Francine Sherman

director, juvenile rights advocacy project


Fran Sherman

At a glance...
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Director, Juvenile Rights Advocacy Project
Law School

shermanf@bc.edu

Office Location
Law School
F301

617.552.4382

  BACKGROUND

Francine Sherman is a clinical professor and Director of the Juvenile Rights Advocacy Project at Boston College Law School. She speaks widely about girls in the justice system and contextual legal services for system involved youth and is doing ongoing research into the pathways girls take into and through justice systems as well as effective practices for attorney’s representing girls. She is a founding member of the Girls’ Justice Initiative and the author of their recent report, Girls in the Juvenile Justice System: Perspectives on Services and Conditions of Confinement. She is a regular contributor to “Women, Girls & Criminal Justice” where she has written about runaway girls, probation practices, and teen prostitution, and legal strategies for attorneys representing young women. She was a contributor to the 2001 ABA and NBA publication Justice by Gender: The Lack of Appropriate Prevention, Diversion and Treatment Alternatives for Girls in the Justice System, and to the 2001 ABA publication America’s Children Still at Risk. She is an ongoing consultant to the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative on strategies to reduce the detention of girls nationally and is lead consultant to the Hyams Foundation Girls’ Initiative in Boston. She is the author of the Girls’ volume of the Pathways to Detention Reform series published by the Annie E. Casey Foundation (2005). She is co-author, with Marsha Levick, of "When Individual Differences Demand Equal Treatment: An Equal Rights Approach to the Special Needs of Girls in the Juvenile Justice System," 18 Wisc. Women’s L. J. 9 (2003).

"Her project is becoming known as a resource for practicing juvenile and delinquency attorneys, as a center for policy research, and as an incubator for training a first generation of multidisciplinary juvenile advocates." -- Boston College Law School Magazine, Spring 1998

EDUCATION

B.A., University of Missouri; J.D., Boston College.

RECENT ACTIVITIES

Work in Progress: Girls and Juvenile Detention, a forthcoming volume in the Pathways to Juvenile Detention Reform series published by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Presentations: With Judith B. Tracy, “It Takes a Village to Raise a Child; It Takes Two Professionals to Successfully Teach Research and Analysis—A Simulated Class Reflecting a Truly Integrated First-Year Legal Research and Writing Curriculum,” Twelfth Biennial Conference of the Legal Writing Institute, Atlanta, GA, in June 2006. "Data, Detention, and Girls" as moderator at the annual meeting of the Annie E. Casey Foundation Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative, San Francisco, in December 2004. "Women in Prison in Massachusetts: Maintaining Family Connections," at the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts McCormack Graduate School of Public Policy, Boston, in March 2005. "Are We Meeting the Needs of Adolescent Girls?" as panelist at the MCLE Seventh Annual Juvenile Delinquency and Child Welfare Law Conference in April 2005.

Activities: Consulted with the Hyams Foundation to develop and implement its Girls’ Initiative program. Moderated a program entitled "Connecting Girls’ Programs and Girls in Juvenile Justice," a peer-led discussion sponsored by the Girls’ Coalition of Greater Boston in February 2003. Continues as a member of the board of the New England Juvenile Defender Center. Launched the Arts and Entrepreneurship Project for girls in the Massachusetts justice system as a new initiative of the Juvenile Rights Advocacy Project. Co-sponsor, with the Ella J. Baker House, the College of Criminal Justice of Northeastern University, and the Dorchester (Massachusetts) Community Roundtable, of a two-day conference entitled "Celebrating Boston Girls: Sharing Resources, Building Strengths," at Northeastern University, in Boston, in June 2002.

Appointments: Appointed to the Massachusetts Department of Correction Female Offender Review Panel in January. Appointed to the Massachusetts Women’s Political Caucus Board of Directors for 2005.

Other: The Juvenile Rights Advocacy Project was awarded a two-year grant from the Jesse B. Cox Charitable Trust for the Girls Health Passport Project Phase II and a planning grant from the Jacob and Valeria Langeloth Foundation for the Massachusetts Health Passport Project.

COURSES

Fall '09: No courses taught
Spring '10: Juvenile Justice Seminar; Juvenile Rights Advocacy

PUBLICATIONS
  • "Reframing the Response: Girls in the Juvenile Justice System and Domestic Violence."  Juvenile and Family Justice Today 18: no.1 (Winter 2009): 16-20.
  • "Access to Community Healthcare for Youth in the Juvenile Justice System: Initial Lessons From the Massachusetts Health Passport Project."  Women, Girls and Criminal Justice 8, no.6 (October/November 2007): 81-82, 87-91.
  • Taking on the Challenge: Phase I of the Hyams Foundation Girls' Initiative. Boston, MA: Hyams Foundation, 2006.
  • Consent to Medical Treatment by Minors in Massachusetts: A Guide for Practitioners. Newton, MA: Boston College Law School Juvenile Rights Advocacy Project, 2006. (With Juvenile Rights Advocacy Project staff and students)
  • Detention Reform and Girls: Challenges and Solutions. Baltimore, MD: Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2005.
  • With Marsha L. Levick. "When Individual Differences Demand Equal Treatment: An Equal Rights Approach to the Special Needs of Girls in the Juvenile Justice System." Wisconsin Women's Law Journal 18: no.1 (Spring 2003): 9-50.
  • Girls in the Juvenile Justice System: Perspectives on Services and Conditions of Confinement. [S.l.] Girls' Justice Initiative, 2003.
  • "How Girls Enter and Move through the Juvenile Justice System." Girls' Coalition Newsletter 10: issue 1 (Fall 2002/Winter 2003): 7.
  • "Promoting Justice in an Unjust System." Women, Girls and Criminal Justice, 3:no.4 (June/July 2002): 49-50, 58-60; 3:no.5 (August/September 2002): 65-66, 74-78; 3:no.6 (October/November 2002): 83-84, 92.
  • "Effective Advocacy Systems for Girls: Promoting Justice in an Unjust System." In Children's Law Institute: Legal & Social Welfare Issues of Girls & Adolescents 2001. Co-chairs: James R. Bell, Jane M. Spinak, 151-182. New York: Practising Law Institute, 2001.
  • "Prostitution and Teenage Girls." Women, Girls & Criminal Justice 1: no.6 (October/November 2000): 83-84.
  • "Probation and the Delinquent Girl." Women, Girls & Criminal Justice 1: no.5 (August/September 2000): 71-72, 80. (Also appears in Community Corrections Report 7:no.6 (September/October 2000): 1-2, 94.)
  • With William R. Torbert, editor. Transforming Social Inquiry, Transforming Social Action: New Paradigms for Crossing the Theory/Practice Divide in Universities and Communities. Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic Press, 2000.
  • "What's in a Name? Runaway Girls Pose Challenges for the Justice System." Women, Girls, and Criminal Justice 1:no.2 (February/March 2000): 19-20, 26.
  • "Law in the School-Linked Services Model: Problems and Possibilities." In Collaborative Practice: School and Human Service Partnerships, edited by Robbie W. C. Tourse and Jean F. Mooney, 201-217. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999.
  • The Role of Context in the Representation of Children." In Who Speaks for This Child? A Dialogue About the Legal Representation of Children, 3-16. Boston, MA: MCLE, 1999.
  • With Barbara Kaban. "An Overview of Disposition Process in Delinquency Cases." In Juvenile Law Basics (1999-06.04-CM), [edited by] Debra S. Krupp, 205-230. Boston, MA: MCLE, 1998.
  • With Jane Kent Gionfriddo and E. Joan Blum, editors. The Second Draft: Bulletin of the Legal Research Institute 9-10 (1994-1996)