Conducting Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) Through a Healing-Informed Approach with System-Involved Latinas

Latina girls are disproportionately represented in the US juvenile justice system (Freiburger and Burke 2011). Almost all girls involved with juvenile justice report some form of emotional, physical or sexual abuse prior to interactions with the juvenile justice system; with over 60% of girls reporting trauma before the age of 5 (Dierkhising et al. 2013). For Latina girls, juvenile detention is associated with early death as Latina girls who have been detained are nine times more likely to die by the age of 29 than the general non-detained population (Teplin et al. 2014). The stark reality faced by system-involved Latinas calls for innovative solutions.