A recent CT Mirror story— “Specialized care for girls in justice system has faltered, experts say” — opens with a claim that has hardened into received wisdom: “Connecticut was once a leader in gender-responsive strategies. Experts and advocates say it’s falling behind.”
The story that follows is accurate as far as it goes. The state did stand up the Gender Responsive Probation Model in 2006. The Center for Children’s Advocacy did launch a Girls Juvenile Justice Project. The legislature did pass HB 5508 in 2024, creating a Gender Responsiveness Subcommittee. The work for girls is necessary and was overdue when it began. Experts are right that progress has slowed.
But the framing — “once a leader” — only holds if “gender-responsive” is read to mean “responsive to one gender.” Read literally, Connecticut has never been a leader in gender-responsive strategies for boys, because the state has not built any.
Consider the parallel inventory. Connecticut has a Governor’s Council on Women and Girls established in 2019. There is no Governor’s Council on Boys and Men. The Judicial Branch operates a specialized probation model for girls; there is no equivalent for boys. The new Gender Responsiveness Subcommittee — the only standing “gender responsiveness” body in Connecticut juvenile justice — is, by the bill’s own description, focused on “female and transgender minors,” with its first report on “youth who identify as girls under the age of 18.” Boys are not in scope.
The Trafficking in Persons Council reserves a designated seat for the chair of the state’s legislative women’s commission; it has no designated seat for any organization that works with male trafficking victims. The 2025 “Journey Mapping” report identifies a gap in services for adult victims and is silent on the male-specific gap.
This matters because of where boys actually are in the state’s hardest-end systems. Connecticut detains roughly four boys for every girl — about 82% of detained youth. The U.S. Department of Justice found in 2021 that Manson Youth Institution, the all-male youth prison, violates the Eighth and 14th Amendments and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The 2024 settlement required the state to end disciplinary isolation, fix mental-health care, and deliver legally required special-education services.
The independent monitor reported that pepper-spray incidents at Manson rose from nine in 2023 to 26 in 2024. The DOC Ombudsman has called the agency’s condition “sustained institutional failure.” The Office of the Child Advocate documented “minimal individual mental health treatment” and “inconsistent clinical programming” for the boys held there.
Outside the justice system, the picture is similar. Male suicide is roughly four times the female rate, four out of five teen suicides are boys, and Connecticut’s overall suicide rate is rising faster than the national average. Connecticut girls in the high school class of 2013 enrolled in college at 78.9% within a year, well above their male peers; six-year completion was 55.6% for women and 40% for men. The state’s full-time college student body is now 57.2% female. Richard Reeves’s Of Boys and Men walks through the national version of these numbers; Connecticut’s local version is not better.
None of this is an argument against the work for girls. The girls’ work is being done because it was unbuilt for decades, and the people doing it are right that progress has stalled. The argument is narrower: the state’s 25-year arc has produced a councils-and-statutes infrastructure for one gender and almost nothing for the other, and the article’s framing — “once a leader,” “falling behind” — implies a symmetry that has never existed.
There is a constructive version of this conversation. Amend the Gender Responsiveness Subcommittee’s charge so it reports on outcomes and gaps for boys as well as girls. Pilot a male-responsive juvenile probation model that reflects what is now known about adolescent boys’ development, suicide risk, and educational disengagement. Stand up a Governor’s Working Group on Boys and Men, modeled on the existing Council on Women and Girls. Require the Trafficking in Persons Council to produce a male-victim gap analysis. The Office of the Child Advocate and DOC Ombudsman could issue a joint annual update on Manson until DOJ settlement compliance is independently certified.
The article’s experts are correct that Connecticut’s specialized care for girls has faltered. The state should also be honest about the rest of the record: when it tells its own story about being a leader in gender-responsive strategies, it is telling half the story. Boys in Connecticut — particularly the ones in detention, in mental-health crisis, and falling out of school — have been waiting a long time to be in the other half.
Nathan Earl is an MPH Candidate at Yale School of Public Health, and Student Research Fellow at the Solomon Center for Health Law and Policy at Yale Law School.