Girls' Violence

Myths and Realities

Christine Alder, Anne Worrall, Christine Alder, Anne Worrall

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780791461105, 9780791461099
• eBook ISBN: 9780791484913
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

This critical collection brings together some of the best contemporary research on the perceived increase in girls' violence. With perspectives from the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom, the work challenges official definitions and media representations of girls and violence. Contributors discuss whether violence by girls has actually increased, what kind of behavior by girls is classified as "violent, " how attitudes toward girls' behavior have changed, in what contexts girls behave violently, and look at the links between girls' violence and the broader issues of the social construction and social control of adolescent femininities. With diverse essays representing different geographical and disciplinary perspectives, this book offers, at times, contradictory evidence and conflicting views. However, common concerns are clear and the reader is rewarded with a rich exploration of the struggles of girls and young women to take control of their lives in material and ideological conditions that continue to restrict their options and opportunities.

Chapter One
A Contemporary Crisis?

Christine Alder and Anne Worrall

Two runaway schoolgirls took over a pensioner’s home in Manchester, covered her walls in graffiti, bandaged her face so tightly that she choked, then pushed her body through the streets in a wheelie [rubbish] bin and dropped it into a canal.

—Rebecca Fowler, The Guardian, 12 July 1999

Four young women beat a 17-year-old girl with gardening tools to warn her off a boy she was seeing. She suffered minor injuries. Police said, “These girls are known for hanging around the area.”

—“Crimestoppers,” The West Australian, 17 July 1998

Just what is going on? Does the new freedom that women have rightly gained include the freedom to act as foully as men?

—Paul Barker, Evening Standard, 1 May 1996

Some girls now carry guns. Others hide razor blades in their mouth. . . . The plague of teen violence is an equal-opportunity scourge.

—C. Leslie et al., Newsweek, 2 August 1993

Teenage girls are becoming more violent, with rising crime figures shattering the image of females as the gentler sex. Experts say it is the ugly side of the greater freedom and equality enjoyed by girls and young women today. Boys and girls are becoming similar.

—Sunday Mail, 27 July 1997

The idea for this book began in September 1998 when the editors met for the first time in Melbourne and realized that both had been researching attitudes toward, and work with, troubled and troublesome girls and young women for several years. Despite working on opposite sides of the world, we found that we shared identical concerns about the increasingly punitive attitudes that were being displayed toward these multiply disadvantaged but nevertheless resourceful young women by the criminal justice system and the media, based on what appeared to us to be spurious evidence of an increase in violent and disorderly behavior by this group. We both felt thwarted in our attempts to investigate this phenomenon by an absence of reliable information and a paucity of sound qualitative research. Although there are many texts on “youth and crime,” girls are rarely mentioned in these. Similarly, there are many texts concerned with “women and crime” which pay little attention to girls. This book represents our efforts to rectify this situation. It aims to bring together some of the best existing research from four English-speaking areas of the world (Australia, Britain, Canada, and the United States) on the perceived increase in girls’ violence. It is a critical collection that seeks to challenge official definitions and media representations by asking such questions as:

• Has violence by girls really increased at the end of the twentieth century?
• Exactly what kind of behavior by girls is now classified as “violent” and has this classification changed?
• What is the process whereby girls’ behavior is criminalized and is this different for boys?
• How have attitudes toward girls’ behavior changed?
• How do different perspectives seek to explain the apparent increase in girls’ violence?
• In what contexts do girls behave violently?
• What are the links between violence by girls and the broader issues of the social construction and social control of adolescent femininities?

Definitions of the terms girls¹ and violence are each sufficiently contested to warrant chapters, if not complete books, in their own rights. Juxtaposing them in the title of this collection may seem to invite the immediate questions, “What do you mean by ‘girls’?” and “What do you mean by ‘violence’?” Much of this collection is focused on answering precisely those questions, but, as editors, it is incumbent to offer an explanation of what was in our minds when we chose the title. The remainder of this introductory chapter will attempt to unravel some of the threads that have resulted in the construction of the “new” social category of “violent girls” in the four geographical regions we have identified. We aim to achieve this, first, by challenging official definitions of the “violence” committed by girls and, second, by examining the construction of “girlhood” and the ways in which girls “do femininities.”

The Unchallenged Statistics

The sort of newspaper reports with which we started this chapter are most often followed by stories drawing on evidence from official statistics of one form or another, and/ or stories of selected incidents. Police, court, and prison statistics are presented as “facts” about the incidence of crime and changing crime patterns. The writers of such reports are apparently unaware of the elementary cautions about the interpretation of crime statistics that would be familiar to any novice in criminology.

