That’s What Life’s About Standing Up for Yourselves: Telling Stories: Young Women and Offending

• In Event: Adolescents' Perspectives on Crime, Justice, and Programming

Abstract

‘There is a story to that, and I believe that it is important to tell it’ Von Voorhis (2012) said in her account of engaging with what she described as ‘an emerging body of evidence that ran contrary to the prevailing evidence of the day.’ She was talking about the inclusion of female stories in the world which is criminology; this paper contributes to that body of emerging evidence as the story tellers are girls in the youth justice system in the UK.

Female offending remains lower than male, but girls' offending levels have risen as a proportion of the whole in many western countries at a time of general falls in offending rates. Debates have centred on whether gender socialisation is changing as a result of feminism and emancipation which has led as a consequence to real changes in female behavior, for which females must be harshly institutionally punished in order to reinforce the gender norm. This paper draws on and contributes to feminist theory in the exploration of qualitative findings of three studies undertaken by the author 2009-13; it explores girls’ stories and places female experience at the centre.

Author

• Elaine Arnull, Bucks New University, UK