Discussing violence: Let’s hear it from the girls

findings from an exploratory Scottish study of teenage girls’vi ws and experiences of violence. They discuss girls’perceptions of violence and the nature and extent of the many forms of violence in theirlives, particularly the pervasiveness of verbal conflicts. They also outline the characteristics of those girls who describe themselves as violent, concluding with a brief discussion of practice and policy implications. Reducing youth crime is a majorpart of the current Government’s criminal justice agenda.Primarily, concern has focused on the offending behaviour of young men rather than young women because of the relatively small proportion of female offenders. However, there has been a growing public view, fuelled by the media, that girls are b coming more ‘criminally minded’and, in particular, more violent. In recent years, stories about the growing problem of female violence – particularly girl gangs roaming the streets and randomly attacking innocent victims – have been a recurring feature of the pages of our newspapers (see, for example