Spotlight on Juvenile Justice: Girls in the System

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

In 1980, girls were 4 times less likely to be arrested than boys. During the 1990s, a surge of juvenile arrests gained national attention, with the arrest rate for girls increasing faster than the arrest rate for boys.1 In response to this increase, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) convened the Girls Study Group in 2004 to better understand girls involvement in delinquency. Prior to 2004, much of the research and programming had focused on boys, as boys have always accounted for the majority of youth arrests. Amongst their findings, the study group attributed the arrest rate gender disparity to mandatory and pro-arrest policies which more strongly affected the likelihood of arrest for girls than boys.2