ABSTRACT
While the stereotype of juvenile delinquency is generally that of a boy delinquent, the juvenile justice system actually has a long but largely unrecognized history of involvement in the policing of girls, particularly in the legal and judicial enforcement of traditional gender roles. Indeed, as the title to this chapter attests, the focus on controlling girls’ and women’s sexuality was at the center rather than at the periphery of the early history of the juvenile justice system (Rafter 1990). By the middle of that last century, the chief vehicles for gendered control were “status offenses” (noncriminal offenses for which only youth could be arrested like truancy, running away from home, and being “incorrigible”) (Chesney-Lind and Shelden 2004). Because these offenses also involved an essentially judicial system in the moral behavior of youth, they had also become controversial by that time.
