Female involvement in the juvenile justice system continues to rise at the same time that male juvenile involvement declines.
One in four juvenile arrests in 1996 was of a female, with violent crime arrests increasing 25 percent between 1992 and 1996. Overall, increases in arrests between 1992 and 1996 were greater for juvenile females than juvenile males in most offense categories. It is important to learn more about why and how girls commit crime and how to intervene effectively to prevent and treat female juvenile delinquency.OJJDP has responded by launching a multilevel approach that includes reviewing how States are dealing with female juvenile offenders, developing an inventory of best practices, producing a prototype training curriculum, and implementing a variety of program development activities.
Several projects supported by the Research Division have components that focus on girls, including the Program of Research on the Causes and Correlates of Delinquency. The Research Division anticipates supporting additional research on female juvenile delinquency and evaluations of effective programs for girls.FEMALE JUVENILE DELINQUENCY: RISK FACTORS AND PROMISING INTERVENTIONS In 1997, there were over a half a million arrests of juvenile girls in the United States. Although the great majority of juvenile crimes are committed by boys, arrests of girls have sharply risen in the last decade.
While there is dispute as to whether shifts represent changes in girls” behavior or changes in arrest patterns, it is undeniable that girls are becoming more visibly present within the juvenile justice system. Arrests Of Girls In 1997 260f juvenile arrests were of girls.Over a third of these girls were under age 15. In 1997 over half 58% of the arrests for runaways were of girls.
Between 1993 and 1997, arrests of boys for violent offenses declined by 9%, while those for girls increased by 12%. Aggravated assault, the most frequent of the violent offenses committed by juveniles, increased for girls by 15%, while declining for boys by 10%. Between 1993 and 1997, arrests of girls for drug abuse violations more than doubled 117 0ncrease. Between 1993 and 1997, arrests of girls for offenses against family and children increased by 82%.
In 1988 260f the serious crimes committed by females were by girls under 18 years; in 1997 this figure climbed to 31 % Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1988-1999. Interpersonal relationships play a particularly important role in female juvenile delinquency. For example, while homicides in 1993 committed by boys usually occurred in conjunction with another crime 57%, homicides by girls most typically involved a relational conflict, such as an argument or physical fight 79%. Moreover, the victims of homicides by girls tended to be members of the girls” own families 32 0.
00000or girls vs. 8 0. 000000or boys.Twenty-four percent of the girls” victims were under 3 years old, usually their own infant children.
This trend for relationally involved violence by girls extends beyond homicides. In an examination of Virginia juvenile offenders, the girls” victims were more likely to be family or friends than were the boys” victims. Informal observations as well as scientific studies have attested to the importance of disputes with other girls over boyfriends as avenues for arrests of girls.The importance of relationship in juvenile delinquency maybe rooted in gender differences in the development of aggressive behavior.
While girls are more likely to engage in relational aggression, such as gossip, social exclusion, or bullying, boys more frequently employ physical aggression. If relational aggression by a girl becomes violent, it obviously targets a known victim. Since girls more frequently engage in relational aggression, this may account for a disproportionate victimization of family and friends by girls.Risk Factors for Delinquency in Girls Juvenile offenders, both boys and girls, have a large number of family problems.
However, girls have higher levels of physical and sexual abuse, and have been more frequently hospitalized for psychiatric problems. Most of the research concerning risks for delinquency has focused on boys, making it difficult to assess how the risks for girls differ from those for boys. However, several factors are consistently associated with delinquency in girls. History of abuse.
A substantial proportion of female delinquents report a history of sexual and physical abuse. In one study of youth incarcerated in Virginia for violent offenses, 5 1 0f the girls evidenced a documented history of sexual abuse and 35% a history of physical abuse, levels which were significantly higher than those reported for boys. Sexual abuse can provide a dangerous pathway to other criminal activities, such as prostitution and substance abuse, which in turn lead to increased violent offending.Moreover a history of abuse and home violence can lead a girl to run away from home, leaving juvenile justice officials with the conundrum of determining whether an offender”s behavior represents unjustified defiance of her parents or an understandable response to her own victimization.
Family distress. A large number of family factors are associated with delinquency in both boys and girls. These include single parent status, parental conflict, parental criminality, poor family management, and residential mobility.As girls are presumed to be more likely to stay close to home, it is plausible that family factors disproportionately affect girls.
Among juvenile offenders recently admitted to detention facilities in Virginia a greater proportion of the girls than boys came from families marked by parental incarceration or substance abuse. Although a number of studies attest to the high level of family dysfunction among female juvenile offenders, it is not clear whether particular family patterns are more associated with boys than with girls.The question arises, Would the same parental practices that work for boys also be the best practices for girls, in terms of preventing delinquency? A study of family interaction styles investigated this question, and found that the best parent-style predictors of delinquency in boys differed from those in girls. The degree of supervision, monitoring, and instrumental communication best predicted delinquency in boys, while parental acceptance, respect, freedom from conflict, and approval of peers best predicted delinquency in girls.
These results mirror conclusions regarding the importance of close relationships for girls, and imply that qualities of the parental relationship, such as feeling accepted and respected by parents are crucial for preventing delinquency in girls. Mental illness. In a review concerning gender and conduct disorder development, researcher Rolf Loeber identified a gender paradox: Those who go against the general gender pattern, such as conduct-disordered girls, tend to be highly disturbed and have a larger than expected number of ancillary problems.The gender paradox has great intuitive appeal for professionals who work with young offenders and find that female delinquents, while less frequently represented, seem disproportionately troubled by a wide array of emotional problems.
