Girls done wrong: the number of girls arrested is on the rise, but is the system meeting their needs?

• Author: Smith, Patricia
• Position: Juvenile justice system

When Jessica Nolan was 13, she shoplifted some pants and shirts from a department store. This misadventure earned her a trip to juvenile lockup and 90 days on probation. But Jessica didn't respond well to the rules imposed by a judge: She violated her curfew, was late to school, and sometimes missed school altogether.

"Instead of getting grounded, I got incarcerated," says Jessica, now 22, explaining how those original 90 days ultimately turned into four years in various juvenile-detention facilities, group homes and rehabilitation programs. "There was never another criminal act. It was all violating my probation."

Hers is a common story. It's the kind that more juvenile-justice experts are paying attention to, as they try to understand why adolescent girls have become the fastest-growing segment of young offenders, and how to handle them.

The juvenile justice system once dealt almost exclusively with boys. But between 1988 and 1997, delinquency cases involving girls increased by 83 percent, according to the American Bar Association's 2001 report, "Justice by Gender." By 1999, girls accounted for 27 percent of all juvenile arrests.

Indeed, during the 1990s, the percentage of girls' arrests increased, while the percentage of boys' arrests decreased in most categories. One notable increase was in aggravated assault (attacks with a weapon), a crime not often associated with girls.

It's not that girls are getting more violent, experts say; it's that the world, and consequently the justice system, is looking at them differently. For one thing, many girls used to be diverted out of the system from the start.

"Ten years ago, girls and boys would be picked up by the police, and the girls would be sent home," says Francine Sherman, director of the Juvenile Rights Advocacy Project in Boston. "The assumption was that the boys were the ringleaders. That doesn't happen anymore."

GIRLS TREATED MORE HARSHLY

In fact, the pendulum has swung the other way. Girls are now more often detained for less serious offenses than boys...