The reasons for the need for caution in interpreting official statistics are well documented. Gibbons (1982: 85) has noted that crime statistics “are among the most unreliable and questionable social facts.” Other analysts have shown that crime statistics may not so much disclose “facts” about “criminal acts” as they do changes in police policies and the political maneuvering of criminal justice agencies as a response to such issues as changes in management objectives, budget structures, and other organizational issues (Taylor 1999). However, “the traces of the storyteller cling to the story the way the handprints of the potter cling to the clay vessel” (Benjamin 1955: 92 cited in Tait 1994: 60). Thus, official statistics are not necessarily “worthless” but rather they can provide valuable insights into the “organizational constraints and priorities of the criminal justice system” (Muncie 1999: 14). One of the purposes of this chapter is to challenge the interpretation of official statistics that underpins accounts of increasing girls’ violence. We begin with an overview of the observations about girls’ violence suggested by official statistics in Britain, Canada, the United States, and Australia before turning to consideration of alternative explanations and forms of analysis.

Media reports of girls’ violence most often draw upon selected statistics and particular interpretations of them to support their story. Before beginning a discussion of these statistics it needs to be noted that youth crime in general, and the crimes committed by young women in particular, are predominantly less serious property crimes. An Australian study found that between 1990 and 1996 most girls’ offending was minor, with half consisting of Good Order offenses (known as Public Order offenses in Britain—offenses such as being “drunk and disorderly”) most (70 percent) of which were transit offenses (such as traveling without a ticket or having their feet on a seat) (Alder & Hunter 1999). The same study found that while there had been an increase (81 percent) in the number of criminal cases involving girls across this time period (compared to a 26 percent increase in boys’ offenses), most of this increase was accounted for by an increase in Good Order offenses (114 percent increase for girls).

In general, violent crimes account for a small proportion of all youth crimes and an even smaller proportion of crimes committed by young women (Muncie 1999: 15; Alder & Hunter 1999; Chesney-Lind 1997). In the United States in 1994, 3.4 percent of girls’ arrests were for serious crimes of violence (Chesney-Lind 1997: 39). In Victoria, Australia, Children’s Court statistics, which you would anticipate would reflect a higher proportion of serious offenses than police arrest statistics, indicate that violent offenses have consistently accounted for less than 10 percent of girls’ offending. Although this is a slightly higher percentage than for boys (7–8 percent), the absolute numbers for boys (around 450 offenses per year) is more than four times that for girls (around 100 offenses per year) (Alder & Hunter 1999), demonstrating the potential posed by the use of percentages to distort the presentation of the “facts.”

Further, girls account for a small proportion of all youthful violent crimes and this proportion has changed little across time. In the United States in 1985 girls accounted for 11 percent of all arrests of youth for serious violent offenses; by 1994 the figure was 14 percent (Federal Bureau of Investigation 1995, 222) (Chesney-Lind 1997: 39). Similarly, in Australia the proportion of youth violent offenses for which girls are responsible has remained relatively stable at around 20 percent (Alder & Hunter 1999).

At the same time, the broader statistical picture of youth violent offending across several Western nations indicates a rise in youthful violent crimes across the late 1990s. This observation applies to levels of robbery and assault offenses, but not to homicides, which have remained at relatively stable levels since the 1980s (Pfeiffer 1997; Cook, Leverett, & Mukherjee 1999). For example, Pfeiffer (1997: 20) presents data on trends for violent crimes in Germany that suggest a sharp increase in violent crimes among the fourteen to twenty-one age group beginning in 1991 through to 1995. In the Netherlands, for the twelve to eighteen year-old population the violent crime rate doubled from the beginning of the 1990s (Pfeiffer 1997: 22–23). In Finland, a similar trend is observed with an increase in violent crimes for the fifteen to twenty year-old population, particularly since 1993. In Britain, James (1995: 122–23) found an increase between 1987 and 1993 in the rates of violent offending by the ten to thirteen and fourteen to sixteen year-olds. Such statistics, suggesting an increase in youth violence generally, form a backdrop for speculation about increases in violent offending by young women.

Some statistics also suggest an increase in violent offending by young women in particular. In Victoria (Australia), an analysis of Children’s Court statistics indicated a 52.9 percent (40.1 percent for boys) increase between 1990 and 1996 in crimes of violence for girls. An almost identical pattern can be found in data from the Children’s Court in New South Wales. In the five year period between 1992–1993 and 1996–1997, assault among boys almost doubled, while for girls there was a threefold increase in the level of assaults over the same period. Similarly, a study of robbery and assaults in Germany for the period 1993–1997 concluded that the increases in violence tended to be greater for girls than for boys. In Canada and the United States, where there is no overall increase in youthful violent offending, there is nevertheless a statistical indication of increasing levels of violent offending by young women (Leschied, Cummings, Van Brunschot, Cunningham, & Saunders 2000).

Media analyses tend to take such statistics at face value and use them to fuel speculation about “new” violent young women. However, such statistics are as much an indication of definitions of particular behaviors, and criminal or juvenile justice system responses to them and to particular individuals, as they are about the actions of young women. We turn now to an overview of some of the issues that need to be taken into account in interpreting official statistics and a consideration of alternative explanations.

What Constitutes, Officially, Violent Offending by Girls?

