As Megan Stephens further points out: Instead of making it a priority to lock up youth, society must begin to try to deal with the environmental factors that compel these young women to behave violently. If the young women that I spoke with were victims, they are victims of a system that has dismissed them as 'bad girls' instead of trying to understand why they think they are driven to act violently.... Any attempt to 'eliminate' youth violence will need to take into consideration the social contexts from which these children come and we need to understand how these contexts seem to make the use of violence not only legitimate but, at least in the minds of these young women, sometimes even necessary. (169-170)

Finally, Mark Totten confirms that,

the literature suggests that women's use of violence is qualitatively different from that of men: whereas male violence tends to be more frequent, serious, and utilitarian, female violence is more often contextualized in significant factors related to self-defence, anticipation of an upcoming physical or sexual assault, and prior victimization by physical and sexual abuse. (51)

Purpose of the Youth Justice System

It is now more than 17 years since the Young Offenders Act was proclaimed into law and paraded internationally as one of the most innovative and progressive legislative responses to juvenile justice. Since its inception, however, the legislation has had its most progressive elements gradually chiselled away.

The YOA was based on youth-positive principles and it is distressing to observe continued attempts to erode its fundamental tenets and guiding principles. Regressive changes have failed youth and further marginalized many youth with special needs, particularly young women. The YOA called for the least restrictive interventions possible for young people. In fact, it called for an examination of all other youth-serving systems (such as education, child welfare, and children's mental health) prior to invoking its provisions. Alternative or diversionary options are entrenched in the Act. Paradoxically, the past decade has seen just the opposite result. In many schools or group homes, for instance, matters that would previously have been dealt with by an internal administrative authority are increasingly likely to be referred to the juvenile justice system.

As Kim Brooks, Vincent Shiradeli, and Jason Ziedenberg reveal in their report on school violence, the larger threat to young people comes not from school violence,

but recent attempts to turn the schools into funnels for the juvenile justice system. Nearly every state has recently changed their laws to require that schools share information with the courts-watering down the confidentiality laws that were the hallmark of the juvenile court's rehabilitative model. Teachers and principals are referring students to police, settling trivial matters in the courts rather than in the classrooms. And if you can't find real evidence of a threat, you can always turn to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's new 'profiling' software that pretends to know all tell-tail signs for potential school shooters, including having parental troubles, disliking popular students, experiencing a failed romance, and listening to songs with violent lyrics. (4)