Between Two Stools? Responding to Young Women who Offend
| Author | Michele Burman,Susan A. Batchelor |
| DOI | 10.1177/1473225409345104 |
| Published date | 01 December 2009 |
| Date | 01 December 2009 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
A R T I C L E
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ISSN 1473–2254, Vol 9(3): 270–285
DOI: 10.1177/1473225409345104
Between Two Stools? Responding to Young Women
who Offend
Michele Burman and Susan A. Batchelor
Correspondence: Professor Michele Burman, Department of Sociology, Anthropology
and Applied Social Sciences, University of Glasgow, Florentine House, 53 Hillhead
Street, Glasgow G12 8QF, Scotland, UK. Email: m.burman@lbss.gla.ac.uk
Abstract
This article traces the emergence of the ‘problem’ of violent and disorderly young female
offenders in Scotland, against a broader background context of the politicization of youth crime
and major changes in youth justice policy post-Devolution. It draws attention to the limited
empirical evidence about this group, and challenges perceptions about the nature and scale of
violent offending by young women. Young women offenders fall between two stools. Policy
responses to youth offending focus primarily on young men (ignoring gender) and policies in
relation to women offenders fail to differentiate between older and younger women (ignoring
age). Perhaps even more so than adult female offenders, young female offenders are an invisible
minority whose offending pathways and distinctive needs have gone largely undocumented
and unaddressed.
Keywords: girls, Scotland, violence, young women, youth justice
Introduction
In recent years growing attention has been paid, both in the academic literature and criminal
justice policy and practice, to the gender specifi c needs of female offenders (Bloom et al., 2003;
McIvor, 2004; Rumgay, 2004). With some notable US exceptions (Chesney-Lind and Pasko,
2004; Schaffner, 2006), there has been a tendency in such discussions to present women who
offend as a homogenous group, meaning that the age-specifi c needs and deeds of girls and
young women (aged under 21) are often overlooked (Batchelor and Burman, 2004; Gelsthorpe
and Sharpe, 2006). A lack of empirical evidence about young women who offend makes it
diffi cult to keep anecdotal evidence in perspective and balanced by facts. This article explores
what we know empirically about young women who offend in Scotland and the criminal justice
response to them. In particular, it considers recent policy initiatives targeted at young offenders
and (adult) female offenders, arguing that young women are overlooked and as a result their
genuine problems are marginalized and ignored.
Burman and Batchelor – Between Two Stools?
271
The Problem of Violent, Drunk and Disorderly Young Women
Stories about the growing ‘problem’ of mean, violent, drunk and disorderly girls have been a
recurring feature of the British media since the mid-1990s (see, for example, Carroll, 1998;
Thompson, 2001; Grant, 2003; MacAskill, 2004; Ross, 2008). Typical accounts suggest that
‘girl violence is on the increase in an alarming way’ (Lambert, 2001), fuelled by a ‘ladette’ binge-
drinking culture (Clout, 2008) in which ‘young women are aping and mimicking the trad-
itional behaviour [of] young men’ (Geoghegan, 2008). This so-called ‘masculinization’ is often
portrayed as ‘the dark side of girl power’ (Prentice, 2000), an unfortunate by-product of young
women seeking equality with young men (Batchelor, 2007a; Chesney-Lind and Irwin, 2008).
In May 2004, Scotland’s most senior police offi cer was reported as having expressed disquiet
about the rising number of crimes committed by drunken and violent young women, claiming
‘it’s a worrying problem that we need to look into’ (John Vine, Chief Constable of Tayside
Police, and President of the Association of Chief Police Offi cers Scotland, quoted in MacAskill,
2004). Likewise, the Lord Advocate Elish Angiolini made headlines in April 2008 when she
appeared before the Scottish Parliament’s Equal Opportunities Committee and stated that
she and others in the Crown Offi ce and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) were worried by
the rise they were seeing in violent crime by young women. Drawing on anecdotal evidence,
Angiolini told MSPs of an increase in ‘appalling acts of murderous torture’ by women against
women, and increasing numbers of young girls in groups using knives. ‘This can be gang-related,’
she claimed, ‘or it can just be that there is someone in a group who is quite persecuted by the
gang leader or their cohorts. That is the kind of machismo behaviour that hitherto we would
only see from a male offender’ (Angiolini, quoted in Naysmith, 2008). Like Vine, Angiolini
linked this rise in violence to ‘the increasing consumption of alcohol by young women, binge
drinking’ (Angiolini, quoted in BBC Online 2008).
