Dressed in a baggy T-shirt, cotton pants and runners with long wavy hair falling around her shoulders, she looks like an ordinary teenager. Yet because of her crime she spent her “sweet sixteen” birthday locked up in one of British Columbia’s closed custody units for youth. ‘Janice” which is not her real name because the Young Offenders Act prohibits publication of a youths identity is incarcerated for her part in the brutal murder of 14 …showed first 75 words of 2801 total…

…showed last 75 words of 2801 total…male young offenders receive many more custodial sentences than do females and the recidivism rate is much higher for males than it is for females. Many people believe that female young offenders and youth crime is beginning to be a major problem. It may not be an issue to simply ignore, but reality of it is that female youth crime has remained fairly stable over the last several years and the concern is overly exaggerated.