Girls At Risk? Reflections On Changing Attitudes to Young Women's Offending

discusses the shift from a welfare-orientated approach to young women’s offending towards greater criminalisation of their behaviour. She argues that it is being conceived increasingly in terms which have more resonance in the widercontext of male offending and explores the validity of this process and its implications for practice with young women. I have recently returned from aconference on young women in juvenilejustice in Melbourne, Australia. The conference was entitled S ill Standing S t ro n gand was attended by juvenile justice workers – many but not all of them women – from all parts of Australia. The tone of the conference was positive and supportive, but the shared concerns about discrimination against young women who offend were remarkably similar to concerns that have been xpressed in the U