The youngest offender was a primary school-age girl who carried out a minor assault in Angus.

She was below the age at which she can be held criminally responsible, but many of the other girls and young women have ended up in court — and some in prison — because of their illegal and sometimes violent behaviour.

Figures show that compared with their male counterparts, females under 18 are rarely involved in the most serious crimes — but some have been responsible for appalling acts towards other people.

Earlier this month, Arbroath girls Paige Sharp (16) and Danielle Sinclair (17) were ordered to be detained for 15 months and two years respectively for their attack on a local man with learning difficulties.

Over the last two years, crimes involving girls include one culpable homicide, five attempted murders, five robberies or assaults with intent to rob, six serious assaults, two abductions and one act of cruelty to a child.

There were also 10 indecent assaults, three offences related to prostitution and one crime of shameless and indecent conduct.

The number of offences involving a girl or young woman was 1398 between June 2008 and May 2009 and 1112 between June 2009 and May 2010 — a total of 2510.

Tayside Police said, “These figures relate to the number of individuals detected and not the number of crimes committed.

“It is possible that one individual will be responsible for more than one crime. It is also possible that there may be more than one accused involved in a single crime.”

The figures show that some under-18s come to the attention of police again and again.

One young woman had 21 crimes attributed to her in a single year — a litany of misbehaviour including breach of the peace, assault, resisting arrest, theft by housebreaking and vandalism.

The increasing number of young females involved in crime has worried the authorities for several years.

In 2008, Lord Advocate Elish Angiolini told the Scottish Parliament she was troubled by “appalling acts of murderous torture” committed by women and by a rise in knife use.

She said the kind of gang-related violence that was emerging had previously only been associated with male offenders and she believed alcohol played a significant role.

However, one of the leading researchers in the field, Dr Susan Batchelor of Glasgow University, pointed out that only 2% of the crimes committed by young women involved violence.

She has drawn on work done with women serving sentences at Cornton Vale prison to try to understand the motivation of those who do physical harm to others.

She believes that anger and aggression are often related to offenders’ own experiences of family violence and abuse.

Dr Val Besag, an educational psychologist who works with the anti-bullying charity Kidscape, believes women are just as violent as men — it just takes more to rouse them to anger.

However, alcohol and drugs were a shortcut to that anger, she said.

A recent study by the Scottish Prison Service found that 45% of women were drunk at the time of their offence and 25% were worried about the possible effects of their drinking once they were released.