South Carolina Female Crime and Delinquency

South Carolina Female Crime and Delinquency

South Carolina Female Crime and Delinquency

Introduction

Female South Carolina juvenile offenders in South Carolina represent a misunderstood, understudied population within the South Carolina juvenile justice system. A system that historically has studied the anti-social behavior of adolescent males, the South Carolina juvenile justice system has been challenged with addressing the decade-long rise in the number of adolescent females in the South Carolina juvenile justice system. Female Offenders in the South Carolina juvenile Justice System: Statistics Summary, documented the significant increase in violent crime index offenses by female South Carolina juvenile offenders. Many jurisdictions have been confronted with a growing adolescent female population, while gender-specific services are limited, particularly for female's incarceated in secure South Carolina juvenile facilities.

Discussion

In recent years, women and girls have accounted for a growing proportion of people arrested and convicted for serious offenses (Greenfeld and Snell 1999), a trend that underscores the need for better understanding of the etiology of female crime and delinquency. Several scholars have posited that explanations of female offending must take into account the victimization women experience both as children and adults, and research suggests that child sexual abuse may indeed play a central role in some girls' pathway to delinquency and subsequent crime. For instance, studies of female delinquents (Lewis et al. 1991; Mouzakitis 1981) report that approximately half (48-53 percent) have been sexually abused, and the proportion of women prisoners who report having a history of childhood sexual victimization is two to three times greater than women in the general public (Harlow 1999). The literature on the relationship between sexual abuse and female crime, together with that on the effects of child sexual abuse, provides evidence that helps explain why such victimization may be an important etiological factor for various behaviors such as running away, drug abuse, prostitution, and even violence that can lead to criminal justice involvement.

Accounts of female offenders' life histories have led to the hypothesis that sexual abuse triggers a woman's criminal career by leading her to run away as a means of escaping the abuse she is experiencing at home (Belknap, Holsinger, and Dunn 1997; Chesney-Lind 1997). Running away may itself result in an arrest and incarceration but can also lead to other forms of offending: Once on the streets, the runaway may turn to prostitution and stealing to survive (Arnold 1991; Chesney-Lind 1989; Chesney-Lind and Rodriguez 1983; Gilfus 1992). Indeed, several retrospective investigations find that substantial proportions of prostitutes have a history of childhood sexual abuse (James and Meyerding 1977; Paperny and Deisher 1983; Silbert and Pines 1981), although more recent research (Nadon, Koverola, and Schludermann 1998) reports no significant difference in the proportion of adolescent prostitutes who have been sexually abused when compared to demographically similar nonprostitutes. McCarthy and Hagan (1992) also found that a history of sexual abuse was not a significant predictor of prostitution once situational variables such as unemployment were controlled for in their study of homeless youth and adolescents ...