Delinquency refers to the crimes or illegal behaviors among young people. Girls are more likely to commit crimes of shoplifting, curfew violation and aggressions. Young girls tend to shoplift due to their sensitivity to consumer culture as they steal things they need but cannot really afford. Moreover, women spend more of their time in shopping as a pastime hence are more likely to be tempted. Additionally, girls are more likely to shoplift clothes and cosmetics, a reason why most store detectives watch out for girls in groups more carefully. Curfew violation and running away are yet another delinquency young girls are arrested for. Most times, these two offenses land such girls in court. As one gets further into the juvenile justice system, they find that girls receive harsher punishments for these two status offenses as compared to their male counterparts. Girls tend to demonstrate indirect type of aggression where they hurt people through insulting, yelling and teasing without physical aggression. They mostly target other powerless girls and often with the boys as the audience. In the last 25 years, there have been changes in crimes such as domestic violence and status offenses that have been relabeled as violent offenses. This has increased the girls arrested in the trends. In California, for example, the proportion of women or girls in domestic violence-related incidences rose from just 6% in 1988 to a massive 16.5% in 1998. Other changes have been on the increase in disorderly conduct and aggregated assaults by 7% and 6% respectively. Moreover, drug violations have been on the rise for the past 25 years hence worsening girls’ behavior.
The gender gap closing since 1970 has caused introduction of crack markets into inner cities, gang involvement in the cracks, underground gun markets and decreased tolerance towards adolescent girls within families and in society. Therefore, the convergence of girls and boys arrest in violent crimes is an indication that the rate of arrest for boys has been dropping at a higher rate than that of girls. This is because the arrest for girls due to simple assaults has risen. Moreover, the increase of policing of intimate violence has increased the girls’ rates of arrests. An example of this is the arrest policies for domestic violence that has increased the number of girls arrested for simple assaults which in the past were not arrested. Moreover, feminism has encouraged girls to participate in male dominated crimes. Drug abuse violations have also increased among the girls by 300% hence increasing the number of girls arrested for drug abuse violations. Remedies that can address female delinquency include intervention programs that focus on acting out conduct should be offered by juvenile justice systems for correction purposes. Moreover, parental influence and control are more effective in later adolescence of females hence parents should be of positive influence to their children. Therefore, parental supervision should be given high priority as children from broken homes tend to engage in crime more.
References
Hoyt, S. and D. Scherer. "Female Juvenile Delinquency." Law and Human Behavior (1998): 1-27. Document.
