Female Juvenile Delinquency

Female juvenile delinquency: What went wrong with “Sugar and Spice and all things nice”?
Ariana Kalaitzaki
S2760178
Griffith University

Abstract
This review addresses major questions around female juvenile delinquency, around which much contemporary research is oriented. These involve which factors are contributing to female juvenile delinquency and what causes female juveniles to display criminal behaviour in the first place. Theories and risk factors will be identified. Although research in the past decade has yielded considerable information about these questions, issues that need further investigation are also presented.

Female juvenile delinquency: What went wrong with “Sugar and Spice and all things nice”? Until recently, girls have been virtually invisible in criminology studies and theories of delinquency (Belknap, 2001; Chesney-Lind & Belknap, 2004) however girls continue to be incarcerated for their criminal behaviours. The FBI reported that girls accounted for one in four arrests of young people in America in 1999 (FBI, 2002). According to Snyder & Sickmund (2006) females accounted for 29% of arrests and 15% of juveniles in custodial care in 2003. In 2007, females accounted for 17% of juvenile crime index arrests, 35% of juvenile property crime index arrests and 33% of juvenile disorderly conduct arrests (Puzzanchera, 2009). Furthermore, between 1985 and 2007, the increase in females with person offenses was 233% (Hockenberry, 2010) and in 2008 juvenile female arrests for simple assault increased 12%. The overall number of delinquent girls rose 96% between 1991 and 2003 (Snyder & Sickmund, 2006). All of this data indicates that girls’ involvement in the juvenile justice system has increased significantly over the past few decades. This highlighted increase in the arrest and detention of girls has brought new attention to the issue of female juvenile delinquency (Belknap, 2001) and research efforts have increased. In the past,

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