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.

One of the differences between boy gangs and girl gangs is for girls it's much more relational and much less violent.

The gang may be a safer place than home, but it's not without its problems. In some instances, especially in the Latino community, the boys have very traditional views of femininity even though they are gang members. The girls can be [seen] as sexually available, but not the good girl that you want to take home to your family, even by young men in the gangs.

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

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.

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.