Violence by Teenage Girls: Is It Really an Epidemic?

A recent study by the Office of Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention at the U.S. Department of Justice examines whether teenage girls are becoming more violent.

By Megan Greene, NCPC Intern

In recent months, the news media has focused extensively on incidents of violence among teenage girls. But are we getting the whole story?

In March 2008, 16-year-old Victoria Lindsay was held against her will in a suburban home in Central Florida where she was videotaped being severely beaten by six other teenage girls. Each of the girls took turns hitting, kicking, and punching Victoria, until finally one of the girls struck her several times before slamming her head into a wall, knocking her unconscious. When Victoria awoke, she was surrounded by the ring of six girls who continued to attack her and prevented her from leaving. After being driven to and dumped in front of another friend’s house, Victoria was told that if she went to anyone about the attack, the next beating would be worse. When she was finally able to make it to a hospital, doctors treated her for a concussion, damage to her left ear and eye, and countless bruises.

The classic school of thought has been that boys externalize their anger, venting their frustrations through physical violence. Girls, on the other hand, were expected to internalize their anger, hurting others’ feelings rather than throwing punches. However, Victoria Lindsay would probably tell you a very different story. This atrocious incident leads to an obvious question: are teenage girls getting more violent?

In May 2008, the Office of Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) at the U.S. Department of Justice published a study aimed at answering this question. The authors of Girls Study Group: Understanding and Responding to Girls’ Delinquency compiled a series of studies of recent crime trends and statistics in an attempt to assess whether juvenile female violence was increasing. The study rested on three data sources—official arrest data, self-reported data, and victimization data— to explore trends in girls’ violence from 1980 through 2005.

Traditionally, it has been accepted that boys commit far more crimes than girls in nearly every category. In light of recent events, however, media reports have begun to call these assumptions into question, citing statistics that show an increase of girls in the juvenile and criminal justice systems. The last 25 years have shown a dramatic change in teen female delinquency in comparison to that of males. According to the FBI’s 2005 Uniform Crime Report, arrests of girls increased nationwide between 1980 and 2005, while arrests of boys declined in the same period.  This report supports the speculation that adolescent girls are getting more violent, right? Maybe not.

The OJJDP study suggests that arrest counts are not necessarily a product of delinquent behavior alone. Rather, the number of arrests is a combination of the occurrence of crime along with more arrests. This means that we may need to interpret an increase in arrest statistics differently than just reflecting an increase in crime. Instead, the report suggests that these results are an outcome of changes in accountability and arrest policies. As reported by the National Crime Victimization Survey in 2005, assaults by both girls and boys have dropped between 5 and 10 percent in recent years. Furthermore, the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report data for 2005 show that the rate of actual arrests for assaults is on the decline for boys while the arrest rate for girls continues to inch upward. According to the study, “This telling difference between the two data sources [the National Crime Victimization Survey and the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report] supports the conclusion that policy shifts and changes in enforcement may have had a greater impact on arrests rates than have actual changes in the behavior of girls.”

So, perhaps the crisis of increasing juvenile female involvement in violence is not as bad as the media suggests. In reality, it appears that the rate of violent crimes by both males and females is continuing to decline and those who are indulging in violent behavior are progressively being held accountable for their actions, whereas they’ve been let off the hook before. Despite some isolated incidents, it seems our nation’s girls are not nearly as violent or in danger of becoming violent as today’s newspaper headlines suggest.