Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Access Criminology and Criminal Justice journals now

CiteULike is a free service for managing and discovering scholarly references - click here to get started.

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Crime & Delinquency
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Right arrow Citation Map
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Feld, B. C.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Violent Girls or Relabeled Status Offenders?

An Alternative Interpretation of the Data

Barry C. Feld

University of Minnesota

Policy makers and juvenile justice officials express alarm over the rise in arrests of girls for simple and aggravated assault. Others see this perceived increase as an artifact of decreased public tolerance for violence, changes in parental attitudes or law enforcement policies, or heightened surveillance of domestic violence, which disproportionately affects girls. The author contends that the social construction of girls' violence may reflect policy changes in the juvenile justice system itself, especially the deinstitutionalization of status offenders. The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act deinstitutionalization mandates encouraged "bootstrapping" or "relabeling" female status offenders as delinquents to retain access to facilities in which to confine "incorrigible" girls. The author analyzes data on changes in arrest patterns and confinement for boys and girls charged with simple and aggravated assault, arguing that differences in rates, victims, and confinement for "violent" boys and girls support a relabeling interpretation of the supposed rise in girls' violence consistent with the social construction thesis.

Key Words: girls' violence • social construction of violence • labeling

Crime & Delinquency, Vol. 55, No. 2, 241-265 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0011128708330629
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?