Female Offenders In Criminal Court Cases

While Greenberg, Grekul, and Nelson report on the social causes that lead Aboriginal youth to become involved in crime, Stoneman and Artz seek to demonstrate how young female offenders are treated more harshly than their male counterparts once a part of the youth justice system due to “moral panic” (pg. 173). The common, unsubstantiated fear remains that girls are committing more crimes and acts of violence (193). Statistics Canada (2012) reports that in reality, female youth account for just 3 percent of all criminal court cases (pg. 174).
Social research offers many explanations for the role of girls in adolescent crime and public perceptions of their illegal activities. As was noted above, there is a strong relationship between victimization
I witnessed one instance in which a young female offender’s case was handled more harshly than a similar case regarding a young male. During my first observation, the judge interrupted the prosecuting attorney’s list of suggested parole conditions for a 14-year-old girl who had breached her parole to remark “Look how beautiful this child is! Don’t you see she’s vulnerable? Her curfew should not be that late [10 pm], and I’ll remind you that you would be justified in preventing contact with [friend 1] and [friend 2], as well as [the child’s aunt].” In this case, the girl had been abused by her aunt in the past, and the judge later commented that she wanted to reduce the opportunity for the recurrence of this abuse by limiting contact with the relative. By the end of it, four new conditions were added to the girl’s pre-existing parole which entailed five previous conditions. Being charged with numerous administrative offenses was common among the girls I observed, but the fact that a girl’s beauty and history of victimization were used as justifications for greater parole conditions seemed incredibly unfair and more certain to create legal trouble for her in the future, which the prosecution also remarked on when attempting to oppose the judge. I found this particularly notable after the same judge, towards the end of that session, did not feel the
2011; Hannah-Moffat and Maurutto 2003) to their tendency to focus too heavily on individual risk factors rather than on systematic structural inequalities (Barron 2011).” (pg. 190) By taking an intersectional approach, and analyzing multiple facets of identity, we can address the intertwined social impacts of the systematic inequalities and utilize this information to better address the issues plaguing young offenders. For instance, the McCreary Centre Society Survey (2012) tells us that twice the number of young female offenders (50%) reported having been kicked out of their homes compared to boys (25 percent). In addition to what we already know about female offender victimization, this information about girlhood means that Aboriginal girls are particularly vulnerable to slipping through the cracks. This is especially true when combined with the geographic location of youth courts and youth homes (which may result in placing Aboriginal girls “thousands of miles from their home and culture” (pg. 189)). As a consequence of net narrowing (pg. 179), young female offenders are at additional risk of entering street life and becoming homeless, seeking support in the form of gang membership, being abused, and are, ultimately, more likely to find themselves