(Sheldon 2004: 3). In other words, girls are penalized for transgressing societal norms such as the idea that girls should stay at home, or the fear that a loitering girl might be soliciting sexual activity. "Part of the explanation of why girls become involved in activities that are likely to land them in the juvenile justice system, but at a rate substantially lower than for boys, is that girls undergo a childhood and adolescence that is heavily colored by their gender," and they are discouraged rather than encouraged to act out in violent actions (Sheldon 2004: 4). However, the obsession with curtailing teenage female sexuality remains in the form of status offenses. As in Victorian times, making female sexuality criminal, and morally reforming female offenders becomes a way of socially engineering the population as a whole, and making it more 'moral' by encouraging or forcing girls to be chaste. Furthermore, when women, particularly women of color do engage in violence, even minor acts of violence, they are even more harshly penalized than their male counterparts, and are often portrayed by the media as "somehow more vicious," because they are transgressing the stereotype of how women should behave (Sheldon 2004:14). In this fashion, the construction of an artificial, passive femininity lays the foundation for the "demonization of young girls of color" (Sheldon 2004: 15). When girls engage in violence, they are not seen as products of a gang environment, but as somehow unnatural.

Tragically, one of the reasons that girls commit status abuses like running away is not because they seek out sexual activity, but because they are the victims of sexual abuse. Girls are much more likely than boys to be the victims of child sexual...

Girls who find their way into runaway shelters or juvenile detention facilities have often been sexually abused, yet their crime is more easily noted and marked by the law than their perpetrators. The fact that the juvenile justice system is supposed to rehabilitate young offenders becomes a double-edged sword for young girls -- in the desire to rehabilitate young criminals, girl's non-criminal personal lifestyle choices regarding sexuality become penalized. Also, because the female body has become a means of making males more moral, even when girls are victims, it is the girls who are contained and convicted of status offenses, rather than their adult abusers. When girls lash out in gang violence, it is they who are penalized, and no attempt is made to reform or understand their crimes in the context of their environment.
Works Cited

Bronte, Charlotte. (1966). Jane Eyre. New York: Penguin Classics.

Fessler, Anne. (2006). The Girls who Went Away. New York. Penguin Press.

Mumm, Susan. (1996, Spring). "Not worse than other girls: the convent-based rehabilitation of fallen women in Victorian Britain."

Journal of Social History. Retrieved 10 Oct 2007 at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2005/is_n3_v29/ai_18498207/pg_2

Shelden, Randall G. (2004). "Female Delinquency and the Juvenile Justice System."

Part I: Delinquency among Girls. Retrieved 10 Oct 2007 at http://www.cjcj.org/pdf/girls1.pdf

Verhoveck, Sam. (1993). "Ban on Pregnant Cheerleaders Lifted." The New York Times. Retrieved 10 Oct 2007 at http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CEFD71E30F930A35752C1A965958260