Most aggregate analyses of trends in official statistics tend to use very broad categories of offenses. In relation to increases in violent crimes by girls for example, the two categories often used as the basis of analysis are robbery and assault. These broad terms tend to invoke in the popular imagination some of the most feared of crimes: from the balaclava-headed, knife-wielding stranger who enters our home in the dark of night, to the random assault of our person as we go about our everyday business. However, a broad range of offenses is subsumed under these general categories, from the most serious armed robberies to minor assault with intent to rob, and an even greater breadth of action is deemed to constitute these offenses.

In an effort to clarify further the interpretation of statistical trends some researchers have attempted to investigate the more precise nature of the crimes committed by girls that have resulted in charges for violent offenses. From their analysis of violent offenses in the youth court cases in Canada between 1991 and 1996, Doob and Sprott (1998: 185) concluded that for girls, as for boys, there had been “large increases in minor assaults and no increase in the most serious assaults.”

Two Australian studies had similar findings. In Queensland, following media attention regarding increases in predatory girl violence, a more detailed analysis revealed that girls’ violent offenses were of the “less serious” nature, frequently involving fights between girls in public spaces such as shopping centers (Beikoff 1996). In Victoria, a study of Children’s Court statistics found that, of the 9 percent of girls’ offenses that were offenses against the person, assaults comprised 39 percent. Of these, 33 percent involved assault of a police officer or a person assisting the police. In comparison, 13 percent of boys’ assaults were committed against the police (Alder & Hunter 1999). On the face of it, it seems unlikely that girls are actually more likely to assault police than boys. Rather, these figures suggest the need to look more closely at the ways and circumstances in which the offense of assault against police is defined in practice.

Also in Victoria, Australia, Rechtman (2001) analyzed police descriptions of the events that formed the basis of charges against girls for assaults and for robberies for the period between 1993 and 1999. Almost no change was found in the sorts of violent crimes with which girls were charged, with the most common offense being the less serious charge of “unlawful assault.” Further, there was very little discernible difference in the nature of the events leading to these charges as described in the police descriptions of the event. One shift, which we will return to discuss later in the chapter, was in the number of victims who were “professional care workers.” Rechtman provides the following example of the events that most frequently led to a charge of unlawful assault:

The victim had been hassled by the offender for approximately five to six weeks prior to the assault. The harassment included telephone calls, and torment at school by offenders and unknown friends of the offender. The reason for the harassment was that the offender believed that the victim has been spreading rumours about her which were slanderous. The harassment climaxed with a minor assaulting which took place when the offender believed the victim had been insolent to the offender’s mother. The assault consisted of approximately four punches with a closed fist, and the victim having her hair pulled. The victim’s injuries included a minor asthma attack, and one minor scratch on the face approximately 2 centimetres long on the left cheek. (Rechtman 2001: 43)

This account is very similar to accounts of girls’ violence described in the chapters in this book. That is, most often they are of the less serious form of assault. Most often the victims are girls about the same age or younger who are known to the offenders, and the offense most often does not involve a weapon. In the United States, girls’ assaults are more likely than boys’ to involve other family members (Chesney-Lind 2001: 39,42).

Similar conclusions regarding the less serious nature of girls’ violent offending were drawn from a study of robberies in Hawaii between 1994 and 1996. While the statistical data indicated an increase in robbery arrests involving girls, a more detailed analysis of the events leading to the charges found that this was the result of “less serious offences being swept into the system” (Chesney-Lind 2001: 42). The increase in robberies was predominantly accounted for by crimes that were characterized as, “slightly older youths bullying and ‘hijacking’ younger youths for small amounts of cash and occasionally jewelry” (Chesney-Lind 2001: 44).

Together these pieces of research from Canada, the United States, and Australia suggest that while statistical analyses of the broad categories of offending indicate an increase in girls’ violent offending, more detailed analyses of the forms and nature of that offending indicate that this increase is accounted for by more of the same, that is, the less serious forms of violent offending in which some girls have always been involved. As Horowitz and Pottieger (1991, 81) conclude from their Miami research, analyses of overall arrest rates can be deceptive and the complexity of the ways in which gender and race are involved in arrest decision making requires much more detailed analyses before we can draw meaningful conclusions from arrest statistics.

What Constitutes, in Self-Report Studies, Violent Offending by Girls?

Self-report studies are another form of research that can shed some light on the nature of girls’ violent offending. Such studies were founded on the observation that official statistics as a measure of juvenile offending behavior were confounded by the juvenile justice responses to the behavior. They are intended to provide a measure of offending as reported by youn...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1. A Contemporary Crisis?
• 2. Rough Girls, 1880–1930: The “Recent” History of Violent Young Women
• 3. Twisted Sisters, Ladettes, and the New Penology: The Social Construction of “Violent Girls”
• 4. Racism, “Girl Violence,” and the Murder of Reena Virk
• 5. Turbulent Talk: Girls’ Making Sense of Violence
• 6. Capturing Girls’ Experiences of “Community Violence” in the United States
• 7. Coming Out to Play? Young Women and Violence on the Street
• 8. Violence in the Schoolyard: School Girls’ Use of Violence
• 9. Situational Effects of Gender Inequality on Girls’ Participation in Violence
• Glossary of UK/ Australian terms by chapter
• Contributors
• Index