NCJ Number
119762
Date Published
1989
Length
23 pages
Annotation
This examination of the treatment of girls in the criminal courts of the countries of the European Economic Council (EEC) considers three issues: whether girls and boys receive different sentences for the same kinds of offenses, the severity of sentences for girls and boys, and the employment prospects for girls and boys in the various EEC countries.
Abstract
There is evidence that girls are still punished more severely than boys for activities that put them at risk of a sexual encounter perceived as deviant and for status offenses, even though boys engage in these activities at least as often as girls. This is confirmed in self-report studies from the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Federal Republic of Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain. More serious is the finding that girls' chances of being incarcerated at all, and for longer, are apparently rising in 7 of the 10 European countries studied. In five of the countries examined (Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, and Portugal), girls' employment prospects are worse than boys' prospects. Girls are also unemployed for longer. The doubly disrupted transition of girls into adult life when both employment and marriage to a good wage earner become problematic is being policed with an increasingly punitive response by European penal systems. 14 tables, 4 notes.