Girls play truant more than boys

New research published by the University of Edinburgh reveals that there is a substantial difference in levels of serious delinquency between boys and girls between the ages of 12 and 15.

Four new reports examine truancy, parenting, gender and victimization among young people and look at the links to delinquent and criminal behaviour.

The four reports are the latest in a series from the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime, which tracks the 4,300 young people who transferred to secondary schools in Edinburgh in the autumn of 1998.

There was little difference in delinquency between girls and boys if trivial as well as serious incidents were included, but the difference in serious delinquency was substantial. Girls were involved in certain specific forms of delinquency--theft from home, writing graffiti, and truancy--more often than boys. However, specific forms of more serious delinquency--carrying a weapon, housebreaking, robbery, theft from cars, and cruelty to animals--were much more common among boys than girls.

The reports also found parents play a crucial role in determining the pattern of their children's behaviour as they become teenagers.

David Smith, Professor of Criminology at the University of Edinburgh, said, "Put simply, the findings show that good parenting can prevent crime. By contrast, parents who are inconsistent and harsh, and who easily give in to unreasonable demands, are more likely to see their teenage children turn to delinquency. The reports also demonstrate the influence of a wide range of other factors from socio-economic status to the community and environment young people grow up in. But peers and parents have an important influence on top of these external factors."

Key findings:

Gender

• The ratio between boys and girls in terms of the average number of offences committed was lowest at age 14, and then began to increase again. The difference was much greater for serious offending than for all offending.
• 40 per cent of girls at age 13 reported writing or spraying graffiti on property in the last year, compared with 29 per cent of boys, while 59 per cent of boys of the same age reported fighting in the last year, compared with only 33 per cent of girls.
• At age 15, boys were three times more likely than girls to carry a weapon and twice as likely to be involved in fighting.
• The higher rates of general delinquency among boys were largely explained by the boys' lifestyles, which provided more opportunities to offend, by the influence of friends, by higher rates of crime victimization, and by weakened adult supervision and moral beliefs. By contrast, these and other factors covered by the study could not explain the difference between boys and girls in serious delinquency.

Parenting

• Many aspects of parenting have an influence on behaviour--tracking and monitoring behaviour, persuading young people to be open about what they are doing and who they are spending time with, being consistent about rewarding only good behaviour, avoiding conflicts and arguments as far as possible, and avoiding harshness and punishment.
• Parenting of children aged 12 to 13 predicts their level of delinquency at age 15.

Truancy

• Only 1 in 5 persistent truants at primary school were girls, but this increased to 3 in 5 by the third year of secondary school--overtaking the boys.
• By contrast, boys were much more likely to be excluded from school than girls--74 per cent of those excluded in the third year of secondary school were boys.
• Truants were more likely to smoke, drink, and use illegal drugs than non-truanting pupils. At age 15, half of all truants reported using drugs during the last year. This increased to two-thirds amongst the long-term truants.
• Factors such as weak parental supervision, dislike of school, and lack of self-control help to explain both why young people use substances and why they skip school. After allowing for these other factors, there was still a direct link between using substances and truanting--for example, being out of school provides more opportunities for smoking, drinking, and taking drugs.

Victim and offender

• Those who experienced the most victimization reported committing, on average, one offence per week, compared with only one every two months for non-victims.
• Violent crime emerged as a prominent factor, since victims of robbery and assault with a weapon were particularly likely to be involved in delinquency.
• Victimization at age 12 increased the likelihood of delinquency three years later, at age 15.
• An important explanation of these findings is that the same activities, situations, and social circles lead both to victimization and to offending. However, there is also evidence that victimization causes offending, and that offending causes victimization.