Delinquent Girls Research Articles

Delinquent Females: In-Depth Therapy and Some Theoretical Opinions

Various theoretical models of adolescence are dis cussed, and the author suggests that in delinquent girls the normal adolescent task of forming a sense of identity followed by inti macy is reversed; they 'jump' the stage of identity to intimacy; the girl who has usually suffered rejection or 'branding' in some form or other by her family, hopes to find herself by having relationships. Group hypnosis can frequently be used to uncover deep seated traumas, which can then be faced together in the group.

Female Status Offenders and Justice Reforms: An International Perspective

Females are treated differently from males in the juvenile justice system. While the majority of males appear in juvenile court on charges of illegal behaviour, most females appear on “status offence” grounds, that is, for behaviour that only juveniles under a particular age can be brought to police or court attention. Females charged on moral or status offences are treated more harshly than males. However, when they are charged with illegal behaviour, females are treated more leniently which is appropriate, since delinquent girls are generally involved in less serious criminal behaviour than boys. In principle, the juvenile court was set up to protect juveniles and, by giving wide powers of discretion to law enforcers, to facilitate decisions in young offenders' best interests. In practice, particular categories of youth are treated more harshly than others. Evidence indicates that those females appearing on status offence charges (often from socially and economically disadvantaged backgrounds) are discriminated against on the basis of their sexual behaviour. This paper describes the present situation and outlines the failures of attempts at legislative changes in the definition and processing of juvenile status offenders in the United States and Australia. These examples show that the double standard of juvenile justice is international; not simply an artifact of one nation's court system. Treating status offence problems within a criminal justice system has destructive and damaging effects which may only intensify the problems from which such youth are ostensibly being protected.

Medical Histories of Female Delinquents

The medical histories (based on hospital records) of matched samples of nonincarcerated delinquent girls, incarcerated delinquent girls, and nondelinquent girls were compared. Numbers of visits, timing of visits, services used, and reasons for hospital contacts were compared for the three groups. Delinquent girls in general had significantly more adverse medical histories than nondelinquent girls; they made significantly more hospital visits and had significantly more accidents and injuries through age 21 years. Perinatal difficulties did not distinguish these two groups. Although incarcerated and nonincarcerated delinquent girls made similar numbers of hospital visits, their histories differed qualitatively. Accidents and injuries, head and face injuries, perinatal difficulties, neurologic abnormalities, and child abuse were found more frequently in the histories of incarcerated girls. These findings have etiologic importance to the development of seriously delinquent behavior.

A comparison of social skills in delinquent and nondelinquent adolescent girls using a behavioral role-playing inventory.

Delinquent behavior in adolescent girls may be related to deficits in social skills; that is, some girls may behave maladaptively because they lack the skills to perform more competently. During the 1st phase of this research, the Problem Inventory for Adolescent Girls (PIAG) was developed to measure competence in social situations. The 2nd phase of the research compared the performance of carefully matched groups of 29 delinquent and 29 nondelinquent girls (mean age 16.25 yrs) on the inventory. The PIAG significantly discriminated between the groups; 40 of the 52 individual items also discriminated between the delinquent and nondelinquent Ss. 10 of the 12 nondiscriminating items were those for which the criteria had been developed by teenagers. This suggests that delinquency is more closely related to skill deficits in interacting with adult authority figures than to skill deficits with peers. Items on the inventory generally were independent of one another and lacked an interpretable clustering pattern. A discriminant analysis yielded a function that resulted in 85% of the Ss being correctly assigned to their appropriate delinquent or nondelinquent group on the basis of their performance on the inventory. (9 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).

