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generic female viagra Teenaged girls may not commit as many crimes as boys, but the numbers who do are growing.  We need to understand what drives their behaviour if we want to reduce crime rates.  Up until recently, there were only two groups of teenaged offenders identified: those who were arrested, tried, jailed and then never appeared before the courts again (desisters), and those who committed more crimes and went through the system again (recidivists).  Such groupings do not describe the real situation very well and are not helpful in understanding, treating, and preventing adolescent criminal behaviour. 

generic female viagra This study tracked 499 girls from age 16 to 28, whose records formed part of a study of criminal recidivism ordered by the New York State Legislature in 1995. One of the goals of the study was to look at their criminal “careers” to see if there were separate groups with different risk factors and outcomes as they became adults. Knowing these things could help prevent crime by intervening in the situations that caused them, and help turn around the young women’s lives. The researchers wanted to determine if there were distinct paths followed by the girls that could predict who would be a desister and who would be a recidivist. Their arrest, court, jail and prison records were searched, as were state death records, the latter because girls and women involved in criminal activity are more likely than those in the general population to die young.

generic female viagra Of the 499 girls, 81% were recidivists, with the remaining 19% classified as desisters.  The recidivists each had an average of 6 adult arrests by age 28. The risks for adult criminal activity in this group were being Black, family criminality, and having experienced multiple forms of child maltreatment. Being Hispanic and being at an older age at first juvenile arrest reduced individual rates of recidivism.

Four pathways were found for these girls by the time they reached 28 years of age:

Rare/Non-offending: This group only rarely offended after age 16. Of the 32% making up this group, 82% were arrest free after they turned 21.

Low-chronic offenders: This was the largest group, making up over 53% of the recidivists.  They accounted for over 50% of all adult arrests experienced by this sample. They tended to commit crimes in adolescence, with their arrests peaking at age 18, by which time about 19% have been arrested. The rate then started to slowly decline to less than 10% by age 28.

Low-rising offenders: These young women made up about 9% of the sample. They tended to experience steadily increasing numbers of arrests starting with an arrest rate of about 19% at age 16, that rose to  57% by age 28. They accounted for 24% of all the arrests in the group of 499.

High-chronic offenders: They had the highest arrest rates overall, peaking at 40 to 60% of the group members being arrested from age 16 to 21, and then slowly declining by age 28.  While comprising only just over 5% of the entire sample, they accounted for 21% of all arrests.   This group was arrested at a younger age than girls in the rare/nonoffending and low chronic groups. They were most likely to have significant mental health problems identified when they entered the system and to have poor reading and math skills, and to have experienced both sexual and physical abuse, and to have been in foster care compared to the low chronic and rare/nonoffending groups.

Girls in the low-rising and high-chronic groups comprised only 14% of the 499 girls followed in this study, but they were responsible for 45% of adult arrests in this group. 

This study showed that understanding the different trajectories of delinquent adolescent girls and the risk factors associated with their criminal “careers” offers opportunities to interrupt these paths. Adverse family situations and personal experiences of abuse predicted arrests that occurred into adulthood.  Preventing these events and circumstances could reduce the personal and societal costs associated with them. 

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The preceding is a summary of: Colman RA, Kim DH, Mitchell-Herzfeld S, Shady TA. Delinquent girls grown up: Young adult offending patterns and their relation to early legal, individual, and family risk.  Journal of Youth and Adolescence.  2009; 38: 355-366.