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It is time to end the unjust practices behinds girls&#39; incarceration. There are at least 41,000 girls’ detentions and thousands more long-term commitments each year, typically in correctional facilities that mirror adult prisons designed for punishment and isolation. The young people who are put in these harmful settings are already some of the most marginalized youth in our country: they are disproportionately poor, LGBQ/TGNC, and Black, Native American, and Latinx youth who have experienced multiple forms of chronic generational adversity, usually from a young age—including housing instability or homelessness, child welfare involvement, sexual abuse, commercial sexual exploitation, parental incarceration, historical trauma, discrimination, and many others. National research has consistently shown that girls and gender-expansive youth experience unique pathways into the youth legal system and have unique and distinct needs from diversionary programs. Despite these differences, girls and gender-expansive youth are most often left out of research, policy analysis, and programmatic investments, leaving systems unable to adequately respond to their needs. They end up arrested and pushed into the legal system because they are criminalized for their responses to trauma or the steps they take to protect themselves. Once in the system, girls and gender expansive youth are unjustly incarcerated for reasons that contradict best practice: to discipline noncriminal violations (like running away), protect the young person’s own safety, or provide access to services that all children have a right to receive in their own community. <br /><br />This webinar will discuss the drivers of girls&#39; incarceration, how community-based supports can disrupt those drivers, and how local communities can and are working to end the criminalization and incarceration of girls and gender expansive youth of color.