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Advocating for Out of Home YouthJacob Anderson-Minshall
“It’s a pretty disturbing picture,” Jody Marksamer says of the “very
interesting information” revealed in a new study by the Equity Project
examining why LGBT youths enter the juvenile justice system and what
their experiences inside are like.
For the past three years Marksamer—who uses male pronouns but says he
doesn’t like to talk about his gender identity to the media—has
coordinated the Equity Project, a collaboration between the National
Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), the Legal Services for Children (a
San Francisco Bay Area organization providing legal services to youth)
and The National Juvenile Defenders Center (a national resource service
for juvenile offenders).
“It’s a pretty disturbing picture,” Jody Marksamer says of the “very
interesting information” revealed in a new study by the Equity Project
examining why LGBT youths enter the juvenile justice system and what
their experiences inside are like.
For the past three years Marksamer—who uses male pronouns but says he
doesn’t like to talk about his gender identity to the media—has
coordinated the Equity Project, a collaboration between the National
Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), the Legal Services for Children (a
San Francisco Bay Area organization providing legal services to youth)
and The National Juvenile Defenders Center (a national resource service
for juvenile offenders).
A first draft of the study’s findings was recently compiled and
includes practice and policy recommendations for juvenile delinquency
systems, while also highlighting jurisdiction that are ensuring LGBT
youth are treated with fairness, respect and dignity. The final report
should be available later this year.
“We surveyed and interviewed judges, defenders, prosecutors, probation
officers and detention workers,” Marksamer says of the study. “Then we
had focus groups with young people across the country. Almost 60 young
people [talked] about their experiences in the system.”
A number of the administrators “responded to us in a very aggressive
and homophobic manner;” Marksamer reveals. “Stating that this survey
was ‘crap,’…that LGBT youth are treated just like everybody else, and
that they really are just crazy and have all these problems.”
Still, Marksmer assures, “We also heard some good things, where
different places in the country are doing a lot of training [so] they
can really, zealously advocate for their clients and understand the
context of their LGBT clients’ lives, to get a better sense of why they
were arrested. [Then] they’re able to really defend a client.”
Marksamer’s primary job, as Director of NCLR’s Youth Project puts him
in the thick of advocacy and education focused on LGBT youth;
especially those who are in the foster care, in the juvenile justice
system or facing homelessness. “Young people are now coming out at
younger ages,” notes Marksamer. “And when families are unable to handle
that…LGBT youth are…ending up in the child welfare system
because…they’re kicked out or they run away. Then, in order to survive,
they have to participate in the street economy and that makes them very
vulnerable to arrest as well as exploitation and violence.”
Even homeless shelters aren’t always an option Marksamer says,
especially for transgender youth who may not fit into the
sex-segregated housing. And a collusion of these factors contributes to
the “unfortunate and alarming” number of LGBT youth who are homeless,
he says. Marksamer points to surveys that indicate between 20 and 40%
of all homeless youth in this country identify as LGBT. Meanwhile,
other queer kids land in detention after skipping school or defending
themselves from harassment and assault.
Many of these homeless or adjudicated LGBT youths end up in foster
care, where Marksamer says there are at least some protections. “In
California as well as in Oregon there are laws that require the foster
care system treat LGBT young people—and LGBT adults who are involved in
that system—without discrimination and ensure that they…are safe.”
To provide recommendations to foster parents and child welfare
agencies, Marksamer co-authored the 2006 publication, Best Practice
Guidelines for Serving LGBT Youth in Out of Home Care; which is “geared
toward people who aren’t familiar working with LGBT people [but] even
if you’re an LGBT foster parent and you’re fostering an LGBT youth, you
may not know what the system is required to be doing.”
For example, he says, “A young person shouldn’t be prohibited from
going to an LGBT related extracurricular activity or youth group
programming, if they would be allowed to go to one that was not LGBT.”
While birth parents may bear partial responsibility for sending LGBT
kids onto the streets, Marksamer contends, “Parents do come around.
[Especially] if they can get support through the child welfare system,
and get connected to counseling.” And, he argues, family reunification
is critical, “When a young person turns 18, and they’re out of the
system; the support of their family is really important.”
In addition to his work with NCLR (nclrights.org) and the Equity
Project, Marksamer co-founded PISSAR, an organization focused on safer
bathroom access; worked with the San Francisco Human Rights Commission
in developing guidelines for San Francisco’s non- discrimination
ordinance; sits on the board of the foster youth empowerment
organization, California Youth Connection; and co-founded The Bay Area
Out of Home Youth Advocacy Council to help the San Francisco Bay Area
implement the state’s Foster Care Non Discrimination Act, which
requires training for foster parents and prohibits discrimination based
on sexual orientation or gender identity.
Another issue garnering Marksamer’s attention is one he sees as a “
huge problem”--sexual assault in adult prisons and juvenile detention
facilities, “perpetuated by the way that people are treated in these
facilities and the way that the power system is set up and encouraged
by the guards.”
“There’s no reason anybody who is in prison or jail or juvenile
detention facilities should be sexually assaulted,” Marksamer
maintains. “It’s a violation of the fourth amendment as well as the
constitutional rights of people who are in facilities. The jail and
juvenile justice facilities have a constitutional responsibility to
ensure the safety of those people in their facilities; and they’re not
doing that.”
In 2005, Marksamer spoke to the National Prison Rape Elimination
Commission about the specific risks LGBT adults and youths face in
detention facilities. This summer he says, NCLR submitted comments on a
draft set of standards the commission will eventually require
facilities to abide by.
“We’re very hopeful,” he says. “That the standards [will] adequately
address the concerns and issues that come up for LGBT people in prison
and detention facilities. Because…they had incorporated the concerns
that we had raised in our [earlier] testimony and …recognized the
vulnerability of LGBT people to assaults in prison and juvenile
detention facilities.”
Marksamer wants to focus on the positive: “As depressing as some of the
things I’ve just talked about sound,” he insists, they’ve begun to
improve. “Five years ago it was, ‘We could never have a gay boy in the
same group home with other boys.’ And now [it’s] ‘We have a transgender
girl and we want to put her in the girls’ group home, can we do that?’”
Trans writer Jacob Anderson-Minshall (
jake@trans-nation.org) co-hosts Gender Blender, a new show on Portland, Oregon’s 90.7 fm KBOO radio streaming live at KBOO.fm.
AJ