BIRTH ORDER AND DELINQUENCY

THE study of birth order (or sibship position) and its behavioural correlates has been one of the early interests of psychology. While the theoretical discussion of the meaning and effects of birth order is traced to Adler (1928), there were earlier studies of this topic, particularly in relation to eugenics {e.g. Pearson, 1914). More recently, Schachter has refocused attention on the significance of this factor with reference to affiliation. The present paper will examine the relationship between birth order and one type of behaviour, delinquency and criminality. The first investigation of this topic was a study by Breckenridge and Abott (1912) of 584 boys who were processed at the Cook County juvenile court during the period 1903-1904. This study revealed that first-born children were over-represented by 16 per cent, among the court cases, and middle-born by 9 per cent., while last-born were considerably underrepresented. Another early exploration of this problem is Goring's (1913) study of 3,000 English prisoners. With the help of Karl Pearson, Goring established that his subjects included substantially more first-born than expected. Despite the controversial method of calculating the expected frequency in each sibship position (Greenwood and Yule, 1914), Pearson (1914) indicated that, regardless of the method, first-born were indeed overrepresented in Goring's sample. Pearson neglected to notice that the overrepresentation of the second-born was even greater. Several studies in the late 1920s and the early 1930s dealt with the relationship of birth order and delinquency and generally confirmed the prior findings of over-representation of first-born children. Levy (1931) studied 700 cases from the files of the Institute of Juvenile Research in Chicago, of which 296 were delinquents. He concluded that the only child commits more acts of delinquency than children with one brother or sister . Wile and Noetzel (1931) stated that delinquents tend to be the eldest children. In both studies, subjects were compared with estimates of the relevant data, drawn from different samples. Armstrong (1933) wrote that it is only in offenses against the home {i.e. desertion and ungovernability) that there is reliability of primogeniture of delinquents . A different interpretation of her data would be that delinquents tend to be first-born in sibships of two to five, while in most of the larger sibships, intermediate positions dominate. Parsley (1933) presented more adequate data in her study of delinquent girls in Chicago. In this study one may compare the research group with controls while holding the sibship size constant. These data show that, while simple analysis seems to indicate predominance of first-born, controlling for sibship size shows the middle positions as over-represented (with the small exception of sibships of eight or more). Fortes' study (1933)

Coed residential milieu

The experimental program discussed here indicates that delinquent boys and girls behave better when they live in the same cottage although in separate rooms. Adolescent sexual promiscuity and homosexual behavior dropped and cottage management became easier. With uniform expectations, boys and girls seemed to think, act, and perform similarly.

Patterns of Delinquency in Girls and Boys

This study compares offenses of delinquent girls and boys committed to a Juvenile Justice Center. The results show that the male-female ratio for selected offenses is different for whites and blacks. The boys had their first court referral at a significantly younger age. The offenses most commonly committed by both sexes were running away, truancy, and incorrigibility. However, the males and black females tended to be more frequent personal offenders, while the white girls were mostly status offenders. There also was a racial difference in male-female ratios (3 to 1 and 1.3 to 1 in blacks and whites, respectively), demonstrating that the frequency of delinquency among white females is approaching that of white males.

The ten commandments—or how the therapist can avoid delinquency

The author has been treating delinquent girls in a closed borstal for 12 years. From this experience he has derived certain rules of therapeutic behaviour which he expresses as the Ten Commandments. The Commandments are guide‐lines enabling the therapist to avoid behaviour which if the patient sees as false, will negate therapeutic efforts. In addition, having interviewed some 3000 borstal trainees, and treated a large proportion of these, the author makes some observations about unsatisfied dependency needs, the satisfaction of which is seen as a priority in residential treatment.

Modifying delinquents' conversation using token reinforcement of self-recorded behavior

Self-recording procedures were introduced within a correctional institution to increase delinquent girls' prosocial comments and positive attention to such comments by others. Conversation was observed daily in the girls' living area. Following baseline, prosocial comments were taught in game-like training sessions with staff. In the living areas, each girl carried a card on which she recorded the frequency of her prosocial comments and positive attention; tokens were delivered later in the evening according to each girls' record of her own behavior. A multiple-baseline design was used: self-recording was introduced first for girls' conversation with their peers and later during their conversation with staff. Both prosocial comments and positive attention to prosocial comments of others increased when self-recording was introduced.

Delinquent girls before the courts.

