Further investigation revealed that two young women had been charged with robbery-one happened about ten years earlier, the other had just occurred. Prior to that, there were apparently no charges or convictions of girls or young women on record. Technically, then, the statistic was correct. The impression of young women erupting into violent behaviour created by the 200 per cent figure and the accompanying media hype was, however, incredibly skewed and inaccurate. The reality was that the violent behaviour perceived to be "erupting" was non-existent and the actual risk posed to the public by the two young women in question was extremely low.

I still receive many calls from reporters, students, and other members of the public requesting information about the increasing number of violent girls, especially about those who are involved with gangs. Sensationalized media accounts of youth crime, especially any involving young women perpetrating violence, attract a disproportionate amount of "air time." As Yasmin Jiwani points out in, Violence Prevention and the Girl Child: The Final Report, while girl gang violence may be prominent in the public imagination, the reality is that only 3.83 per cent of violent crimes are committed by young women.

Factors Contributing to the Increased Criminalization of Women and Girls

In Canada, and internationally, we are also seeing the feminization and crimi-nalization of poverty. Most single parents are women, the majority of whom live below the poverty line. As social programs have been dismantled, women, especially sole support mothers, are faced with the reality of having to make ends meet within the context of a shrinking social welfare system. In order to survive and support their families with insufficient resources, many are forced to work under the table, prostitute themselves, and, occasionally, some even carry packages across international borders for money.

All too often, and increasingly so, these survival approaches result in the criminalization of women and girls for fraud, soliciting for the purposes of prostitution, trafficking, and/or importation charges. Think of the comparative savings in terms of both human and fiscal costs if the monies required to jail them, as well as the expenses of state-provided child-welfare services and support for those who have children seized by the state, were invested in our communities instead. This re-investment of ever-shrinking resources would undoubtedly benefit the women and girls currently being criminalized, as well as many others who are marginalized in their communities. Ultimately, such social and community development is beneficial to all of us.

Another result of funding cutbacks to services over the past decades is the obliteration of progressive policy developments to de-institutionalize those labelled as mentally handicapped and/or mentally ill. These trends to normalize and integrate services for those with cognitive and mental disabilities have been seriously compromised by funding cuts. This has resulted in more people-particularly women and girls who have traditionally been over-represented in these sectors-literally being dumped into the streets and, ultimately, into the wider, deeper, and stickier social control net of our criminal justice system. Although the criminal justice system is the least effective and most expensive system that could be used to respond to cognitive and mental disabilities, it is a system that cannot refuse to "service" anyone who is criminalized, regardless of their disability.

Once in prison, the practical reality is that mental health needs have been equated with risk. Mental-health concerns that are disabling undoubtedly create very real needs for those who have them and for those who try to control prisons. But, equating mental and cognitive disabilities with risks only serves to perpetuate the social construction of persons with mental disabilities as dangerous.