Apparently not anymore. According to American FBI figures, between 1966 and 1996 the percentage of juvenile girls arrested for violent offenses doubled, but still remained at only 10% of all juvenile arrests. By 2002, however, females accounted for 24% of juvenile arrests for aggravated assault, and 32% of other levels of assaults. But does this mean girls are abandoning their passive nature and becoming violent like boys? Lyn Mikel Brown, Meda Chesney-Lind and Nan Stein propose in the journal, Violence Against Women (Vol 13, No. 12; 2007) that "steep increases in girls' arrests are not the product of girls becoming more like boys. Instead, forms of girls' minor violence that were once ignored are now being criminalized." While girls may not be completely abandoning their nature—whatever one might consider that to be—it's hard to believe that the increase in female juvenile arrests is entirely attributable to "minor violence" suddenly becoming criminalized. When in the past would the following incidents have been considered "minor" violence? Last Monday, at a bus station in Chelles, France about twenty 15- and 16-year-old girls met for a rumble. They carried an assortment of weapons that included screwdrivers, bedboards, iron bars and steak knives. Warned by school staff, authorities intervened shortly after the first blows were delivered and arrested eight of the ringleaders. But fellow students say a rematch has already been planned. The same day in Halifax, Nova Scotia, two teenage girls were sentenced for a crime they had committed the previous summer. Apparently—using metal table legs as clubs—the girls had waylaid a 66-year-old woman as she walked through Halifax Common and beat her repeatedly, leaving her with a broken rib and severe bruising. Last month in West Philadelphia, 10 girls attacked two other female teens who were waiting for a school bus. Using what was either a box cutter or a straight-edge razor, the attackers slashed 15-year-old Shakia West, severely wounding her in the face. Last autumn in Des Moines, Iowa, a 15-year-old girl plunged a knife repeatedly into the neck of a 16-year-old acquaintance who died at the hospital soon after the stabbing. When the Judge asked what had provoked the killing, the girl answered, “I stabbed him after I lost my temper and he called me disrespectful names.” If Brown, Chesney-Lind and Stein are correct and girls have always been this way, one can only muse that it's about time such behavior became criminalized. But however long this state of affairs may have existed, surely it's appropriate now to explore what can be done in the lives of young girls to prevent this kind of outcome. | 
