Female Delinquency Versus Male Delinquency
Offending for females, as well as males, often follows customary expectations. In rather isolated instances, the offending for females departs from such customary expectations: females repetitively express conducts that are typical taken as the customary males’ purview according to Otten (1985). By and large, there are differences, as well as similarities, between female and male delinquency; boy’s offences are graver and more varied than those of girls. The majority of girls whose cases are processed through the criminal justice system are often arrested for larceny theft, including shoplifting, and escaping from home (Burfeind & Bartusch, 2011). This paper demonstrates that there are marked differences between female delinquency and male delinquency.
Nature of Offenses
Status offending has at all times been significant in referrals for girls. The majority of children who get referred for escaping from home are girls. There are more girls held by correctional institutions on account of status offenses than boys. There are more bots held by correctional institutions on account of criminal offenses than girls. Notably, the majority of girls who escape from home are victims of sexual abuse. The majority of detained girls have suffered sexual abuse previously.
The status offenses that most often lead to the arresting and detention of more girls are escaping from home along with curfew violation. These two offenses are much more insignificant regarding male delinquency. Even though girls have a higher chance of committing the status offenses than boys, the girls have a lower chance of being arrested for them, but prosecuted. Overall, courts pronounce harsher sentences against girls for the offense than boys. For instance, there are far fewer boys committed by courts to residential placement than girls for the offenses.
Conducts, or behaviors, which were classified as cases of domestic violence or status offenses previously have over time been reclassified as offenses that are violent. That probably explains why there has been a marked increase of the number of girls who arrested over time. In recent times, the percentage of females involved in the cases has gone up significantly. Varied studies have shown that the majority of girls who face charges in juvenile courts on account of person offenses commit them in family settings. The offenses are family-centered, involving close family members such as parents assaulted by own daughters.
Specific Offenses
Girls are more likely to engage in shoplifting and prostitution than boys. Possibly, that is because more girls than boys are particularly more sensitive to, or receptive of, the consumer culture. That means that more girls than boys may be persuaded to steal items that they actually require or feel they require but are unable to afford. In addition, the majority of those who go shopping are females. Females are highly likely to spend lots of time shopping as own pastime. Their exposure to the temptation to shoplift is thus greater that of males.
Girls have a higher probability than boys of shoplifting clothes and cosmetics than boys. On the other hand, boys have a higher probability than girls of stealing electronic goods, or items. When girls are shopping, store detectives are more likely to keep an eye on them than boys. The detectives are likely to report female shoppers as suspicious particularly when they are shopping in groups or are not neatly dressed. That adds to the girls’ over-representation in the numbers of children charged with specific status offenses.
About a half of all prostitutes across the world are minors. There are more girls than boys who engage in prostitution, which is illegal in many jurisdictions. Most of the young prostitutes often suffer sexual, as well as physical, abuse. Most of them are raised in families that are dysfunctional and that are typified by neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse, drug abuse, and alcoholism. The majority of the girls who take up prostitution as their economic mainstay are forced to do so by the need to survive. They are limited alternative choices.
There is higher chance for boys than girls to engage in robberies and grave property crimes. Notably, juvenile robberies are typically deemed to be criminal, low-yield acts aimed more at expressing mischief and naughtiness than gaining financially. The motivations of those engaging in juvenile robberies are different from those of those engaging in the typical armed robberies such as bank robberies and muggings.
Juvenile robberies often entail stealing friends’ possessions and are executed for excitement and thrills. They are hardly ever planned and are markedly gender-specific: girls are less aggressive than boys when executing juvenile robberies. Boys who engage in the robberies are more likely to utilize weapons against their victims. All in all, the boys along with girls who engage in the robberies are often motivated by the need to get status conferring-items or money to spend on the items (Otten, 1985).
Risk Factors
The variations between the offenses that are characteristically committed by boys and those committed by girls are attributed to various factors. First, they are attributed to the fact that they do not share the same social environments and expectations by and large. By and large, liberal feminists consider females to be “less delinquent than males” owing to “their social roles” (Siegel, 2016, p.171). That suggests that females and males have different choices even when they are in the same environment, sharing comparable problems, including those related to race and class divisions. The ways in which such problems affect a child’s everyday life is markedly gender-mediated. The problems include sexual abuse and violence or aggression acts.
Often, sexual abuse pushes more girls than boys to escape from home and get into related status offenses. The abuse causes lasting effects, including depression, hostility, anger, anxiety, fear, improper sexual behavior, and challenges in school, truancy, and early marriage. The problem behaviors of girls often relate to traumatizing and abusive home life. Even then, the problem behaviors of boys mirror their engagement in lifestyles that are merely dismissed as antisocial.
More girls than boys are forced to engage in crime by the violence, especially indirect aggression acts, directed against them in the society. The acts include teasing, insulting, and yelling. Accordingly, girls have a high chance of engaging in lateral violence against other vulnerable girls. Abused girls characteristically take it on comparably situated girls as opposed to those who abuse them.
Conclusion
Offending for females, as well as males, often follows routine expectations. There are more girls than boys in correctional institutions on account of status offenses. Girls are more likely than boys to engage in shoplifting and prostitution than boys. On the other hand, there is higher chance for boys than girls to engage in robberies and grave property crimes. Often, sexual abuse and violence or aggression acts drive more girls than boys to engage in offending acts.
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