Policing Girlhood? Relational Aggression and Violence Prevention

• Author: Meda Chesney-Lind,Katherine Irwin,Merry Morash
• DOI: 10.1177/1541204007301307
• Published date: 01 July 2007
• Date: 01 July 2007
• Subject Matter: Articles

328

Policing Girlhood?

Relational Aggression and Violence Prevention

Meda Chesney-Lind

University of Hawaii at Manoa

Merry Morash

Michigan State University

Katherine Irwin

University of Hawaii at Manoa

Relational, covert, and indirect aggression among girls has recently caught the attention of

those interested in school violence prevention. In the name of being gender responsive,

violence prevention or antibullying programs are being encouraged to include this form of

aggression among the sorts of behaviors one seeks to prevent. The authors review the literature

on relational aggression and suggest that the research to date does not necessarily support the

notions that such aggression is the exclusive province of girls, that those who engage in it have

other social problems, and most importantly, that it is equivalent to physical aggression,

violence, or bullying. The authors argue, then, that scarce violence prevention resources

should not be diverted to prevent this nonviolent behavior. Furthermore, the authors speculate

that policing what is essentially noncriminal behavior simply encourages further and

unnecessary control over girls and brings an increased number of girls into noncompliance

with school rules and policies.

Keywords: girls; aggression; social control

The turn of the century has been characterized by an increased attention to girls’ violence

and aggression. Much of the intense media interest in girls’ violence is the product of

dramatic increases in girls’ arrests for nontraditional, violent offenses. Between 1980 and

2000, for example, girls’ arrests for aggravated assault, simple assault, and weapons law

violations increased by 121%, 257%, and 134%, respectively. Boys’ arrests also increased

in these categories, but by far less (28%, 109%, and 20%). And the trend continues. For

example, between 1995 and 2004, girls’ arrests for simple assault increased by 31.4%,

whereas boys’ arrests decreased by 1.4%. Arrests of girls for aggravated assault did drop

(by 2.9%) but compare that to the 27.6% drop in boys’ arrests for this offense (Federal

Bureau of Investigation, 2005, p. 285).

It is important, though, to keep these figures in perspective. Despite the increases seen

in girls’ arrests, girls still accounted for relatively small proportions of violent crime arrests

of juveniles: 10% of murders or negligent manslaughter arrests, 3% of forcible rapes, 9%

of robberies, and 24% of aggravated assaults (Snyder, 2004, p. 3). Data from the Federal

Bureau of Investigation’s National Incident-Based Reporting System further confirm the

low level of girls’ violence compared to boys’; relatively few (26%) victims who reported

Youth Violence and

Juvenile Justice

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Chesney-Lind et al. / Policing Girlhood? 329

violent crimes by juveniles said that the offender was a female (McCurley & Snyder, 2004,

p. 6). Girls were responsible for just 8% of victimizations for sexual assault, 6% of rob-

beries, 22% of aggravated assaults, and 30% of simple assaults committed by a juvenile. In

no category did they account for close to half of the victimizations.1

There are reasons to be somewhat skeptical of police and court statistics showing that

girls are increasing in their use of violence. Self-report data sources failed to corroborate

this surge in girls’ arrests for violence. In fact, self-report studies often found that girls were

becoming less violent during the period that saw their arrests increase dramatically. The

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s biennial Youth Risk Behavior Survey found

that between 1991 and 2005 there was a decrease in the percentage of girls who reported

being in a fight, from 34.2% to 28.1% of girls. Boys’ self-reported violence during the same

time also decreased, from 50.2% to 43.4%. But in each year, it was still higher than the

girls’ rate (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1992-2003; see also Steffensmeier,

Schwartz, Zhong, & Ackerman, 2005).

Why the difference between official statistics and self-reports? Many suspect that zero

tolerance policies in public schools and mandatory arrests for domestic violence may have

led to more arrests of girls for acts that previously would have been considered either fam-

ily matters, school matters, or for some other reason, outside of the purview of the police

and the courts (Bartollas, 1993; Chesney-Lind & Irwin, 2007; Russ, 2004). There also is

some evidence that police and courts treat girls more harshly than boys (Horowitz &

Pottieger, 1991) and that this practice inflates the official statistics for girls.

Although there is debate about whether girls are increasing or maintaining their use of vio-

lence, it is recognized that some girls have problems—sometimes serious—with violence and

that they hurt others. Given the importance of gender in our society, the etiology of girls’ vio-

lence is likely to be influenced by gender, in combination with race, class, and ethnicity, and

thus interventions must be carefully targeted to any gender-related and culturally specific

causes. The need to understand the etiology of girls’ violence is not in dispute here. Indeed,

the authors of this article as well as other researchers have explored the context of girls’

violence and the need for those seeking to intervene in this behavior to foreground these

gender-related issues (see Artz & Riecken, 1997; Chesney-Lind & Belknap, 2004; Morash &

Chesney-Lind, in press).

Although we very much support gender-responsive prevention and intervention efforts

aimed at reducing girls’ violence, we are troubled by another trend: focusing violence pre-

vention and intervention efforts on the policing of girls’ (and occasionally boys’) nonvio-

lent, covert or relational aggression. In this article, we will discuss our reasons for raising

questions about this approach, which some contend is a gender-balanced approach to vio-

lence prevention and bullying.

In fact, we contend that public concern about youth violence and the many programs

created to prevent and intervene in the problem offer an instructive and cautionary case

study of the new gender-balanced approach in youth programming. Instead of just imple-

menting programs for boys or taking programs developed for boys and then superficially

adapting them for girls, policy makers and program designers in the post-Columbine

years drew from the studies about girls and specifically responded to the idea that girls

and boys experience and express violence and aggression differently. Also, these policy

makers and program designers have made a specific effort to include these indirect or