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More girls being arrested and jailed, report says

CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN) -- While the overall crime rate for juveniles has been falling since 1994, the number of girls being arrested and incarcerated has been increasing, according to a report issued Monday by two national legal groups.

The authors of Justice by Gender, issued by the American Bar Association and the National Bar Association, attribute the increase primarily to changes in the response of the juvenile justice system to female offenders, rather than any discernible trend toward more violent or aggressive behavior by girls.

"Some experts have found that this growth is due in part ... to the relabeling of girls' family conflicts as violent offenses, the changes in police practices regarding domestic violence and aggressive behavior, the gender bias in the processing of misdemeanor cases, and, perhaps, a fundamental systemic failure to understand the unique developmental issues facing girls today," the report said.

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The report said there was a "glaring dearth" of prevention and treatment programs for girls that are "appropriate, developmentally sound, culturally competent, (and) gender-specific." Many programs that exist for girls were modeled after programs designed to serve boys, the report found.

"Girls are more often the victims of physical, sexual and psychological abuse," said ABA President Martha Barnett in a foreword to the report. "Girls are too often placed in settings and institutions that are neither designed for, nor proven effective in, their treatment and rehabilitation."

The report recommended that juvenile justice officials look for alternatives to detaining and incarcerating girls, especially for minor offenses.

However, the report's authors also agreed that more study is also needed into whether increases in violent or aggressive behavior might be partially responsible for the increase in arrests among girls.

In 1999, 670,800 girls under the age of 18 were arrested in the United States, about 27 percent of all juvenile arrests, the report said. During the 1990s, the number of girls arrested on drug charges and curfew violations/loitering more than doubled. Simple assault arrests nearly doubled, while aggravated assault arrests were up by more than 50 percent.

The number of juvenile arrests for females rose in eight of 12 categories of crime cited by the report, compared to increases in just four categories for males. And in the four categories where arrests of girls decreased -- running away, motor vehicle theft, burglary and robbery -- the decreases were less than they were for boys.

Overall, delinquency cases involving girls increased 83 percent between 1988 and 1997, the report said. They rose in all racial categories, increasing 74 percent among whites, 106 percent among blacks, and 102 percent among other races, the report said.

The ABA and NBA found that girls were more likely than boys to be detained for minor offenses and status offenses, such as running away. Girls who were released from detention were also more likely than boys to be sent back, even though they are less likely to commit new crimes. That's because girls have a higher detention rate for probation and parole violations than boys, the report said.

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