Last week a group of seven girls ages 13 to 17 were arrested after two women were attacked in robberies on the CTA. Considering the much-publicized hazing incident by female Glenbrook North High School students last spring, the obvious question is: Are girls getting more violent?
The answer, according to statistics and experts in the field, is yes and no.
A 2001 report by the American Bar Association showed that juvenile girls experienced an 83 percent rise in delinquency from 1988 to 1997.
Perhaps due to more aggressive intervention–Cook County is said by some to be a national leader in this area–the FBI reported that arrests of females of all ages increased by only 0.8 percent in 2002. Arrests of all juveniles declined 3.5 percent during the same period, and the number of juveniles arrested for murder fell 64 percent in the last decade.
Some of the increase noted by the ABA may be due to a greater willingness of families and schools to call police over disputes that frequently were settled privately in the past, experts say.