One hundred and twenty-six delinquent girls are compared with 730 boys drawn from the same population of schoolchildren in terms of the pattern of their delinquency, certain socio-demographic background characteristics and their disposal by the courts. The prevalence, frequency and seriousness of female delinquency is found to be much less than that of the boys. However, in terms of social background and offence behaviour the similarities are more marked than any differences. Sex-related offences form an insignificant part of female delinquency. Courts show a slight tendency to deal more severely with females. Caution in the use of institutional samples for the study of female delinquency is suggested.

Training institutional staff to alter delinquents' conversation

The staff of an institution for delinquent girls were trained to use prompts and certain social contingencies to alter girls' conversation about prosocial and antisocial behavior. The major findings were: (a) staff training led to an increase in the rate of girls' prosocial comments when staff were present, and some decrease in the rate of antisocial comments; (b) changes in staff behavior led to unpredictable changes in girls' responses to peers' prosocial and antisocial comments; (c) changes in prosocial comments were not maintained during a post-training condition, and did not generalize to periods when staff were usually absent. This pattern of outcome suggests that other intervention procedures should be used to alter such behaviors.

Book Review: The Institutionalization of Delinquent Girls

Book Review: The Institutionalization of Delinquent Girls

Race and counselor climate in the counselor preference of delinquent girls.

Race and counselor climate in the counselor preference of delinquent girls.

Race and counselor climate in the counselor preference of delinquent girls.

Race and counselor climate in the counselor preference of delinquent girls.

Juvenile delinquent drug abuse in females: a clinical study.

Thirty drug taking and thirty non-drug taking delinquent adolescent girls were assessed using a psychiatric interview technique. Differences were observed between the groups on an aggressive-passive-withdrawn dimension. Drug takers were found to be passive and withdrawn whilst control group subjects were found to be more aggressive. These factors were identified within the modal personality of the delinquent girl. The results supported M.M.P.I. studies of the drug taking personality and were seen as an indication of aetiology and its implications for assessment and treatment.

Self-parental alientation and locus of control in delinquent girls.

Social maladjustment has been related to an external locus of control orientation. It was hypothesized, therefore, that delinquent females would be more external than a control sample. Further, since alienation from others is also associated with maladjustment, it was expected that the delinquents would also prefer greater distance from others. These hypotheses were confirmed with discussion being in terms of implication for rehabilitation of delinquents.

The effects of parental composition on recidivism rates in delinquent girls.

The effects of parental composition on recidivism rates in delinquent girls.

Expectancy in delinquent behavior of adolescent girls.

A study was conducted to test the utility of Rotter's social learning theory in predicting the type of delinquent behavior, sexual or non-sexual, in which adolescent girls would engage. It was hypothesized that (1) sexually delinquent girls would place high reward value for love and affection and have low expectancy for attaining it, (2) non-sexually delinquent girls would place high reward value for recognition and status and have low expectancy for attaining it, and (3) that normals would not be significantly low on reward value or expectancy for either love and affection or recognition status. Hypotheses 1 and 3 were supported, while the variable of recognition status appeared to have little relevance for Ss' behavior.

Attitudes toward Physical Activity of Delinquent and Nondelinquent Junior High School Age Girls

Abstract It was the purpose of this study to compare altitudes toward physical activity of delinquent (N = 20) and nondelinquent (N = 60) junior high school age girls. Demographic data were secured through the administration of a questionnaire. Attitudes toward physical activity were assessed by the use of the Kenyon Attitudes Toward Physical Activity Inventory (ATPAI). Data were analyzed through the use of univariate and multivariate statistical procedures. Statistically significant (.01 level) differences in attitudes were found on only one of the six domains. The nondelinquent girls scored significantly higher than the delinquent girls on the social scale. That is, nondelinquent girls value physical activity as a social experience — an opportunity to interact with others. Statistically significant differences were not found for the vertigo, aesthetic, catharsis, or ascetic domains. Multiple discriminant function analyses revealed, however, that there were significant (.05 level) overall differences bet...

Personality and intellectual changes in delinquent girls following long-term institutional placement

Personality and intellectual changes in delinquent girls following long-term institutional placement