the exception of prostitution, the categories in which they constituted more than 15% of all arrests were murder/
manslaughter (15.4%), larceny (27.9%), forgery and
counterfeiting (23.7%), fraud (27.1%), embezzlement (26.6%), narcotic drug laws (15.6%), vagrancy (19.7%), curfew
violation (21.2%), and runaway (51.6%) (Hoffman-Bustamante, 1973) .
The differential treatment of females in the criminal justice system is considered to be another important determinant of the sex ratios in official crime statistics (Reckless, 1967). The apparent conformity of women is suggested as a partial
consequence of three factors: complainants are less likely to
report female criminal behaviour; when a complaint is made, police are less likely to arrest females; and the court process will
operate more leniently with women. As Reckless (1967:95) concludes:
Female offenders have a much better chance than do male offenders of not being reported, of not being arrested, and of dropping out of the judicial process, that is, « of remaining uncommitted. It may be that our modern society takes a much more chivalrous and protective
attitude toward women who transgress than toward men who commit infractions. Although our society is very severe in its censuring of women who misbehave, it does very little about taking official action against them.
One important variation in criminal sex ratios, however,
2
involves age. ' Adolescent girls have a higher probability of being referred to the juvenile court than do women to the adult courts, and proportionately more girls than adult women are committed to penal institutions (Block and Geis, 1962;
Sutherland and Cressey, 1970; Reckless, 1967) . Furthermore,
female delinquency is typically characterized by a high proportion of non-criminal behaviours for which the girl could not be
formally sanctioned if an adult. Within these categories there is a high concentration on sex delinquency. The image of the female delinquent primarily as a sex delinquent has become
generally accepted and, as a consequence, explanations of female 2. Sutherland and Cressey (1970) also note variations in the
sex ratio in crime by country, by area of residence, by ethnic and socio-economic status, and over time.
7.20 delinquency have tended to concentrate on the sexual aspect of
2
deviant behaviour in adolescent girls. Recent research on sex differentials in self-reported delinquency and on the process of social control of delinquency in the juvenile court system have revealed a number of factors which have significant implications for an understanding of female delinquency and its control.
There is evidence that, as with male delinquency, there is considerable under-reporting of female delinquency in official
statistics. More importantly, there is evidence that the juvenile court system "selects" for the imposition of sanctions a biased population of adolescent females, in particular those females who engage in non-criminal rather than criminal behaviour. For
the girls who are selected for court appearance there is a
greater propability that they will be institutionalized for those non-criminal behaviours than there is for boys who appear in the court.
Without denying the validity of the differential role expectations of males and females as an explanation of official female delinquency, these characteristics of the formal social control of female delinquency suggest that the juvenile court functions to enforce the traditional sex status of adolescent girls. By tending to negate the criminal responsibility of girls, but taking formal action in cases of parent-daughter conflict, the juvenile court enforces the child status of the girl. This
2. Cohen (1955), for example, suggests that female delinquency, as sex delinquency, is a response to the problem of the
adolescent girl who must manage her sexual resources in her relationships with the opposite sex. The sexually delinquent girl is one who has traded the immediate benefits accruing from "sexual accessibility" at the risk of weakening her position in the "marriage market".
is also an enforcement of her female status, in that such action supports a standard of the closer supervision of girls, a factor which is said to account for her relatively greater conformity in criminal deviance. The explicit emphasis on sex delinquency in the social control process enforces the female status of the girl whether in the context of the moral value placed on her chastity, in the more pragmatic concern about the possibility of pregnancy, or in the concern that her delinquent activities may be a prelude to prostitution.
However, there is evidence that in recent years the sex ratio for both juvenile delinquency and adult crime is decreasing
(Sutherland and Cressey, 1970; Reckless, 1967). Given the context of the changing roles of women in our society, in particular their greater participation in the workforce, then such an increase in female deviance might be accounted for by changing role expectations, and greater opportunities for deviance. At the same time the increase in official rates
could be a partial consequence of changing societal reactions to female criminal deviance, particularly in those offenses
(excluding prostitution), where the official sex ratio appears proportionately lower at present, e.g., larceny, fraud,
embezzlement, forgery (Reckless, 1967).
In the juvenile system under study the higher proportion of adolescent girls referred to the children's court for non criminal delinquency relative to males, supports the generally observed patterns of sex differentials in delinquency control. However, the actual proportions of non-criminal delinquency for both females and males are considerably lower than those observed
7.22
lor other areas. Present findings suggest that the hinter rates of official female criminal deviance in the community under study are a partial consequence of the operations of the policewomen in their response to such deviance. In the handling of female criminal delinquency, shoplifting in particular, the policewomen do not appear to exercise any special discretionary action on the grounds of the sex of the offender, although the discretion which may have been applied by the original
complainant is not known. For the policewomen, the only grounds for not summoning a first offense shoplifter to the children's court are claimed to be those of age. Furthermore, the
policewomen's criteria for differential court recommendations for those girls who are summoned are similar to those observed for police discretionary action with respect to boys.
Justifications for the policewomen's law enforcement policy include an emphasis on the fact of shoplifting as a
criminal offense of increasingly serious proportions. It would seem that minor larceny in the form of shoplifting has come to be defined as a "normal" female crime in a way that perhaps other criminal activities have not, and that community protection
against its increasing incidence is taking precedence over any chivalrous attitude to female offenders on the part of law enforcement agencies. Also, since Lho policewomen do not
consider the court experience as a particularly traumatic one for 3. For example, in the study by Clark (1964) , the actual
proportions were 74% of the girls compared with 23% of the boys. In the present study,in 1972-73, 51% of the girls compared with 5% of the boys were referred to the court for non-criminal delinquency
4. Recently in this community the practice of protecting adult