Women in Crime

Females in Crime

What about girls? Stress, teenage mother hood, drug habits; all those components needs survival skills. How do you keep those survival skills? Gangs, prostitution, abuse? To us juvenile delinquency is something that we look at it with contempt instead of taking the time to look into sociological issues, emotional issues and the reality that would give us a clearer view. However, this still would not allow an individual to understand the conditions that women live in, the pressures they go through and/or face everyday.

For us to be able to make a non judgmental opinion is very difficult, perhaps many of us have been affected by the wrong doings of some delinquent’s actions such as a drive by shooting, being at the wrong place at the wrong time. The realization, what we call going through a day, everyday, is a day these delinquent women have, in essence, survived. True there are other options to those girls, but realistically how many are able to go and get out as easy as those programs claim it is?

State juvenile justice systems across the country are challenged by the question: What about girls? This question cannot be ignored because female involvement in the juvenile justice system continues on a steady course upward; even as juvenile male involvement in delinquency declines. Between 1992 and 1996 the number of juvenile females arrested for Violent Crime Index offenses increased 25 percent, with no increase in arrests of male juveniles for the same offenses. Juvenile female arrests for Property Crime Index offenses increased 21 percent, while juvenile male arrests in this category decreased 4 percent. Law enforcement agencies made 723,000 arrests of juvenile females in 1996.

Female involvement in the juvenile justice system, once seen as an abnormality, has evolved into a significant trend. State and local juvenile justice systems are increasingly called upon to address the needs of juvenile female offenders and at-risk girls. Recognizing that these needs require national attention, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) has launched a multilevel approach. It 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.

In addition, another specific question is why is there an increase? Well maybe we should look at the reasons behind the actions, or maybe how they have rationalized their actions in order to