaware or insensitive to the issues, that the girls implicated by these cultural, environmental, and societal stigmas have an incredibly difficult uphill battle to beat their odds. Educated individuals with an understanding of these issues can use that privilege to spread awareness and inform others. This, in turn, can lead to greater respect for the groups involved, as well as critical discussions about how these systemic issues came to be and how they can be addressed. This book successfully portrays the complex social and familial experience of adolescent women who find themselves in the correctional system, however, occasionally distracts readers from the substantive interviews with irrelevant anecdotes and partially developed connections to popular culture and media. Additionally, while Lopez does a captivating job of reporting interviews and stories from these girls, she referenced parts of her own book which support the overlapping areas involved, but make the message she is attempting to develop slightly confusing at times. By reestablishing the background information for each participant, and relying less on external examples when she had so many real-life interviews, her points would have been even more impactful and emphasized. Even through these slight criticisms, this work was extremely interesting, informative, and illuminating to many of the struggles that adolescent females experience in low income communities that seemingly feed them into the juvenile justice system. …