Several studies confirm that female juvenile offenders have higher rates of depression, eating disorder, and suicidality than boy offenders, as well as higher levels of previous psychiatric hospitalization. Teenage parenting. Although there is no evidence that teenage parenting causes delinquency, several of the high-risk behaviors associated with teenage pregnancy are also associated with delinquency.For example, drug use and frequent delinquent acts at home and at school are related to increased pregnancy rates in teenagers.
In a recent study of teen pregnancy in the United States, self-reported fighting was a significant pregnancy predictor among sexually active girls. Again, these results do not imply that fighting leads to pregnancy, but rather that the cluster of behaviors associated with delinquency and violence are also associated with the risk-taking that can lead to teen pregnancy. Academic failure. As with boys, female delinquents frequently have a history of poor academic performance.
In one examination of incarcerated women, nearly half of the respondents had been expelled from school, and a disproportionate number had learning disabilities. In both boys and girls, violent behavior and delinquency have been associated with poor academic achievement, low commitment to school, and frequent school changes. Promising Interventions The great majority of research conducted on juvenile delinquency has focused on the more frequent offender — boys. Consequently, information on gender-specific interventions are sparse.
However, a number of interventions have been found helpful to girls as well as boys.As might be predicted from examination of risk factors, interventions that focus on developing relationship skills, building family or community connections, or dealing with high risk behaviors such as sexual activity or substance abuse are most promising. Hoyt, S. & Scherer, D.
G. 1998. Female juvenile delinquency: Misunderstood by the juvenile justice system, neglected by social science. Law and Human Behavior, 22, 81-107.
Schlossman, S. & Cairns, ARAB. 1994. Problem girls: Observations on past and present.
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Children in time and place: Developmental and historical insights, pp. I 10- 130.New York: Cambridge University Press. Female offenders [Special Issue].
1998. Corrections Today, 60,66-144. Juvenile Justice Experts Should Focus on Girls” Unique Needs The national arrest rate for girls has steadily climbed from 21 percent in 1983 to 27 percent last year. More disturbing is that arrests for violent crimes such as aggravated and simple assault increased a total of 36 percent among girls between 1994 and 1998 compared with a negligible increase or decline in those violent crimes for boys, according to the most recent figures released by the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention OJJDP in Washington, D.
C. Gang activity is one of several risk factors for delinquency in girls, especially for more serious offenses.In California, where gang activity is high in urban areas, more girls than boys were arrested for murder, attempted murder, and carjacking in 1998, according to Hans Steiner, M. D.
, a professor of psychiatry in the division of child and adolescent psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine. He and a colleague presented the preliminary results of an ongoing study of juvenile offenders in the California Youth Authority at the October meeting of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.To assess their treatment needs, the researchers surveyed about 3,600 incarcerated male and female juvenile offenders from June 1998 to January 1999. Girls made up about 8 percent of the sample, and they ranged in age from 9 to 17.
Steiner and his colleagues used the Achenbach Youth-Self Reporting instrument to measure the prevalence of disorders such as posttraumatic stress disorder PTSD, anxiety, and depression and behaviors such as physical and verbal aggression and delinquency.Girls scored high on both dimensions. Because girls experience more physical and sexual abuse, they tend to have more psychopathology than boys including PTSD, suicidal behavior, dissociative disorder, and borderline personality disorder, said Steiner. Aggressive behaviors were four times more common in girls than boys, according to the results.
This is a highly comorbid population who needs more services, said Steiner.The typical female juvenile offender is aged 14 to 16, from an ethnic minority, lives in a poor neighborhood with a high crime rate, and has experienced physical, sexual, and/or emotional abuse, according to a 1998 OJJDP report, Guiding Principles for Promising Female Programming: An Inventory of Best Practices. Other characteristics are poor academic performance, substance abuse, and a lack of medical or mental health services, states the report. Researchers have found that these factors are interrelated.
For example, up to 70 percent of female delinquents have a history of sexual abuse, which can result in academic failure, teen pregnancy, low self-esteem, and other problems. OJJDP Administrator Shay Bilchik told Psychiatric News, Juvenile justice officials have recently begun to understand the multiple processes that impact the lives of teenage girls such as pregnancy and sexual abuse. The red flags for delinquency have been there, but the needs of girls have been largely ignored.He attributed that in part to few community mental health resources and to the juvenile justice system”s handling girls differently from boys.
Because the majority of girls are arrested for misdemeanor offenses, judges usually try to divert their cases from the juvenile system into more informal settings rather than mandating treatment and accountability, said Bilchik. Girls typically respond to a crisis with more self-destructive behavior than do boys, so girls may be perceived as less dangerous to society and thus receive less attention, according to the OJJDP report.Gender-Specific Programs To jumpstart the development of gender-specific programs, the 1992 Reauthorization of the Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention Act required states applying for federal formula grants to identify gaps in their services to female offenders. It also required states to develop a plan for providing gender-specific services aimed at prevention and treatment of juvenile delinquency.
Congress also authorized new challenge grants for states to address specific issues including developing policies to prohibit gender bias in placement and treatment of juveniles.New programs should ensure that female youth have access to the full range of health and mental health services, treatment for physical or sexual assault and abuse, self-defense training, and education in parenting and vocational services, according to the 1998 OJJDP report Juvenile Female Offenders: A Status of the States. The OJJDP supported these legislative efforts by assisting states in improving their system for dealing with female offenders.Last year, the agency issued a guide to best practices based on 16 model programs that addressed the needs of female juvenile offenders or helped girls at risk for delinquency stay out of the juvenile system.
To be successful, a program should provide a cohesive environment and supportive staff that boost girls” confidence and skills and encourage them to make positive changes. In addition, each girl needs an individual assessment and treatment plan, according to the OJJDP publication Guiding Principles for Promising Female Programming: An Inventory of Best Practices.
