FEMALE GANGS

Female Gangs

Female Gangs

Introduction

To date, most study on gang aggression has concentrated on the male constituents, with the females easily viewed as auxiliary participants. whereas male gang constituents have historic outnumbered females, a new pattern of feminine gang members has developed which encompasses feminine gang members being more entrenched than before reported, more violent, and more oriented in the direction of criminal undertakings generally affiliated with males (Fishman, 1992; Goldstein & Soriano, 1994; Taylor, 1993). An examination of misdeed reports throughout the last twenty years illustrates that criminal undertaking of feminine gang-members has increased steadily and substantially since the early 1970s, specifically undertakings affiliated with the use, sales, or circulation of drugs.

Discussion

Female Gang Members

Current study articles the expanding number of females in gangs. Fagan (1989) considered the percentage of feminine gang members in Los Angeles and San Diego to be as high as 33 percent. Knox (1991) undertook an extensive study of youths confined to over forty juvenile correctional facilities. Forty-two per hundred of his experiment of incarcerated adolescent females reported that they were gang constituents; this percentage was only slightly smaller than that of incarcerated males who described gang membership. Two comprehensive longitudinal investigations of comprehensive trials of gang members in Denver, Colorado and Rochester, New York were conducted over a four-year period. amidst the significant findings from the Denver study, Esbensen and Huizinga (1993) described that between 20% and 46% of all gang members were females. Even more astonishing were the outcome that Bjerreggaard and Smith (1993) found out in Rochester; investigation of their facts and figures displayed 22% of feminine respondents asserted to be gang constituents, while only 18% of male respondents described gang involvement. According to Howell (1995), two notable conclusions arise from these studies:

First, females evidenced alike gang participation rates to males. Members

of both sexes were significantly more likely to have participated in serious delinquency and to have committed these acts at much higher frequencies

than were non-members. Second, they discovered considerable likeness among

males and females in the risk factors associated with gang participation (p. 270).

After an comprehensive review of the publications, Joe and Chesney-Lind (1995) concluded that, whereas the criminal demeanour of feminine gang constituents has consistently expanded over the last ten years, the academic study of gang participation extends to be, for all intents and reasons, the study of male gang demeanour and personality. They state that the stereotype of gang constituents is “so indisputably male that the policeman, the general public, and even those in criminology who study delinquency, seldom, if ever, consider young women and their troubles with the regulation” (p. 409).

Female Gang Criminal Activities

Serious lawless person behavior by adolescent females in gangs has steadily bigger since the 1970's. Giordano (1978) discovered a fifty-two percent boost in grave criminal activity, i.e., robbery, drug sales and circulation, by feminine gang-members between the early sixties and mid-seventies, while at the same time apprehend rates for males who committed grave crimes rose only nine ...