Number of arrests up for girls in Maine American Bar Association cites national pattern of more young female offenders

Maine police arrested nearly 40 percent more girls last year than they did a decade earlier, but girls are still the minority of young criminal offenders in the state.

The trend in Maine is consistent with a national pattern found in an American Bar Association study released last week, which said girls are being arrested and jailed in record numbers nationally.

In Maine, police arrested 2,749 girls last year, an increase of 39.3 percent over the 1,669 girls arrested in 1990, according to Public Safety Department data. In the same period, arrests of boys increased 3.5 percent, from 6,989 to 7,243.

Girls are committed to the Maine Youth Center for fewer offenses and less serious criminal behavior than boys, a Justice for Girls Task Force report said. Many girls are sent through the juvenile justice system so they can get social services, it said.

Last month, there were 40 girls in Maine’s youth centers in South Portland and Charleston. They made up 17 percent of the total population of juveniles detained.

In 1996, girls detained at the youth center usually made up 10 percent of the total population, said Roxy Hennings, a planner with the Department of Corrections’ Division of Juvenile Services.

Hennings said the juvenile corrections system is not designed to meet the needs of young female offenders.

“Girls are really anomalies within the correctional system, so when you get them, they really don’t fit,” Hennings said. “Basically, you program for the majority. If the majority are boys, you program for how boys think, how boys act, not for girls.”

Officials are creating programs tailored to accommodate the girls. Counselors have been added, poetry and theater programs offered, and arrangements made to allow some girls to stay in a residential treatment program in Saco. In addition, the Juvenile Services Division has hired a consultant to develop programming for girls and helped form a collaborative with social service agencies to get girls more community support.