“You're Being Watched All the Time:”

Abstract

Recent research on systems of social control demonstrates how young men experience surveillance and the harmful effects of these types of practices. However, missing from this discourse is the understanding of how girls experience these practices and the gendered challenges associated with surveillance. In this article, we discuss the experiences of 12 Latina girls who were interviewed inside a juvenile detention center in California. Drawing from semi-structured interviews with them and extensive ethnographic fieldnotes, we examine the perceptions of surveillance experienced by this group of girls. Our findings suggest that girls struggled with the lack of privacy and felt that surveillance practices were degrading. We also discuss how the criminalization of girls through constant surveillance influenced their behavior negatively.