Violent girls or relabeled status offenders

Crime & Delinquency http://cad.sagepub.com/

Violent Girls or Relabeled Status Offenders? : An Alternative Interpretation of the Data
Barry C. Feld Crime & Delinquency 2009 55: 241 DOI: 10.1177/0011128708330629 The online version of this article can be found at: http://cad.sagepub.com/content/55/2/241

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Violent Girls or Relabeled Status Offenders?
An Alternative Interpretation of the Data
Barry C. Feld
University of Minnesota

Crime & Delinquency Volume 55 Number 2 April 2009 241-265 © 2009 SAGE Publications 10.1177/0011128708330629 http://cad.sagepub.com hosted at http://online.sagepub.com

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