Gender Differences In Juvenile Delinquency

Introduction
More than 2 million juveniles are arrested each year with nearly 600,000 entering into juvenile incarceration. (Kapp, Petr, Robbins, & Choi, 2013) There has been a steady increase of youthful female offenders. From the early nineties up until about 2006, simple assault crimes have decreased “4% for male juveniles and it increased 19% for females” (Espinosa, Sorensen, & Lopez, 2013). “25 to 50 percent of antisocial girls commit crimes as adults (Pajer, 1998)”. "Similar risk factors may play a role in both girls' and boys' delinquency. Gender differences in underlying biological functions, psychological traits and social interpretation can result in different types and rates of delinquent behaviors for girls and boys (Moffitt,
“A child is abused or neglected every three hours in Washington, DC (Children’s Defense Fund)”. Risk taking behaviors, including delinquency can be the direct result of exposure to severe and cumulative stressors (Mc Barrett, Raine, Stouthamer-Loeber, Loeber, Kumar, Kumar, M., Lahey, B.B., 2010). Male and female delinquents report different types of trauma. “Wards 7 and 8 comprise over half of all substantiated cases of abuse in the district, with the number of 360 in ward 7 and 670 in ward 8 reporting abuse ( DC Action for Children)”. Girls in the juvenile justice system more often experience sexual abuse and rape then boys (Hennessy, Ford, Mahoney, Ko, Siegfried, 2004: Snyder, 2003). According to research, "girls in the California juvenile justice system, 92% report some form of emotional, physical or sexual abuse. (Acoca, Dedel, 1998) Females are usually victims of abuse before they commit their first crime. "Abuse is directly linked with subsequent violent behaviors, with one and four violent girls having been sexually abused compared with one and ten non-violent girls (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999). Female offenders experience higher rates of victimization, and "have more limited abilities to cope with such stressors, thereby magnifying their effect (Dornfield, Kruttschnitt,
Boys are more likely to be diagnosed with attention deficit and conduct disorder. (Barbaresi, Katusic, Colligan, Pankratz, Weaver, Weber, Mrazek, and Jacobsen, 2002) Females are diagnosed with "mental health problems linked to life struggles and experiences of victimization, such as depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder(Teplin, Abram, McClelland, Dulcan, and Mericle, 2002). According to (Skowyra and Cocozza 2007; Teplin et al. 2002; Wasserman et al 2004) “studies consistently document that 65 to 70 percent of youth met criteria for a diagnosable mental health disorders”. It stated “repeated exposure to direct, interpersonal traumas places female delinquents at particular risk for the development of PTSD” (Wood et al. 2002). According to Telling, et al., 2002, "21.6% of the detained girls met the criteria for a Major Depressive Episode versus 13% of detained boys. (Shapter et al., U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2000) This is roughly four times the national average. "30.8% of girls that were incarcerated met the criteria for any anxiety disorder. Of these females, 18.5% suffer from