According to statistics just released by the
Youth Justice Board, we are in the middle of a teenage girl
crime spree: in the space of four years, offences by girls aged
between 11 and 17 have risen 50% to 59,000 per year.
While many in the field attribute the rise to a greater
willingness among agencies to report - and police to record - minor
offences, they also recognise the figures highlight a deeper
problem with the behaviour of young women.
Those who work with teenagers say there is a hardcore of girls
in inner cities who have become more violent, and this is reflected
in the figures: the recorded number of violent attacks and
robberies are both up by more than 150% in just three years.
Iyabo Oba, a youth worker from west London, has spent the past
year interviewing girls for the
Centre for Policy Studies. She
has found that some girls are getting involved in serious fights.
And a small number of violent girls mean all young people are
having to get tougher.
"It needs to be placed in context. In relation to the guys it's
still quite a small proportion but some of the girls say they need
to be as hard as the boys. There used to be bullies when I was a
kid on the bus, but I wouldn't have to pay attention to them now
Drug dealers
Camila Batmanghelidjh, the director of
Kids Company, agrees that
violence among girls is a problem that has transferred from boys.
And a recent increase in violence in general, she says, is driven
by drug dealers and by a wider availability of guns.
"Sexual assault has really escalated at street level, and now
drug dealers are using girls to courier and to work for them. So
actually the girls are being pulled into the criminal world by the
drug dealers.
"As there are more attacks on the girls, then the level of rage
in the girls escalates."
Batmanghelidjh says at the root of the problem is a view among
disenfranchised boys and girls "that a human life is not
worthwhile". And the causes of this, she argues, are no mystery: a
lot of parents are unable to provide adequate care underfunded
services can't provide enough support for those children without
parental figures and society as a whole is uninterested and afraid
of children. All of these have created an underclass of "lone
children" which has created a cycle of deepening violence for boys
on the street, a problem which has inexorably drawn in girls.
She adds: "What the public doesn't understand is why these
children are so suicidally brave. Why do they stand in daylight and
shoot or stab someone or kick someone for 45 minutes on a bus? The
fact is, these kids have got to the point that they don't care if
they live or die. They're just exhausted by the battle for
survival."
Oba believes there has also been a generational shift towards
"moral breakdown", with an accompanying lack of boundaries within
young people's home life, which has spilled over into violence on
the streets. Although she is unable to explain when or how such a
breakdown has developed, the underlying point coincides with
Batmanghelidjh's view: a large responsibility for rising offences
is, at root, due to weak parenting and state support.
So what is being done to address these problems? Research
released last month by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at
King's College London showed that spending on youth justice through
the YJB and youth offending teams has risen by 45% in the last six
years to £648.5m. Of that money, two-thirds goes onto funding
places for those in custody or on remand - and the number of
children locked up has gone up 8% in the last three years, against
a target to reduce the number by 10%. By contrast, prevention
schemes total just 3% of expenditure annually, at a meagre £23.7m a
year.
"Girls are marginalised"
Jeanette Williams, a policy and development adviser to
Hertfordshire YOT, says the figures highlight the problem that too
many girls are being brought into the youth justice system rather
than being diverted by other programmes, while those who are
brought in are not properly catered for.
"Once they are in the system they move up it faster than boys
because they are more likely to rebel than boys," says Williams.
"The youth justice system is not set up for girls. They are
marginalised. A lot of the YOTs adapt programmes that exist for
boys, and that can include things like car crime that girls usually
don't do. Things that work for girls are things to do with
addressing drugs and drinking. But there's just no off-the-shelf
programme for girls."
Provision of programmes has been piecemeal, but some steps are
now being taken to remedy this. For the past year, the YJB has run
a quarterly meeting for practitioners who work with young women who
offend to share good practice and knowledge.
As well as this forum, research is also being conducted for the
Board by London South Bank University's Crime Reduction Unit.
Elaine Arnull from the unit says the type of offences that girls in
the youth justice system are involved in can dictate the sort of
response that is required by agencies.
She says: "Girls who committed offences like handling stolen
goods are more like adult women: they're more likely to have
experienced abuse or victimisation. We didn't find that was true of
girls who had committed violent offences in general they looked
more like boys. We're suggesting the system needs reconfiguring,
because girls might not look like adults in terms of interventions
you would need to plan."
Girl-only programmes
Some girl-only programmes do exist through YOTs, but Arnull says
that they are not being matched-up to the sort of girls who would
benefit from them. "YOT girl groups are more likely to look at
relationships, sexual health and self-confidence, much more than
programmes with boys will do. We're saying we're not convinced that
the evidence exists that you need to do that. There are issues for
girls, but they are the same issues as for boys."
It is clear from the fact that Oba, Arnull and Williams will all
be publishing research into young female offenders in the next few
months that the field is now beginning to engage with the problem.
But despite what is being found by both those who work in the field
and by academics, the system remains geared towards tackling the
problem through youth justice, rather than the underlying
causes.
Says Batmanghelidjh: "We have more children registered as young
offenders in this country than we have on the child protection
register, and that's because we wait until the child becomes a
threat to society.
"We're incubating a generation of children who are terrified and
isolated. If we are able to articulate that truth then I think
people will better understand why children are going on to violate
other people."
This article is published in the 19 June edition of
Community Care magazine, under the headline "Girls gone
bad".
Web extra
➔
Latest YJB figures on offences committed by young people:
http://www.communitycare.co.uk/yjbfig
➔ Find out more about the work of Kids Company at
http://kidsco.org.uk
➔ To read more about youth services go to
http://www.communitycare.co.uk/104026