# Girls Incarcerated
**Girls Incarcerated** (also known as *Girls Incarcerated: Young and Locked Up*) is an American documentary reality series that premiered on Netflix on March 2, 2018, following teenage girls incarcerated at juvenile correctional facilities in Indiana.[1](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/girls_incarcerated) The series ran for two seasons of eight episodes each, with episodes of about 43 minutes, and carries a TV-MA rating.[1](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/girls_incarcerated) • [2](https://www.justwatch.com/us/tv-show/girls-incarcerated) It documents daily life behind bars, including school, recreation, friendships, romantic relationships, birthdays, and a high school graduation.[1](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/girls_incarcerated)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Premiere | March 2, 2018, on Netflix; season 2 released June 21, 2019[1](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/girls_incarcerated) • [3](https://www.tvmaze.com/shows/35096/girls-incarcerated/episodes) |
| Format | 2 seasons, 16 episodes, about 43 minutes each; documentary/reality TV, TV-MA[2](https://www.justwatch.com/us/tv-show/girls-incarcerated) |
| Season 1 setting | Madison Juvenile Correctional Facility, Madison, Indiana, following about fifteen inmates called "students"[4](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-troubled-teens-of-netflixs-girls-incarcerated) |
| Season 2 setting | LaPorte Juvenile Correctional Facility, after Madison closed in October 2017[5](https://www.distractify.com/p/girls-incarcerated-season-2) |
| Production | Loud Television (ITV America); executive producers include Bianca Barnes-Williams, Royd Chung, Gemma Jordan, Jordana Hochman, Lisa Keane, and Micaela Pender[6](https://www.itv-america.com/portfolio/girls-incarcerated/) • [1](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/girls_incarcerated) |
| Audience ratings | IMDb 7.3/10 from about 1,300 votes; JustWatch user rating 28%[7](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8092942/ratings/) • [2](https://www.justwatch.com/us/tv-show/girls-incarcerated) |
| Availability | Streaming on Netflix (subscription) in the United States[2](https://www.justwatch.com/us/tv-show/girls-incarcerated) |
## Spoilers
### Format and premise
The series follows teenage girls serving sentences at Indiana juvenile correctional facilities, documenting what their lives are like behind bars.[1](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/girls_incarcerated) The girls are referred to as "students" while incarcerated; they attend school, have recreation time, earn privileges, and work on coping skills for anger, peer pressure, and other challenges.[8](https://www.commonsensemedia.org/tv-reviews/girls-incarcerated) Offenses shown range from running away from home and addiction problems to assault and armed robbery.[8](https://www.commonsensemedia.org/tv-reviews/girls-incarcerated)
The incarceration plan at Madison gave teenagers time but no fixed release date, incentivizing them to earn release, usually after a few months, through satisfactory completion of a social-education program.[4](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-troubled-teens-of-netflixs-girls-incarcerated) Madison housed Promise Junior/Senior High School, from which a number of students graduated.[4](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-troubled-teens-of-netflixs-girls-incarcerated)
### Season 1: Madison
Season 1, released March 2, 2018, was filmed at the Madison Juvenile Correctional Facility in Madison, Indiana, following about fifteen inmates along with the teachers, correctional officers, and counselors who supervised them.[4](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-troubled-teens-of-netflixs-girls-incarcerated) Some of the girls were as young as thirteen.[4](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-troubled-teens-of-netflixs-girls-incarcerated) Most of the youths had been committed for minor offenses like drinking alcohol or using marijuana, while a small number faced assault or firearms charges.[4](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-troubled-teens-of-netflixs-girls-incarcerated)
Featured students included seventeen-year-old Taryn Twine, a model student and peer mentor who revealed that she had asked to be sent to Madison as self-punishment for an accidental car crash in which her friend was killed, and sixteen-year-old Najwa Pollard, who had served her sentence but could not be released because her guardians would not claim her.[4](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-troubled-teens-of-netflixs-girls-incarcerated) In interviews on the show, girls describing how they began using drugs, skipping school, or joining gangs invariably mentioned poverty, psychological stress, and sexual abuse; one described being kidnapped by her mother, who forced her to use heroin until she became addicted.[4](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-troubled-teens-of-netflixs-girls-incarcerated)
### Season 2: LaPorte
Falling enrollment of female juvenile students led to the closure of the Madison Juvenile Correctional Facility in October 2017, and the Indiana Department of Correction shut it down in order to enlarge the adjacent adult prison.[9](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8092942/) • [5](https://www.distractify.com/p/girls-incarcerated-season-2) Season 2 was therefore moved to the LaPorte Juvenile Correctional Facility, where Superintendent Galipeau had also transferred.[5](https://www.distractify.com/p/girls-incarcerated-season-2) LaPorte had been established in November 2017 by converting Camp Summit Boot Camp into a female juvenile facility; it can house up to 62 female youth and is the only female juvenile facility in Indiana, serving also as the intake facility for female youth.[10](https://www.in.gov/idoc/facilities/juvenile/laporte-juvenile-correctional-facility/)
