The Disproportionate Overrepresentation of Minority Youth in ...

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of things doesn’t get arrested she gets sent someplace else. I think it has to
do with the way the community sees lady as opposed to men. Women are
often looked at as the soft sex and they may be, I don’t know.
Girls have more issues that need to be dealt with that can’t be dealt with in
the community. I also think that parents tend to give up on girls faster than
boys. Boys are expected to have some trouble and so parents always tend
to have a little more tolerance for delinquent behavior in boys.
I found that very interesting. We have such a low number of females and I
think maybe the police are hesitant to refer them over to our agency. By
the time they get here, or the ones they do refer are the hard core females.
I don’t mean ruthless killers but more advanced delinquents. One’s that
are going to need the more restrictive treatment. The ones that are going to
need placement. They don’t just refer females that need basic treatment.
So I think that our penalties seem harsh because we are getting the ones
that deserve that type of treatment as opposed to we just aren’t seeing a lot
that just need simple intervention. They are just being handled at home or
the school is just handling it.
I think that sometimes, in my experience, it is more frequent for girls to
ask to be put somewhere else. They don’t want to stay at home. If you
have a kid who is telling you that if you put them back at home they aren’t
going to stay, then we are going to place that kid and it more frequently
happens with girls than it does with boys.
That might be some that the parents know the females are more
independent and she won’t fight it that hard as well as the parents saying
that they can’t control her and they don’t know what to do.
We get so few females in here. That is kind of back to the point that when
you get to the point to where you have to file on a girl, you have already
exhausted all of the other services and therefore, they end up in placement
a lot faster. Part of that is the out of control behavior and parents seem to
wear out faster and want us to do something so