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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.