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.

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

The most dangerous kind of girl involvement with gangs is one where the girls are just sort of hanging around the gang boys or even being part of the male gang.

Girls often feel very powerless in their lives and their families, and they kind of mimic the male violence as a way to try and get some of that male power that they see lacking in their own lives.

When some of the gangs got involved with the drug trade, particularlythe crack cocaine trade, and the lethal violence started to flare up in the '80s, then there was a great deal of public attention on gangs and a great deal of concern about what was going on in these social groups.

Violence among boys is so valorized and so encouraged that you have to do things different in violence prevention with boys than with girls.

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.