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5 Feminist Criminology 3 (2010)

handle is hein.journals/femcrim5 and id is 1 raw text is: Feminist Criminology 5(1) 3-7 Editorial @2010 SAGE Publications Reprints and permission: http://www. sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1 177/1557085 109358488 http://fc.sagepub.com $SAGE Welcome to this issue of Feminist Criminology. This issue contains four diverse arti- cles all of which focus, to some degree, on factors associated with committing crime and/or deviance. All of the authors also discuss the gendered nature of involvement in delinquency, deviance, and crime. The first article by Jamie Vaske and Krista Gehring examines whether the relation- ship between depression and delinquency is similar for both adolescent males and females. As the authors note, depression and delinquency are correlated in most research, especially for girls. In addition, research shows that girls are more likely than boys to experience depression. It is not clear, however, how gender affects other medi- ating variables that also may be associated with delinquency. For example, research suggests that depression may result in delinquency because youth fail to acknowledge the consequences of their behavior, withdraw from social activities, experience rejec- tion by their peers, or use drugs or alcohol to mediate the effects of their depression. It is not clear whether there are significant gender differences in these types of variables that ultimately affect the nature of the relationships between gender, depression, and delinquency. Vaske and Gehring used data from the Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to examine the potential mechanisms underlying the depression-crime relationship. The authors analyzed cases from this nationally repre- sentative, longitudinal study of youths using children who were aged 11 to 12.5 in 1994. They looked at whether impulsivity, peer rejection, social withdrawal, and sub- stance use were related to delinquency for both boys and girls. They found that depression and delinquency were correlated for girls but not for boys. They also found that for girls, it appeared that depression and substance use were related to delin- quency, while peer rejection was more important in understanding delinquency in boys. The authors conclude that depression is a gender-specific risk factor for delin- quency and that it is important to consider this factor when implementing gender specific programming for delinquent youth. In the next article, Stacey Nofziger explores the relationship between self-control, gender identity, and deviance. She notes that the sex gap in offending is, in many ways, largely unexplained and that a better understanding of the relationship between gender identity and self-control might be an important step toward better understanding this gap. Prior research has established that self-control is associated with participation in delin- quent behavior for both boys and girls, but girls generally have higher levels of self-control and subsequently engage in less delinquency. Nofziger argues that previous research addresses the key role of self-control in predicting deviant behavior, although it fails to adequately explain the mechanism that links sex and self-control. She argues that this cru- cial connection can be provided by an examination of gender identity. Although gender

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