NCJ Number
216892
Date Published
2006
Length
15 pages
Annotation
This chapter examines the issue of gender, more specifically girls and young women within the youth justice system, and argues that incarceration is being more readily applied to girls and young women within contemporary youth justice in England and Wales.
Abstract
The moral panic generated by the small increase in girls’ crime has contributed to increasing criminalization of, and punitiveness toward them. There has been an abandonment of traditional welfare-oriented approaches to girls’ delinquency and their replacement by an increasing desire to criminalize, punish, and lockup. Efforts to control girls and young women’s behavior via a range of formal and informal routes that have stressed their special psychological and other needs, have come under close critical scrutiny. Historically, girls and women offend less than boys and men, and those females who do offend tend to start later, desist sooner, and commit less serious offenses. Recent data indicate larger increases in recorded female juvenile offenses in England and Wales. A key question is how far changing perceptions of behavior, actual changes in behavior, and changes in society, respectively, have led to changes in the nature of criminal justice system responses to girls. This chapter focuses on patterns of girls’ offending and responses to it. It examines historical and contemporary explanations for female juvenile delinquency. The chapter argues that the regulation of acceptable gender-role behavior has long been a key feature of the criminal justice system’s response to offending by girls. It examines changing perceptions of girls’ behavior and concomitant shifts in their social regulations. The recurring moral panic regarding girls’ behavior, which seems to have shifted in recent years, from girls’ sexuality and status offending, to their apparently increasing violence and alcohol use, is analyzed. References