HARSH REALITY: Growing up inside a juvenile detention center

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This film narrows its focus to concentrate on the lives of two teenagers, Shanae Owens and Megan Jensen, both incarcerated for assault at the Waxter Juvenile Facility in Baltimore. With its drab green walls and sparse furnishings, Waxter is no country club. But its staff emerges as a caring if overstressed group of people who do what they can to steer the girls in their charge toward a productive life. Often it's not enough.

''Girlhood,'' which follows Shanae and Megan over three years beginning, doesn't pretend that a place like Waxter can hope to do the job by itself. What both girls crave is the stabilizing force of a caring and responsible mother. Of the two only Shanae receives that nurturing, and it seems to make all the difference. Both girls are likable, smart young women struggling to overcome traumatic backgrounds.

Shanae, an African-American who has been at Waxter for two years when the film begins, was sent there after stabbing a girl to death in a knife fight. Shanae was only 11 at the time and had tumbled into a numbed existence of drinking and drugs after being gang-raped by five boys. Confronted with her crime, Shanae is strangely detached and has little memory of the incident.

Megan, the more unruly of the two is a little older than Shanae. A wild, tough-talking girl of mixed race who has run away from 10 foster homes, she was incarcerated for attacking another foster child with a box cutter. Volatile, articulate and desperately needy, Megan seethes with bitterness at having been abandoned by her mother, Vernessa, a heroin addict and prostitute, who has spent many years in prison.

This film is a riveting documentary about two young offenders serving time in a Baltimore juvenile facility and their struggles to forge a new life for themselves against formidable odds. It shows a fascination with the criminal justice system, and amazing access to the people caught in its wheels. Girlhood thoughtfully questions not just the system itself, but our unfair assumptions about the young people caught within it.

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THE HARSH TRUTH: Growing up inside a juvenile detention center (YouTube)