Girls often find themselves at the center of a moral panic surrounding youth crime with claims that their behavior is out of control in national news media. While media often readily suggests that crime among girls is on the rise, there is little scholarly consensus. This article explores the Integrated Criminal Court Survey to analyze whether guilty findings among girls are rising, what can be said about girls’ involvement in crime and violence over the past few decades, and how legislation changes and ideological shifts have altered how youth in conflict with the law have been treated.
BalaN.CarringtonP. J.RobertsJ. (2010). Youth justice reform in Canada: Reducing use of courts and custody without increasing youth crime. In SmithD. J. (Ed.), New response to youth crime (pp. 318-340). Cullompton, UK: Willan.
5.
BalaN.CarringtonP. J.RobertsJ. V. (2009). Evaluating the Youth Criminal Justice Act after five years: A qualified success 1. Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice/La Revue Canadienne de Criminologie et de Justice Pénale, 51, 131-167.
6.
BellS. J. (2012). Young offenders and youth justice: A century after the fact (4th ed.). Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Nelson Education.
Chesney-LindM.IrwinK. (2008). Beyond bad girls: Gender, violence and hype. New York, NY: Routledge.
10.
Chesney-LindM. (2006). Patriarchy, crime, and justice. Feminist Criminology, 1(1), 2-26.
11.
Chesney-LindM.MorashM.IrwinK. (2010). Policing girlhood? Relational aggression and violence prevention. In Chesney-LindM.JonesN. (Eds.), Fighting for girls: New perspectives on gender and violence (pp. 107-128). Albany: State University of New York Press.
12.
CohenS. (1972). Folk devils and moral panics: The creation of the mods and rockers. London, England: MacGibbon & Kee.
13.
CohenS. (2002). Folk devils and moral panics: The creation of the mods and rockers. London: Routledge.
14.
DeKeserdyW. (2010). Moral panics, violence, and the policing of girls. In Chesney-LindM.JonesN. (Eds.), Fighting for girls: New perspectives on gender and violence (pp. 241-251). Albany: State University of New York Press.
15.
DicksonL. (2005, April14). Violence by teenage girls still a concern, police say: Little has changed since Reena Virk slain in 1997. The National Post, p. A10.
16.
DoobA. N.CesaroniC. (2004). Responding to youth crime in Canada. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: University of Toronto Press.
17.
DoobA. N.SprottJ. B. (1998). Is the quality of youth violence becoming more serious. Canadian Journal of Criminology, 40, 185-194.
18.
EdwardsP. (2006, May17). Girl gang members on the rise: Six per cent are female, say police—Major change in the last five years. The Toronto Star, p. B02.
19.
FitzgeraldR. (2003). An examination of sex differences in delinquency (Catalogue No. 85-561-MIE [No. 001]). Ottawa, Ontario: Statistics Canada.
20.
Girls gone violent. (2007, October15). The Globe and Mail, p. A16.
HiebertV. (2010). Media violence: A cross-national comparison of Canadian and Swedish youth. University of Manitoba. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1993/21614
24.
HockenberryS.PuzzancheraC. (2015). Juvenile court statistics 2013. Pittsburgh, PA: National Center for Juvenile Justice.
25.
JonesN. J.BrownS. L.WanamakerK. A.GreinerL. E. (2014). A quantitative exploration of gendered pathways to crime in a sample of male and female juvenile offenders. Feminist Criminology, 9, 113-136. doi:10.1177/1557085113501850
MesserschmidtJ. W. (1993). Masculinities and crime: Critique and reconceptualization of theory. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
28.
MesserschmidtJ. W. (1997). Crime as structured action: Gender, race, class, and crime in the making. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications.
29.
MorettiM. M.CatchpoleR. E. H.OdgersC. (2005). The dark side of girlhood: Recent trends, risk factors and trajectories to aggression and violence. The Canadian Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Review, 14(1), 21-25.
30.
MorettiM. M.OdgersC.ReppucciN. D.Aggression Project Team, CatherineN. L. A. (2015). Serious conduct problems among girls at risk: Translating research into intervention. in CorradoR. R.LeschiedA.LussierP.WhatleyJ. (Eds.), Serious and volent young offenders and youth criminal justice: A canadian perspective (pp. 493–510). British Columbia, Canada: SFU Publications.
SchrammH. (1998). Young women who use violence: myths and facts. Calgary, AB: Elizabeth Fry Society of Calgary.
37.
SpivakA. L.WagnerB. M.WhitmerJ. M.CharishC. L. (2014). Gender and status offending judicial paternalism in juvenile justice processing. Feminist Criminology, 9, 224-248. doi:10.1177/1557085114531318
38.
SprottJ. B.DoobA. N. (2009). Justice for girls? Stability and change in the youth justice systems of the United States and Canada. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
StevensT.MorashM.Chesney-LindM. (2011). Are girls getting tougher, or are we tougher on girls? Probability of arrest and juvenile court oversight in 1980 and 2000. Justice Quarterly, 28, 719-744. doi:10.1080/07418825.2010.532146
