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Young Women and Delinquency
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16961 |
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MODERN THOUGHT
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4 / 1990 |
1,274 Words |
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Meda Chesney-Lind
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When people talk about the problem of delinquency, they are generally thinking about delinquent boys. Yet, about a quarter of the young people arrested for juvenile offenses every year in the United States are girls. Who is the typical female delinquent? What causes her to get into trouble? What happens to her if she is caught? Until recently, few people cold supply answers to these questions. Now that situation is changing. Interest in women's issues has meant that the long-neglected problems of girls in trouble are finally receiving attention.
Contemporary work on female delinquency suggests that while there are many similarities between male and female delinquency, there are also important differences. First, and most importantly, girls tend to the arrested for offenses that are less serious than those committed by boys. About half of all the girls that are arrested are apprehended for one of two offenses: larceny theft (which for girls is often shoplifting) and running away from home. Male delinquency also involves minor offenses, but the crimes they commit are more varied.
One of the two major "girls' offenses" - running away from home - points up another significant aspect of female delinquency. Girls are quite often arrested from offenses that are not actual crimes like robbery or burglary. Instead, they are arrested for activities such as running away from home, being incorrigible or beyond parental control. These are called "status offenses," and they have long played a major role in bringing girls into the juvenile justice system. In fact, in the early years of the juvenile justice system virtually all the girls in juvenile court were charged with these offenses.
Currently, status offenses (particularly running away from home and ungovernability) continue to play a major role in female delinquency. In 1985, for example, 63 percent of those appearing for juvenile courts charged with turning away from home were girls, as were about half (42 percent) of all youth charged with all status offenses; by contrast only 15 percent of those in juvenile court for criminal offenses were girls.
Why are girls more likely to be arrested than boys for running away from home? There are no simple answers to this question. Studies of actual delinquency (not simply arrests) show that girls and boys run away from home in about equal numbers. There is some evidence to suggest that parents and police may be responding differently to the same behavior. Parents may be calling the police when their daughters do not come home, and police may be more likely to arrest a female than a male runaway youth.
Another reason for different responses to running away from home speaks to differences in the reasons that boys and girls have for running away. Girls are, for example, much more likely than boys to be the victims of child sexual abuse with some experts estimating that roughly 70 percent of the victims of child sexual abuse are girls. Not surprisingly, the evidence is also suggesting a link between this problem and girls' delinquency - particularly running away from home.
Studies of girls on the streets or in court populations are showing high rates of both sexual and physical abuse. A study of a runaway shelter in Toronto found, for example, that 73 percent of the female runaways and 38 percent of the female
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