Feminine leadership and juvenile justice outcomes: The Florida experience

• Published date: 01 May 2024
• Author: William T. Jackson,Milena I. Neshkova,Meredith A. Newman
• Date: 01 May 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13706

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Feminine leadership and juvenile justice outcomes:

The Florida experience

William T. Jackson

1

| Milena I. Neshkova

2

| Meredith A. Newman

2

1

Department of Public Administration and

Policy, School of Public Affairs, American

University, Washington, DC, USA

2

Department of Public Policy and

Administration, Steven J. Green School of

International and Public Affairs, Florida

International University, Miami, Florida, USA

Correspondence

William T. Jackson, Department of Public

Administration and Policy, School of Public

Affairs, American University,

Washington, DC, USA.

Email: wjackson@american.edu

Abstract

In this paper, we ask whether female top law enforcement officials can steer

justice provision on the ground. While prior research has documented that female

street-level bureaucrats advance the interests of their female clients, we know little

about how female leaders influence the distribution of street-level outcomes. This

study draws on juvenile justice and inquires whether youth arrests and prosecu-

tions vary as a function of the sheriff’s and state attorney’s sex. We expect counties

and circuits led by female sheriffs and state attorneys to experience fewer youth

arrests and prosecutions than those led by men, especially among female and

minority offenders. Data from Florida’s 67 counties between 2015 and 2020 reveal

that women’s leadership is associated with less severe outcomes for all young

offenders, not just females. We also find that gender and feminine leadership theo-

ries hold more explanatory power in this context than representative bureaucracy

and gendered organizational socialization.

Evidence for practice

•Female top elected law enforcement officials affect policy implementation at

the street level toward more restorative rather than punitive outcomes.

•Feminine leadership explains the distribution of youth arrests and prosecutions

among minority groups better than theories of representative bureaucracy and

gendered organizational socialization.

•Counties with Sheriff’s and State Attorney’s Offices headed by women experi-

ence fewer arrests and prosecutions of juvenile offenders, especially among

Black and Hispanic youth.

Back in 1899, two revolutionary women, the philanthropist

Lucy Flower and the social worker Julia Lathrop, pioneered

the creation of juvenile courts separate from those for

adults. They sought to remove children from the criminal

justice system and protect them from the stigma associ-

ated with it (Dohrn et al., 2002). More than a century later,

scholars and practitioners consider the juvenile justice

system a gateway to the criminal justice system (Berry-

James, 2012), with children subjected to adult punitive

practices, mostly minority youth (Alexander, 2012). This

study asks whether the spirit of the progressive era is rele-

vant today by focusing on female leadership in a system

with life-lasting consequences for young offenders. Specifi-

cally, we pose two interrelated questions. First, does having

female heads of law enforcement offices affect juvenile jus-

tice outcomes at the street level, and if so, how? Second,

do outcomes for female offenders in counties with female

sheriffs and state attorneys differ from those in counties

with male sheriffs and state attorneys?

To model these relationships, we draw on theories of

feminine leadership, representative bureaucracy, and gen-

dered organizational socialization. We build upon prior

work on effective (and affective) leadership to posit that

female sheriffs and state attorneys will pursue a restorative

approach to young offenders. We expect that women’s

leadership styles will be associated with preventative and

rehabilitative outcomes rather than punitive ones. Leader-

ship attributes ascribed more strongly to women than men

and primarily concerned with other people’s welfare are

characterized as communal,“for example, affectionate,

helpful, kind, sympathetic, interpersonally sensitive, nurtur-

ant, and gentle”(Eagly & Johannesen-Schmidt, 2001, 783).

We argue that gender roles spill over to organizations.

Leaders such as sheriffs and state attorneys “occupy roles

Received: 15 October 2022 Revised: 7 July 2023 Accepted: 10 July 2023

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13706

544 © 2023 American Society for Public Administration. Public Admin Rev. 2024;84:544–559.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/puar

defined by their specific position in a hierarchy but also

simultaneously function under the constraints of their gen-

der roles”(Eagly & Johannesen-Schmidt, 2001, 783). Based

on these theoretical expectations, we test whether

counties with female sheriffs and state attorneys experi-

ence fewer youth arrests and prosecutions than those led

by males. Data from Florida’s 67 counties from 2015 to

2020 support this expectation: having female sheriffs and

state attorneys mitigate the justice outcomes, especially

among Black and Hispanic youth. Representative bureau-

cracy seems less relevant in this context, as we register a

drop in both female and male youth arrests and prosecu-

tions in jurisdictions managed by female elected execu-

tives. Such a result is additional evidence for feminine

leadership that prioritizes restorative over punitive

approaches to juvenile delinquency.

