How should the juvenile justice system respond to female delinquency?

Answer 1

First, it is a myth that females do not become delinquent; there are young women and girls who do get arrested, often as a result of problems with drugs and alcohol, but these days, also as a result of joining gangs. Poverty, physical and sexual abuse, and lack of parental involvement can also play a role in the delinquency of girls. Studies have shown that the justice system has historically treated girls and women more harshly, under the mistaken belief that it is abnormal for females to become criminals, so giving them a serious punishment will scare them away from further offenses. However, without addressing the underlying factors that lead to delinquency, punishment alone does not work.

The truth is that the juvenile justice system is overburdened and underfunded, and young women are often given little counseling, no therapy, and little guidance about how to change their lives. Certainly, girls who steal or commit assault deserve punishment of some kind, but first offenders should be treated differently from repeat offenders. Rather than just focusing on locking up juvenile offenders, prisons should also provide role models who can help these girls to develop better coping strategies. Many juvenile offenders are illiterate or come from homes where substance abuse (or even sexual abuse) was common. While juvenile offenders do need to pay for their crime and understand where they went wrong, a combination of counseling, education, and job training may help to give them a better path than what they had been on and prevent them from returning to prison later. Unfortunately, we are living in a time when the emphasis is on "Law and Order," but this alone will not solve the problem of juvenile delinquency, whether by males or by females.