Because the girls serve short sentences, with one year-long sentence mentioned as an outlier, no returning cast members from season 1 appeared apart from the correctional officers.[11](https://www.monstersandcritics.com/tv/netflixs-girls-incarcerated-young-and-locked-up-comes-back-for-season-2/) Season 2 was released on June 21, 2019, with all eight episodes available that day.[3](https://www.tvmaze.com/shows/35096/girls-incarcerated/episodes)
## Reception and criticism
The series holds an IMDb rating of 7.3/10 from about 1,300 user votes, while the [JustWatch](https://www.edgepedia.org/justwatch) user rating stands at 28%.[7](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8092942/ratings/) • [2](https://www.justwatch.com/us/tv-show/girls-incarcerated) Common Sense Media described it as a "gritty, insightful prison docu" with strong language and themes, recommending it for ages 16 and up, and noted that it highlights taking responsibility for one's actions while showing many students caught in a cycle of returning to the system after release.[8](https://www.commonsensemedia.org/tv-reviews/girls-incarcerated)
Writing in *The New Yorker* in April 2018, staff writer Doreen St. Félix called the series civil and empathetic, noting that it largely forgoes the macabre violence of prison shows such as MSNBC's *Lockup* and portrays its subjects as human beings with intelligence, contradictions, fears, and hopes.[4](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-troubled-teens-of-netflixs-girls-incarcerated) Her central criticism was that the show, produced by Loud Television, the company behind lifestyle shows such as *Tiny House Hunting*, rarely engages with the efficacy of rehabilitative programs for juvenile women or with the structural realities that lead to girls' incarceration, and does not question whether a detention center is the best place for a young person, even a nonviolent one, to achieve self-actualization.[4](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-troubled-teens-of-netflixs-girls-incarcerated) She also criticized an episode in which a Christian volunteer told the teens at Madison, where pro-LGBT posters lined the halls and students had paired off in secret relationships, that they would go to hell if they were gay.[4](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-troubled-teens-of-netflixs-girls-incarcerated)
## Context: girls in juvenile justice
The series depicts a small and shrinking population. Of the 29,314 youth in residential placement on a typical day in the United States, 15% (4,349) are girls, according to The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization focused on criminal justice reform.[12](https://www.sentencingproject.org/fact-sheet/incarcerated-women-and-girls/) Girls' confinement has fallen sharply: 15,104 girls were confined in residential placement on a typical day in 2001, a figure cut by over 71% by 2023.[12](https://www.sentencingproject.org/fact-sheet/incarcerated-women-and-girls/) Although girls are 15% of incarcerated youth, they make up 40% of youth in placement for status offenses such as truancy and curfew violations, and Native and Black girls are incarcerated at over 4 times and over 3 times the rate of white girls, respectively.[12](https://www.sentencingproject.org/fact-sheet/incarcerated-women-and-girls/) Research on incarcerated female juveniles consistently finds that their lives before incarceration are punctuated by severe trauma and that poly-victimization is not uncommon, supporting trauma-informed approaches in juvenile justice settings.[13](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8837737/)
The decline in Indiana's female juvenile population is visible in the series' own production history: Madison closed in 2017 for lack of students, and LaPorte, its replacement, is a much smaller facility.[9](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8092942/) • [10](https://www.in.gov/idoc/facilities/juvenile/laporte-juvenile-correctional-facility/) No third season has been produced.
## References
1. [Girls Incarcerated, Rotten Tomatoes](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/girls_incarcerated)
2. [Girls Incarcerated (2018), JustWatch](https://www.justwatch.com/us/tv-show/girls-incarcerated)
3. [Girls Incarcerated – Episode List, TVmaze](https://www.tvmaze.com/shows/35096/girls-incarcerated/episodes)
4. [Doreen St. Félix, "The Troubled Teens of Netflix's 'Girls Incarcerated'," The New Yorker, April 30, 2018](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-troubled-teens-of-netflixs-girls-incarcerated)
5. ["'Girls Incarcerated' Season 2 — What It Was Really Like Filming Jesse Rose," Distractify, July 1, 2019](https://www.distractify.com/p/girls-incarcerated-season-2)
6. [GIRLS INCARCERATED, ITV America](https://www.itv-america.com/portfolio/girls-incarcerated/)
7. [Girls Incarcerated: Young and Locked Up – Ratings, IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8092942/ratings/)
8. [Girls Incarcerated – Parents' Guide & TV Review, Common Sense Media](https://www.commonsensemedia.org/tv-reviews/girls-incarcerated)
9. [Girls Incarcerated: Young and Locked Up (TV Series 2018– ), IMDb](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8092942/)
10. [IDOC: LaPorte Juvenile Correctional Facility, Indiana Department of Correction](https://www.in.gov/idoc/facilities/juvenile/laporte-juvenile-correctional-facility/)
11. ["Netflix's Girls Incarcerated: Young and Locked Up Comes Back for Season 2," Monsters and Critics, June 23, 2019](https://www.monstersandcritics.com/tv/netflixs-girls-incarcerated-young-and-locked-up-comes-back-for-season-2/)
12. [Incarcerated Women and Girls, The Sentencing Project](https://www.sentencingproject.org/fact-sheet/incarcerated-women-and-girls/)
13. [Understanding Adolescent Girls in Custody Using the MIDSA, PMC](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8837737/)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Documentary, docudrama, and lifestyle series › Factual entertainment and specialist-interest formats › Premiered 2001 to 2019*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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