This article makes a twofold contribution to the current

literature. First, it examines an important but understudied

question about the effect of top elected officials’identities

and whether they impact the implementation of public

policies at the street level. Previous studies focused mainly

on the behavior of frontline workers and reported signifi-

cant descriptive benefits from female representation in

the workforce for female clients. Our study shifts the focus

to a group that has received less attention in extant

scholarship—the elected law enforcement officials at the

local level. Sheriffs and state attorneys are heads of admin-

istrative agencies and belong to a class of officials called

elected executives. They are selected through a direct vote

but perform administrative duties (Miller, 2013). Although

deputy sheriffs are the ones who make the arrests, we posit

that female leadership of the chief justice authorities affects

street-level outcomes by shaping the expectations for front-

line workers. The signals deputies and prosecutors receive

about the approach to juveniles might differ depending on

the preferences of their leaders. Our findings strongly sup-

port the presence of such a mechanism. Second, we empiri-

cally test the explanatory power of feminine leadership,

representative bureaucracy, and gendered organizational

socialization on juvenile justice outcomes. The findings

that women’s leadership softens the severity of penalties

for delinquent minors speak to a more compassionate

approach consistent with communal characteristics of

feminine leadership. In this sense, our results underscore

the role of female leaders in achieving a more equitable

justice provision.

The rest of the paper proceeds as follows. Next, we pro-

vide an overview of the juvenile justice system and dispar-

ities in justice outcomes among social groups. We then

discuss the elected executive status of sheriffs and state

attorneys and their jurisdictional authority in Florida. The fol-

lowing section outlines our theoretical framework and the

potential pathways through which female sheriffs and state

attorneys influence justice outcomes on the ground. We

continue with the estimation results and discuss their impli-

cations for theory and practice. The last section concludes

and outlines avenues for future research.

DISPARITIES IN JUSTICE PROVISION AMONG

SOCIAL GROUPS

The United States has a long history of inequality and

injustice regarding the law and its application to people of

color and women (Gooden, 2017). The progressive move-

ment to institute a children’s court sought to rehabilitate

delinquent youth (Dohrn et al., 2002; Henning, 2012;

Sharma, 2016) and allow judges to devise individualized

treatments for young offenders rather than punish them

(Howell et al., 2012). Yet, the juvenile justice system has

become increasingly punitive, targeting minority and

lower-class communities through law enforcement and the

courts (Alexander, 2012). Research consistently shows that

court practices have produced disparate outcomes,

unequal treatment, and unsafe environments for detained

youth (Berry-James, 2012;GonzalezvanCleve,2016).

In a study examining the shift in juvenile policy from

prevention to sanction, Stevens and Morash (2015) docu-

ment an increasing trend of punitive measures placed on

Black and Brown youth, with the police focusing on illicit

substances and drugs rather than addressing the victimi-

zation of minorities (Campos-Manzo et al., 2020). Scholars

have also coined the term “school-to-prison pipeline”to

denote the grim trajectory of many young offenders

(Sharma, 2016). Such a pipeline is especially real in Florida,

where after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman

Douglas High School in 2018, the state invested in hiring

more sworn police officers, known as school resource

officers (SROs), on school campuses. Recent studies dem-

onstrate that the increased presence of SROs is associated

with more behavioral incident reports and student arrests

(Curran, 2020; Gottfredson et al., 2020). Being arrested at

school age can generate life-changing consequences and

negatively affect the future of a young person.

Public health literature offers another perspective by

pointing out that a youth’s first encounter with the juvenile

justice system constitutes a traumatic experience with

implications for future mental health (Eith & Durose, 2011;

Geller et al., 2014). Police stops are associated with depres-

sive symptoms among young adults, both White and Black

(Bacak & Nowotny, 2020). If a police encounter impacts the

mental health of young adults (Garner et al., 2002), this

should hold even more for minors.

Priorworkhasalsoexaminedtheroleofraceand

ethnicity in post-arrest outcomes. Claus et al. (2018)

show how slight differences in post-arrest decisions for

petty offenses produce severe disparities in subse-

quent legal interactions. Relatedly, studies on racial dis-

parities in prosecutions find that Black defendants are

more likely to receive harsher sanctions than Whites

(Stolzenberg et al., 2013). Scholars also highlight the

importance of considering theentirecriminaljustice

system when assessing the link between the offender’s

social identity and the sanction severity (Claus et al., 2018;

Jackson et al., 2023; Stolzenberg et al., 2013). With this

in mind, we analyze the influence of female top law

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW 545