Bad Girls

The world watched with horror as South Carolina officials pulled a car with two little boys strapped inside out of a lake that fall of 1994.

The older son died with his hands pressed against the window, the news reported, perhaps trying to escape, perhaps screaming for his mother.

But what was more horrifying than the image was that it was Susan Smith, their mother, who buckled her babies in and pushed her car into the water.

Fast forward six years, after the murders of 13 teenagers by two boys at Columbine High School, after Jonesboro where in 1998 four girls and a teacher were killed and nine students and another teacher were wounded at an Arkansas middle school by male classmates.

But an incident this April signaled a growing trend: Boys aren't always pulling the trigger. Last month, three first-grade girls were suspended from a Lake Station, Ind. school for plotting to kill classmates.

Shocking? After all, even nursery rhymes teach that girls are made of "sugar and spice and everything nice." And conventional wisdom holds that boys -- gun-toting bad boys -- are the ones who commit disturbing, violent crimes.

But research demonstrates that the number of girls and young women who commit violent crimes is rising dramatically. Researchers split on what triggered that rise, or if that increase is even real. Experts connect the reported surge in violent girls to everything from strict arrest laws to the evening news to physical and sexual abuse in young women.

Decoding the Numbers

Though juvenile crime as an overall rate shows a downturn, crimes committed by young women are on the rise. In 1997, girls constituted 26 percent of the juvenile arrests made in the year, compared with 22 percent in 1986, according to the Justice Department report. Girls make up the fastest growing segment of the juvenile and criminal justice system: Between 1993 and 1997, the increases in arrests were greater for girls than boys in almost every category, the report said.

And the media reflected this trend. Traditionally, local television news rarely aired stories that showed female perpetrators. But now that seems to be changing.

In a survey by Colorado's Rocky Mountain Media Watch, 100 nighttime television news programs in 50 markets appeared to reflect the rising incidence of females committing crimes. According to the survey, in 1995, only 5 percent of those who were identified as perpetrators of murder, rape, or assault on the news were female.

But by 1998, that figure doubled to 10 percent, the study shows. So are news outlets choosing to feature more crimes by women or are they simply reflecting national trends?

Paul Klite, director of Rocky Mountain Media Watch, says the answer is unclear.

In fact, nothing is clear except the simple fact that the number of reported female crimes is on the rise, says Melissa Sickmund, a senior research associate at the National Center for Juvenile Justice in Pittsburgh, Penn. She says that rising numbers could simply reflect a change in how youth crime is reported.

"Keep in mind," she said, "that it might not be the behavior, but how the system reacts to the behavior." In the past, law enforcement officials may have turned a cheek from ladies in fist fights or judges may have dismissed cases to spare a woman a stain on her reputation, Sickmund said.

Tougher Laws

But that kind of leniency rarely happens anymore. Laws stemming largely from tough domestic violence legislation call for mandatory arrests in most cases. For example, with mandatory arrest laws, a woman or man who retaliates in a domestic dispute can be arrested alongside the aggressor. And this "get tough" legislation sparked even stricter laws, so that anyone who does anything even slightly aggressive, such as hair-pulling, can be arrested for assault.