Fifteenth annual Riley Lecture: ‘Girls Going Wild’
The arrests for violent crimes have risen dramatically in juvenile girls since 1983, according to Meda Chesney-Lind, a professor in Women's Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Chesney-Lind's speech was a part of Alfred University’s annual Riley Lectureship in Women’s Studies, which began in 1996. Chesney-Lind is a celebrated criminologist and author of several books dealing with the subject of girls and violence.
“We have gone from one in five girls in 1983 to one in three girls in 2008,” Chesney-Lind said on March 22 in a packed Knight Club. However, that rise in arrests, and the seeming rise in violence in general among girls, has many causes, and the media obsession with girls' violence only complicates it.
Sex and violence sells, which is why television shows like The Bad Girls Club and movies like Mean Girls exist. Chesney-Lind said she has gotten phone calls from producers of the Ricky Lake Show and The Oprah Winfrey Show asking for her to find “thugs” to interview, or asking for her to comment on a particularly violent crime committed by a woman.
Chesney-Lind provided some explanations why the juvenile arrest rate for teenage and pre-teen girls has been on the rise. One cause is the phenomenon of “upcriming”, which refers to policies that increase the penalties associated with particular offenses. In a post-Columbine society, most people react to crimes by calling 911, even for the most minor of offenses. No one wants to take the risk of ignoring small crimes because they may turn into catastrophic events.
In addition, the rise of officers on school campuses provide “a different set of eyes on the same event,” Chesney-Lind said.
Also partially responsible for the increasing number of arrests of young women is the re-categorization of status offenses as violent offenses. For instance, making arrests mandatory for all domestic violence-related incidents has resulted in a higher rate of arrest for girls. Chesney-Lind said that girls who have been charged with beating their mothers are more likely to be arrested than their brothers are for the same crime, and girls assaulting their female relatives accounts for the majority of girls’ arrests on domestic violence charges.
“Now I’m not condoning this, but raise your hand if you’ve ever hit your sister,” Chesney-Lind said. “Don’t really raise your hand, but I’d be the first one with my hand up. When you start criminalizing domestic violence, you have surprising consequences.”
In recent years, court referrals, as well as detention rates, have also skyrocketed for girls, while only rising marginally for boys.
That change is coming from the police, not the girls, according to Chesney-Lind.
Chesney-Lind ended on a positive note. She talked about the rise in women’s participation in athletics and the positive impact it is having on the way they behave. Participating in athletics and similar activities combats negative stereotypes and provides healthy outlets for girls as well as boys. There has been a 900 percent increase in participation for women in college sports since the introduction of Title IX, which says institutions receiving federal funding may not discriminate against anyone based on gender. Title IX, of course, is most noted for its promotion of women in high school and collegiate sports.
“We need to spread the good news about women and challenge backlash journalism,” Chesney-Lind said. “We have to fight back against misogyny in the media.”
