Girlhood Juvenile Delinquents, Shanae Megan, Waxter Juvenile

¶ … Girlhood juvenile delinquents, Shanae Megan, Waxter Juvenile Facility Maryland. By end fil

There are a number of reasons for why Shanae was able to turn her life around whereas Megan was not. Most of these reasons were actually some of the primary themes in Liz Garbus' documentary Girlhood, which followes the lives of these young women for three years from the Waxter Juvenile Detention Center to the streets of Baltimore. Shanae had a substantially greater amount of support than Megan did. Shanae's family -- and her mother in particular -- repeatedly demonstrated that they loved her and wanted her to make a change for the better. Megan, however, was virtually abandoned by her mother and received little support from the rest of the family. Not surprisingly, by the end of the documentary she is living alone in Baltimore while Shanae was living with her family and doing well in high school while preparing to attend a junior college.

However, it is also noteworthy that Megan is two years older than Shanae. This age difference is crucial because there is a mutability associated with youth that tends to wear away the older a person gets. It is typically more difficult for adults to change their patterns of behavior than it is for younger people. This fact, combined with the lack of familial support that Megan got, certainly contributed to her continuing to run away from foster homes. Shanae, however, simply had to acknowledge her culpability in the murder of a friend before being able to effect a significant change in the direction of her life.

The most salient factor in Megan's reversal of fortune however was the tireless work that her mother did to ensure that her daughter became an upstanding individual. Her mother was largely able to chart Shanae's problem for the duration of the movie, because she cared about her and wanted to see her do better. Megan, however, never received such support from her mother, or from the rest of her family. Subsequently, she was always looking for that support and without it had less incentive and means to create a change in her life.

There are a couple of different things I would attempt to implement if I were the director of the Waxter Juvenile Facility to make the program more efficacious for juveniles sent there for reform. One of the biggest criticisms that Garbus implied about this facility throughout the film is that there is a definite dearth of structured activities for the youngsters enrolled there. One can even argue that this lack of structured time spent engaging in constructive pursuits is one of the facets of this facility that contributed to Megan's sense of mischief, which was apparent in the early part of the documentary.