‘Bad Girls' or ‘Mad Girls' — the coping mechanism of female young offenders

Feminist criminologists have documented their concern about the treatment of female offenders within the penal system. Indeed a number of researchers have highlighted the fact that women have a propensity to be defined as in need of medical or psychological treatment rather than as purely criminal (Morris 1987; Carlen and Worrall 1987; Dobash et al. 1986). These observations are over 20 years old but do they still hold true?