TEXT A Even as the number of
females processed through juvenile courts climbs steadily, an implicit agreement
remains among scholars in criminal justice that young males define the
delinquency problem in the United States. We suggest two reasons why this view
persists. First, young females are accused primarily of victimless crimes, such
as truancy, that do not involve clear-cut damage to persons or property. If
c0mmitted by adults, these actions are not even considered prosecutable; if
committed by young males, they have traditionally been looked on leniently by
the courts. Thus, ironically, the difficult conditions of female delinquents
receive little attention because they are accused of committing relatively minor
offenses. Second, the courts have long justified so-called preventive
intervention into the lives of young females viewed as antisocial with the
reasoning that women are especially vulnerable. Traditional ideas of women as
the weaker and more dependent sex have led to earlier intervention and longer
periods of misdirected supervision for female delinquents than for males. It can be inferred from the passage that the author believes traditional stereotypes of women to be ______.