Girls, Challenge and Criminological Constructions

• In Event: Gender, Family, and the Causes and Collateral Consequences of Mass Incarceration

Abstract

This paper re-examines quantitative and qualitative data on girls convicted of violent offenses in England and Wales 2008-13. It explores the quantitative data that arises from practitioners’ who are using an actuarial, risk-based method of assessment. It then critiques those assessments in light of girls’ narrative accounts of, and explanations for, their own behavior. There is a growing body of work that suggests that girls’ accounts for their own behavior are at odds with current criminological theorizing and analysis (Renzetti 1999; Ness 2004 & 2010; Jones 2010; Brown 2010; Carrington 2013; Althoff 2014; Miller et al 2015). I consider girls accounts as resistance to the hegemonic naming of their behavior and ask does this pose unsettling questions for existing theory and practice?

Author

• Elaine Arnull, Nottingham Trent University