Forum considers rise in girls’ violent crime

Alex Bloom

Based on an outpouring of positive feedback from an initial forum held last month, Suffolk County Sheriff Andrea Cabral said she plans to hold an annual forum on the recent increase in violence committed by young women.

Cabral’s original idea was to hold four such forums each year, but decided on scaling back those ambitious plans for one reason — to actually do something rather than simply talking about doing something.

“I had people approach me after the forum saying, ‘What can I do to help?’” Cabral said. “And that was really the goal of the forum — to not only give people information but also for individuals to feel like they can play role in changing a young girl’s life.”

The forum is currently being edited and will be broadcast soon on BNN.

The numbers are alarming. According to the FBI, of the total number of arrests in many crimes like robbery, aggravated assault, violent crime and weapon-related crime, among others, the number of females age 15-24 arrested for these crimes increased by 17.5 percent.

At the South Bay House of Correction in Suffolk County, the number of female offenders increased 68 percent to 237 inmates between 2000 and 2004. Additionally, according to the state Department of Education’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System, there has been an increase since 1999 in the number of high school females carrying guns to school, joining gangs and fighting.

“The Hand That Rocks the Cradle: The Rise of the Female Offender” was the first forum. Held at Roxbury Community College, the forum focused on the rise in the number of female offenders and the increase in severity of the crimes they commit.

Deborah Prothrow-Stith, a Harvard professor of public health practice and associate dean for faculty development in the Department of Health and Public Policy, Robert Lewis, Jr., director of the Boston Center for Youth and Families and John Auerbach, the executive director of the Boston Health Commission were all in attendance.

Superintendent Paul Joyce Jr., chief of the Bureau of Investigative Services for the Boston Police Department and Monica Fernandez-Castro, regional clinical director at the Massachusetts Department of Social Services were also panelists.

Members of the audience were also part of forum. Jewel Cash, 16, from the South End, was one of them and argued for more youth involvement.

“People are shooting each other but they don’t even know why. They want respect because they don’t get it at home,” said Cash, who attends Boston Latin Academy. “You may have gone through the civil rights movement, but we haven’t. We have our own movement that we’re having to live through.”

Prothrow-Stith cited society’s marketing of violence as one of the root causes of the rise in violence, saying that female youth are receiving the wrong message.

“With all the marketing of violence to girls, why wouldn’t they begin to imitate that behavior?” Prothrow-Stith said. “What it really boils down to is what are we going to do as a society? We have to own up to the fact that girls are doing exactly what we’ve been telling them to do.”

Auerbach and Fernandez-Castro presented data relating to the profile of female offenders. Many of them are urban, poor minorities from broken homes who are acting out against the everyday violence and abuse they see at home and on the street.

“I have worked with women who tell me they had their first substance abuse experience with their mother, that it was a bonding experience,” said Fernandez-Castro, saying that substance abuse and domestic abuse become a vicious cycle as the daughter eventually takes on the same problems that plagued her mother.

All of the panelists recommended more programs and interventions geared directly to girls to attack the problem.

Joyce emphasized that females must be reached in the home and at school before they ever commit a crime.

“When it gets to the police, it’s too late and there’s a lot of damage done,” said Joyce.

Lewis argued that access to programs similar to those given to men needs to be provided in order to decrease the violence among women.

“If you cut basketball in the city of Boston, there would be an outrage,” said Lewis. “Yet we’ve cut girls programs over the years and we just keep cutting them. We need more girls’ programs and not just cooking and ballet and dancing, but skill development and leadership development programs.”

“We as a society have criminalized urban, poor, and largely black and Latino children,” said Prothrow-Stith. “I hope that with the violence occurring in small towns and middle class America, we will wake up to realize we cannot demonize these children. They are reacting to bad things.”