Thanks for joining
the discussion on Myths of Delinquency! To be brought up to speed on this
discussion, its origins, and its process, please read this first post in this
blog series called “Clarifying Beliefs About Juvenile Delinquency.”
As
I gathered beliefs from kind, educated, and compassionate adults, it quickly emerged
that the most common statement was when they think of “delinquent youth” they
think of them all as male.
Myth 1 – All juvenile delinquents are male.
While it is true
the majority of juvenile offenders are male, female incarceration rates have
been consistently rising since 1985 (Knoll & Sickmund, 2011). Between 1985
and 2008, the number of delinquency cases involving females increased 102%, yet
for males the increase was 29% (Knoll & Sickmund, 2011). “By 2004, girls
accounted for 30% of all juvenile arrests” (Zahn et al., 2010, p. 1). The
statistics can be misleading or simply miss telling the whole story in that the
offenses for which females are most often adjudicated are status offenses such
as running away from home or truancy.
However, these
minor offenses may disguise more serious concerns in the lives of these
juvenile delinquents. In 2010, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention established the Girl Study Group in response to skewed statistics on
juvenile arrests by gender. In this project, Zahn and colleagues (2010) found
…although their
offense behavior may not appear to be very serious, these girls may be fleeing
from serious problems and victimization, some involving illegal behavior by
adults, which in turn makes them vulnerable to subsequent victimization and
engaging in other behaviors that violate the law such as prostitution, survival
sex, and drug use. (p. 3)
Placed in a
juvenile justice system designed for males, the female juvenile population is failed
by a system that was not set up to meet their needs (Watson & Edelman, 2012).
Young women in the system are typically non-violent offenders, making them low-risk,
but often high-need (Watson & Edelman, 2012). Subsequently, there has been
a reform effort in the juvenile justice system to better meet the needs of females
on the local, state, and federal levels (Watson & Edelman, 2012). “Overall,
the juvenile justice system is ill-equipped to serve girls effectively, having
failed to implement the reforms called for by a growing body of research on the
needs of the girls in its care” (Watson & Edelman, 2012, p. 1).
