Arrests for aggravated assault by girls younger than 18 fell 17% from 1998 to 2007, the new U.S. Department of Justice research finds. The research comes at a time when widely played videos show girls beating each other up. One such video, circulated on YouTube, showed two teen girls pummeling another girl in June at a Michigan high school.
"We're not facing an epidemic of girls gone wild," says J. Robert Flores, chief of the department's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, which spent $2.5 million on the first U.S.-funded effort to explore girl delinquency.
The research project, known as the Girls Study Group, was launched in 2004, a year in which girls accounted for 30% of all juvenile arrests. The findings will be released in a series of reports in the coming year.
"We want to dispel that myth," that girls have become more violent, says Stephanie Hawkins, leader of the Girls Study Group and research psychologist at RTI International, a research institute.
