Girls come to the gang for very different reasons than boys. For boys in marginalized communities, they have a gender problem, and they solve it often through gang membership. They find an ability to do masculinity in a way that reasserts their importance in a society that mostly ignores them. For girls, they're coming out of more damaged backgrounds. Their families are often the reason they get propelled into gang membership.

There's only one thing worse than not paying attention to girls in gangs - it's paying attention to girls in gangs. The public reaction to girls and women who engage in nontraditional behavior - the hysteria that often surrounds girls in these groups - is almost as interesting as the behavior itself.

Girls come to the gang for very different reasons than boys. For boys in marginalized communities, they have a gender problem, and they solve it often through gang membership. They find an ability to do masculinity in a way that reasserts their importance in a society that mostly ignores them. For girls, they're coming out of more damaged backgrounds. Their families are often the reason they get propelled into gang membership.

Girls begin to have second thoughts about the violence. Studies show they feel a considerable amount of guilt about it. They feel bad later and want to apologize.

If we socialized boys like girls, we would have a much lower crime rate in America.

If you socialize people to care about each other and care about relationships, they tend to be much less violent and tend to think about the consequences of their actions more.

In the '60s and '70s, people didn't pay a lot of attention to gangs. I think gangs still existed, but gangs had fallen out of criminological favor.