Violence by Teenage Girls: Trends and Context

This research examines issues of adolescent offenses and how they differ for girls and boys; risk and protective factors associated with delinquency, including gender differences; and the causes and correlates of girls’ delinquency. Using official arrest data, self-report data, and victimization data from 1980-2005, this report examines trends in girls’ violence by measuring the involvement of girls in violent activity (including whether such activity has increased relative to the increase for boys) and the contexts in which girls engage in violent behavior. Available evidence strongly suggests that girls are, over time, being arrested more frequently for simple assaults, despite evidence from longitudinal self-report and victimization surveys that they are not actually more violent. The reasons for increasing arrests, however, are not well established. This article questions whether or not these arrests indicate real changes in girls’ behaviors or if they are simply a product of recent changes in public sentiment and enforcement policies that have elevated the visibility and reporting of girls’ delinquency and violence. Although there does not appear to be a large increase in physical violence committed by girls, some girls do engage in violent behavior, and it is important to understand the context in which such violence occurs and how these situations differ for girls and boys (this article suggests that context for girls’ violence is in situations of peer violence, family violence, violence within schools, violence within disadvantaged neighborhoods, and girls in gangs). They conclude that there is very little overall change in girls’ assault levels or in Violent Crime Index offenses and essentially no change in the gender differences or female-to-male ratio of violent offending.

File(s): 

Girls’ Study Group: Understanding and Responding to Girls’ Delinquency