Gender Differences in Delinquency and Juvenile Justice Processing

Abstract

This article traces the historical coverage of the gender issue in the criminological literature. It also provides contemporary empirical evidence about differences and similarities between girls and boys with respect to juvenile crime and to processing by the juvenile justice system, by analyzing several national juvenile crime data series, all of which have been recently updated. This research has produced numerous results that indicate that female and male delinquents possess more similarities than differences concerning arrest rates, arrest statistics, juvenile court data, and juvenile corrections data.