NCJ Number
125761
Date Published
1990
Length
20 pages
Annotation
This analysis of female participation in youth gangs uses information gathered about Hispanic gangs to refute the view that female juvenile delinquents are socially isolated figures who try to assuage their loneliness through brief, promiscuous liaisons with boys.
Abstract
Research evidence contradicts the common views that female delinquency is a sign of social maladjustment and involves sexual promiscuity, that family factors are more influential in female than in male delinquents, and that adolescent females do not form strong same-sex friendships. However, early research on gangs defined females solely in terms of their relationships with male gang members. More contemporary work has been based on interviews with female gang members and has found that for Hispanic females, gang membership represents an idealized collective solution to a bleak future composed of poverty and social isolation. The female gang members often publicly defer to the male gang members, but they regulate their own affairs and talk indulgently about men when the males are not present. However, their futures are bleak in that 94 percent will have children and 84 percent will raise them without spouses.