FEMALE DELINQUENT THEORY

Who is the typical female delinquent? What causes her to get into trouble? What happens to her if she is caught? These are questions that few members of the general public could answer quickly. By contrast, almost every citizen can talk about “delinquency,” by which they generally mean male delinquency, and can even generate some fairly specific complaints about, for example, the failure of the juvenile justice system to deal with such problems as “the …

…delinquency. Although recent decades have shown changing crime trends amongst women, the fact remains that females continue to be the victims of violence and sexual abuse. American society has defined as desirable youth, physically perfect women, which unfortunately also means that the criminal subculture views them from this perspective as well. But unlike males, females’ victimization and their response to it is specifically shaped by their status as females, and it is still evident today.