TV Reviews : ‘Bad Girls’ Looks at Soaring Rate of Crimes by Females

“I just kept stabbing her, I wasn’t counting them or nothing, I just wanted to make sure she was dead.”

--Shirley Wolf, who, at the age of 14, murdered an 85-year-old woman.

According to tonight’s NBC news special “Bad Girls” (10 p.m. on Channels 4, 36 and 39), Shirley is just one of the rapidly growing number of female juvenile offenders who have sent the arrest rate for girls soaring 10 times faster than that of boys.

And the crimes they are committing are increasingly violent.

Disregard the glib, tabloid title; this disturbing report, responsibly written and hosted by NBC News correspondent Deborah Norville, is a chilling series of interviews with the young criminals, their victims, law-enforcement officials and social services representatives.

Don’t expect an hour of stereotypes. Some of the young women, interviewed during their incarceration, are lovely and articulate. They are also guilty of murder, assault and theft. There is a link, whatever the background. Most have been the victims of some kind of abuse themselves.

A large percentage are simply warehoused, locked up until they’re “old enough that you can send them to adult corrections,” according to Jim Bouck, president of the union of Ventura’s youth counselors and guards.

But there are success stories, strong arguments for rehabilitative programs such as Boystown in Nebraska, which began admitting girls in 1979, and several outstanding treatment centers in Massachusetts, where psychological counseling, job training and child care are provided.

Despite the dollar sense that these programs and others of a preventive nature can make, however, little is being done.

Few of us need to be told that crime is on the increase, but by letting these newest young criminals tell their own stories, “Bad Girls” makes it clear that society is breeding a second- and third-generation criminal class through indifference and neglect.