ABSTRACT
Gender issues are not high on the youth justice policy agenda in the UK. ‘Boys’ and ‘girls’ or ‘young men’ and ‘young women’ rarely appear in practice and policy documents, and yet the Home Office is concerned about gender differences in the causes of offending.1 This paradox runs throughout responses to children who offend. On the one hand, the increasing use of ‘youth’ as a descriptor and policy focus renders girls and young women invisible in a criminal justice system in which, it is true, the vast majority of those processed and punished are male. On the other hand, there is an increased visibility of what has been referred to in a Canadian article as ‘female youth’,2 notably in media and policy concern at the perceived proliferation of ‘girl gangs’ and the rise in convictions of girls.