Thus, in a country where concerns about crime are already fi rmly embedded within a dis-
course of youth (Burman et al., 2006; McAra, 2006), young women depicted as drunk and
disorderly, out of control and looking for fi ghts, have increasingly been identifi ed as a new source
of the ‘youth problem’ (Batchelor, 2005). Indeed, it could be argued, as Angela McRobbie has
suggested, that ‘young women … have replaced youth as a metaphor for social change. They
have become a touchstone, and sometimes a problem, for the whole society…one of the
stakes on which the future depends’ (McRobbie, 2000: 200–201, emphasis added). Whilst
the rhetoric surrounding violent and disorderly behaviour by young women echoes concerns
about troublesome young men, it carries an added dimension of gravity precisely because of
the gender of the offender (Batchelor, 2001). According to traditional gender roles, women are
deemed ‘essentially’ gentle, submissive, and passive. Women who transgress these roles by com-
mitting acts of violence are therefore considered ‘doubly deviant’ (Heidensohn, 1985), having
violated not only the law, but also the accepted norms of femininity. The involvement of girls
and young women in violence is particularly disquieting because they are perceived to be outside
the traditional arena of family control (Hunt et al., 2000).
For young men, being on the streets is seen as a ‘natural,’ legitimized social activity governed
by rules of masculinity (Campbell, 1986; Kennedy and Baron, 1993). Young women have
traditionally been more home centred, inhabiting a ‘bedroom culture’ which rendered them
less publicly visible than young men (McRobbie and Garber, 1976). This is due in part to the
closer supervision afforded to them by their carers, but also is a result of gendered conventions
272
Youth Justice 9(3)
governing the use of public space (Furlong and Cartmel, 2007). However, the picture of home-
based, passive females appears to be changing (Sweeting and West, 2003). Women’s entry into
the labour market means that they now marry later, delay childbirth, enjoy increased affl uence
and populate public space more than they once did. As a result, young women have become
central to the growth of a thriving night time economy (Chatterton and Hollands, 2003; Hobbs
et al., 2007; O’Brien et al., 2008), specifi cally targeted by the pubs and clubs industry through
the marketing of new alcohol products, drinks promotions, and the redevelopment of traditional
working-class pubs into female-friendly café bars, dance bars and themed pubs (Measham
and Brain, 2005).
The Politicization of Youth Crime in Scotland
Concerns about offending by young women must be read within the context of an increasing
politicization of youth crime in Scotland from the mid-1990s onwards, a politicization which
in many ways mirrored developments in England and Wales. In Scotland, both the political
attention given to – and the work taken forward to address – youth crime accelerated and
expanded greatly following Devolution. Devolution brought the establishment of a new
political forum and legislature, and marked a re-shaping of Scottish political parties’ electoral
identities away from ‘the constitutional question’ which, until 1999, had dominated the pol-
itical landscape. Political attention turned to matters of devolved governance and public policy,
amongst which crime and justice rapidly rose as prominent issues. The ‘problem of youth
crime’ was one of the key issues under consideration at the fi rst Cabinet meeting of the Scottish
Executive in 1999, at which the government announced its commitment to review youth
justice. Since then, many aspects of criminal justice policy and practice have been subject to
scrutiny in the form of consultation and review, in an intense period of policy and legislative
change (see, for example, Croall, 2006; McIvor and McNeill, 2007). A number of ‘get tough’
initiatives were spearheaded by Scotland’s First Minister, leading to the introduction of a raft of
new interventions and initiatives targeting offending youth. Prominent amongst these were the
government announcement of measures designed to tackle ‘persistent young offenders’1 and the
setting of national targets to reduce youth crime (Scottish Executive, 2002a).
There is now little doubt that Devolution introduced ‘turbulence’ into the Scottish youth
justice system (Bottoms and Dignan, 2003) and turbulence remains one of its defi ning char-
acteristics, 10 years on. For almost 30 years, Scotland stood in marked contrast to other juris-
dictions in its commitment to a distinctive Kilbrandon-informed penal-welfarist ethos in youth
justice, although...
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