Female Young Offenders Essay Research Paper Dressed

Female Young Offenders Essay, Research Paper

Dressed in a baggy T-shirt, cotton pants and runners with long wavy hair falling around her shoulders, she looks like an ordinary teenager. Yet because of her crime she spent her .sweet sixteen. birthday locked up in one of British Columbia.s closed custody units for youth. .Janice. which is not her real name because the Young Offenders Act prohibits publication of a youths identity is incarcerated for her part in the brutal murder of 14 year-old Reena Virk in November 1997, an event that shocked the country and prompted .Bad Girl. headlines coast to coast. What made this case so unbelievable was that seven out of eight of the teens who participated in butting out a cigarette on Virk.s forehead, and punching and kicking her until she was dazed and bleeding, were girls. (Chislom, 1997)

Many people believe that because of incidents like this, there must be a major problem with our female youth and crime today. Although this was an extremely heinous crime . are female youths really becoming more violent and more capable of murder. Are crimes committed by young females catching up to the number of crimes committed by young males. These are questions sought and researched by many individuals and groups in Canadian society as well as all around the world. No matter what the number.s are today of crimes committed by young females, the crimes they commit are still significantly lower than that of their male counterparts. However, there is an increase of young female offenders and it is becoming more recognized by the media and society. Female offenders commit relatively fewer severe crimes than males, they are less likely to recidivate, and yet although the Young Offenders Act abolished status offences, young women are treated differently by the courts compared to youthful males.

In general, both young males and females have the same factors which may lead them down the path to commit crime. Many adolescents who are involved in crime had histories of family dysfunction, school problems, such as, truancy, learning disabilities, failure, and conflicts with teachers. As well, young offenders are quite often found to be involved in drug and/or alcohol abuse, have delinquent peers and/or belong to a gang. Personal risk factors are also a big issue when dealing with the profile of a young offender. If a child shows anti-social behaviour, frequently runs away from home and/or is a very hyperactive child, then criminal activity, although it may not always be the case, could be another behaviour to surface from the individual child. Compared to males, young females are much more likely to turn crime if they have been a victim of physical and/or sexual abuse (Corrado et al., 2000, p. 144).

Although a young offenders profile is very similar for both males and females, girl offenders differ from their male counterparts in several ways. Criminal activity by girls and young women tend to begin and end at a younger age (Reitsma-Street, 1993, p. 440). In a 1997 study the percentage of accused youth between the ages of twelve and thirteen, 22 percent were females, 15 percent were males and between the ages of fourteen and fifteen, 43 percent were females and 36 percent were males. However, after the age of fifteen female youths accused of a crime dropped drastically and while males being charged escalated. Also, young females are two to five times less likely to get involved in more serious crime than are young males (Savoie, 1999).

Of all the .Canadian kids who killed. between 1961 and 1983, 89 percent were male and 11 percent were female (Meloff & Silverman, 1992) Figures revealed by Statistics Canada (1995), 36 Canadian youths were charged with homicide. Of these 36 charged only three were females. A major gender difference is shown in the number of youth charged with homicide. Statistics Canada (1995) also revealed that 61 boys and 9 girls were charged in the same year with attempted murder. This raises the question as to whether or not the rates of homicide and attempted murder have increased in the last several years. Contrary to the belief of many people, they have not. Dealing with young female.s Dell and Boe (1997, p. 24), found that from 1992 to 1994 girls charged with homicide has remained fairly constant compared to the previous several years. Compared with young males charged with these crimes form between the same years, boys committed ten times as many homicides and approximately eight times as many attempted murders than girls. Even though females are not nearly as murderous than the boys, male youth homicide has also remained stable throughout the years (Sinclair & Boe, 1998, p. 27).

Meloff and Silverman (1992, p. 27) found that young females rarely commit homicide during the process of committing another crime, such as, theft or break and enter. For instance, between 1961 and 1983 only 3 percent of girl killings were committed during another crime compared to 25 percent of the young male homicides.

Although murder and murder related crimes are very serious offences, they only make up 3 percent of all crimes committed by Canadian girls and compared to their male counterparts murder is far less frequent. On the other hand, female assault crimes account for almost 20 percent of all female youth crime (Corrado et al., 2000, p. 197). Many people look at these figures and believe that y