Abstract
The purpose of this study was to describe delinquent girls' weapons preferences where and how often they carried weapons and to identify the most important factors that explained four different weapon-related violent outcomes. A large, high-risk sample of female adolescents consisting of 510 girls aged 14–17 in four cities were interviewed using the same questionnaire and methods. Tabular and logistic regression analyses were applied. Knives emerged as the most frequently reported weapon in all cities. Rates of both lifetime victimization and perpetration of violence with weapons were high in all sites. Starting to carry a weapon as a result of violence was reported by 40% of the girls in Toronto, 28% in Philadelphia, 25% in Amsterdam, and 16% in Montreal. The major predictors of weapon perpetrated violent behaviours included ethnic origin, early onset of delinquent activities, participation in delinquent acts in the past 12 months, gang fighting and carrying a weapon as a result of violence. Site, age and heavy alcohol consumption had a minor impact, and drug use, drug selling, and neighborhood features, none. Despite numerous differences in weapons' prevalence across cities, the logistic regression found that site was only significant in use of an object (Toronto) and not significant in threatening or hurting someone with either a knife or a gun or actually hurting others with a weapon. These findings suggest commonality in serious female violence that extends beyond borders and cultures.
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Acknowledgements
Other members of the DAVI team include Edward Adlaf, Annemieke Benschop, Serge Brochu, Charles Freeman, Deborah Harrington, George Rots, Rosalyn Sutherland, and Fu Sun. The authors also thank Paul Goldstein for his useful advice as a consultant on DAVI.
The DAVI team gratefully acknowledges the support of our funding agencies, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (grant #RO1-DA11691-01A1) for the Toronto and Philadelphia sites; NWO/ ZonMw, through a bi-national agreement with the Netherlands, for Amsterdam (grant #3100.0037); and the Centre National de Prevention du Crime (grant #3150-U4), and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (grant #410-2002-1154), for Montreal, Quebec.
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Erickson is with the Social, Prevention and Policy Research Department, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, T-418, 33 Russell Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 2S1; Butters is with the Centre for Urban Health Initiatives, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada; Cousineau is with the Centre for International and Comparative Criminology, University of Montreal, Montreal, Canada; Harrison is with the Centre for Drugs and Alcohol Studies, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, Canada; Korf is with the Bonger Institute of Criminology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
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Erickson, P.G., Butters, J.E., Cousineau, MM. et al. Girls and Weapons: An International Study of the Perpetration of Violence. JURH 83, 788–801 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-006-9038-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-006-9038-5