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In response to the rising arrest rates of female juveniles in the 1990s, OJJDP convened the Girls Study Group (GSG) in 2004, a research project that aims to gain a better understanding of girls' delinquency and guide policy toward female juvenile offenders. Because the majority of delinquent offenders are boys, very little research exists on female juvenile delinquency.

The GSG sponsored a series of studies that probed the following questions:

• Which girls become delinquent?
• What factors protect girls from delinquency?
• What factors put girls at risk for delinquency?
• What pathways lead to girls' delinquency?
• What programs are most effective in preventing girls' delinquency?
• How should the juvenile justice system respond to girls' delinquency?

One of the findings of the GSG is that girls are not more violent now than in previous years. Comparative analysis of official and self-report data revealed that the increase in girls' arrests is due largely to a change in how the juvenile justice system is responding to girls' behavior. Further analysis indicates that the increase in girls' arrests appears to be an unintended result of relatively new mandatory, or proarrest, policies put in place to protect victims of domestic violence. This outcome highlights the need to work with law enforcement to identify appropriate responses to conflict between girls and their family members, and for communities to support and provide families with access to family-strengthening and mediation programs that provide intervention rather than just simply arrest.

The GSG has also found that girls and boys experience many of the same delinquency factors and that, while some risk factors are more gender-sensitive, focusing on general risk and protective factors for all youth is appropriate. Although intervention and prevention programs should be based around factors unique to girls, such efforts depend on the individual girl's specific strengths and needs. Therefore, developing and using appropriate risk assessment tools for youth of both genders is crucial to ensuring the best response.

Perhaps the most important finding of the GSG is that there is a considerable lack of reliable, accurate, and comprehensive information about good prevention and intervention programming for girls. Therefore, a concerted effort is needed to address the lack of evidence-based programs for the juvenile justice field overall, as well as the lack of programming for girls specifically.

In the future, the GSG findings will provide OJJDP with the necessary foundation to move ahead on a comprehensive program of information dissemination, training, technical assistance, and programming regarding girls' delinquency prevention and intervention. These findings should also assist States and communities in developing their own efforts to address girls' delinquency.

Over the next several months, OJJDP will release a series of Bulletins to highlight the GSG, each one focusing on a specific facet of the study group's research activities and major findings. The Bulletin, Charting the Way to Delinquency Prevention for Girls, provides an overview of the research and the Bulletins that address each issue. This overview Bulletin describes how the GSG worked to understand and respond to girls' delinquency and summarizes the other Bulletins in the series. The other Bulletins include:

• Violence by Teenage Girls: Trends and Contexts—describes recent trends in girls' offending and examines the settings in which girls commit crimes. This Bulletin was released in May 2008 and is available online.
• Resilient Girls: Factors That Protect Against Delinquency—examines whether four factors—a caring adult, school connectedness, school success, and religiosity—can protect girls from delinquency.
• Suitability of Assessment Instruments for Delinquent Girls—determines whether current risk-assessment and treatment-focused instruments are appropriate for use with girls; also provides guidance to practitioners on how to select instruments for use.
• Causes and Correlates of Girls' Delinquency—examines the personal, family, peer, school, and community factors that can lead to delinquency among girls.
• Developmental Sequences of Girls' Delinquent Behavior—investigates the different patterns of delinquent behaviors in which girls become involved and provides insight into the life pathways that lead to girls' delinquent behavior.
• Girls' Delinquency Programs: An Evidence-Based Review—reviews girls' delinquency programs and determines whether they effectively intervene in delinquency trajectories.

Releases of the above Bulletins will be highlighted in future issues of News @ a Glance and JUVJUST. (For more information on the GSG Bulletin Charting the Way to Delinquency Prevention for Girls, see the New Publications section of this issue of OJJDP News @ a Glance.)

For more information on the GSG, please visit the OJJDP Web site or the GSG site.