A heightened awareness of girls’ criminal behavior has researchers looking for answers.
But the search for the root causes is just beginning, according to Laurie Schaffner, a sociologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
“The reasons that girls commit violence are different from the reasons boys do, and they’re not very clearly enunciated,” she said.
But one possibility emerged when Schaffner interviewed 150 incarcerated women for her upcoming book, “Girlhood on the Edge” (Rutgers University Press). The link, she said, was that all of them had been sexually abused or assaulted.
“I suppose it’s like Charlize Theron in the movie `Monster’ to some extent,” noted Pat Zeglen, a Cook County administrator who has worked in the juvenile probation and court services department since the late ’60s. (Theron won an Oscar for her portrayal of real-life serial killer Aileen Wuornos, who had been sexually abused as a child.)
Zeglen says the Chicago area has been enterprising in seeking to help girls in trouble, establishing the coalition Girls Link to unite police forces, the judicial system and private agencies.
One such innovation is an “evening reporting center,” where delinquent girls get counseling, dinner, help with homework and attend victim-impact panels between 4 and 9 p.m. Monday through Friday.
“For most of the kids who come here, [lack of] parental involvement is key,” Zeglen said. “There’s a big block of time when kids are unsupervised.”
Case in point: The CTA robberies last week that resulted in the arrest of seven girls ages 13 to 17 occurred on a Sunday night five hours apart: around 6:15 and 11:30 p.m.
