Introducción. El género de los sistemas penales juveniles: debates necesarios

This issue of Oñati Socio-Legal Series, entitled The Gender of Juvenile Criminal Systems. Necessary Debates, is the result of the communications and exchanges held at a interdisciplinary workshop that took place in 2018. It is composed of eleven articles that discuss experiences in juvenile criminal justice aimed at adolescent women and other related issues, based on the presentation of the results of research and interventions carried out in Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay) and the Spanish State (Catalonia, Madrid, Basque Country, Zaragoza). The discussions held in this space and the articles published are one more example of the global punitive expansion that contemporary capitalist societies are experiencing and that we can observe in the different contexts through the extension of the forms of control and scope of the penal systems that are produced on the adult, young and adolescent population. In this framework, it is interesting to contextualize how the transits of younger women through the penal systems are, emphasizing the necessary inclusion of a gender perspective that can understand the singularities that are part of the treatment of women in these systems.