crime and gender essay

• Subject List
• Take a Tour
• For Authors
• Subscriber Services
• Publications
• African American Studies
• African Studies
• American Literature
• Anthropology
• Architecture Planning and Preservation
• Art History
• Atlantic History
• Biblical Studies
• British and Irish Literature
• Childhood Studies
• Chinese Studies
• Cinema and Media Studies
• Communication

Criminology

• Environmental Science
• Evolutionary Biology
• International Law
• International Relations
• Islamic Studies
• Jewish Studies
• Latin American Studies
• Latino Studies
• Linguistics
• Literary and Critical Theory
• Medieval Studies
• Military History
• Political Science
• Public Health
• Renaissance and Reformation
• Social Work
• Urban Studies
• Victorian Literature
• Browse All Subjects

How to Subscribe

• Free Trials

In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Gender and Crime

Introduction, introductory works.

• General Overviews
• Historical Context
• Gender Differences in Crime
• Gendered Crime Pathways
• Gender and Desistance
• Gendered Crime Rates: Convergence or Divergence
• Early Feminist Critiques of Criminological Theory
• Criminological Theory and Gender
• Victimization
• Debates and Controversies

Related Articles Expand or collapse the "related articles" section about

About related articles close popup.

Lorem Ipsum Sit Dolor Amet

Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Aliquam ligula odio, euismod ut aliquam et, vestibulum nec risus. Nulla viverra, arcu et iaculis consequat, justo diam ornare tellus, semper ultrices tellus nunc eu tellus.

• Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children
• Corporate Crime
• Criminological Perspectives on Intimate Partner Violence
• Delinquency and Crime Prevention
• Family Violence
• Feminist Theories
• Feminist Victimization Theories
• LGBTQ Intimate Partner Violence
• Prostitution
• Race, Ethnicity, Crime, and Justice
• Rape and Sexual Assault
• School Bullying
• Victimization Patterns and Trends
• Violence Against Women
• Women and White-Collar Crime
• Women, Girls, and Reentry

Other Subject Areas

Forthcoming articles expand or collapse the "forthcoming articles" section.

• Education Programs in Prison
• Mixed Methods Research in Criminal Justice and Criminology
• Victim Impact Statements
• Find more forthcoming articles...
• Export Citations
• Share This Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

Gender and Crime by Sally S. Simpson LAST REVIEWED: 14 December 2009 LAST MODIFIED: 14 December 2009 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780195396607-0052

In Western cultures, gender and crime, as a subject of intellectual curiosity, did not gain much attention until the late 1960s and the 1970s. Previously, female offenders were an object of curiosity, often understood and treated as an aberration to their sex. As a consequence of the women’s movement, female offenders and, in particular, female victims of male violence, moved front-and-center in the field of criminology. Feminists played a key role in this emergence, launching critical assessments of the field’s neglect, both in terms of empirical research and theoretical developments. These efforts produced a solid body of scholarship that led nonfeminist researchers to acknowledge that gender is a critical factor (some argue “the” critical variable) that distinguishes who participates in crime and who does not. Over time, scholarship shifted away from “women” as a category in favor of intersectional approaches (i.e., gender, race, class, ethnicity, and sexuality), a focus on gender differences, and postmodern theorizing (e.g., discourse analysis, rejection of structure, sexed bodies). Nonetheless, debates about how best to study gender (positivism versus other epistemological approaches), whether males and females have distinct pathways into crime (including violence and the potential link between early victimization and the risk of later criminality and victimization), and the impact of crime prevention policies such as mandatory arrest on female victims remain unresolved.

The field of criminology and criminal justice, like that of other social science disciplines, has been dramatically affected by ideas and challenges brought about by the women’s movement. Scholars classify these influences in terms of “waves” linked to women’s suffrage (first wave), the social movements of the 1960s (second wave), and dissentions and discord within the movement itself (third wave). Distinct types of research are closely associated with these broad historical categories. Contemporary research, beginning in the second wave, emphasized women as research and theoretical subjects ( Heidensohn 1968 ) out of which two distinct conceptualizations emerged ( Daly and Maher 1998 ): real women (women offenders and victims as active agents in their own lives) and women of discourse (the ways in which women are constructed as discursive subjects—see Smart 1992 ). During the third wave, scholars adopted a more heterogeneous perspective by recognizing intersectional differences ( Burgess-Proctor 2006 ) and “gendered” relations ( Heimer and Kruttschnitt 2006 ).

Burgess-Proctor, Amanda. 2006. Intersections of race, class, gender, and crime: Future directions for feminist criminology. Feminist Criminology 1.1: 27–47.

DOI: 10.1177/1557085105282899

Reviews the emergence and importance of “multiracial” feminist criminology, especially with regard to theoretical, methodological, and praxis-related developments.

Daly, Kathleen, and Lisa Maher, eds. 1998. Criminology at the crossroads: Feminist readings in crime and justice . New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

Multifaceted compilation of feminist work organized around emergent themes, including discourse analysis, victimization and criminalization, masculinities and violence, and gender, politics, and justice. A helpful introductory chapter by Daly and Maher navigates the history of feminist criminology.

Heidensohn, Frances. 1968. The deviance of women: A critique and an enquiry. British Journal of Sociology 19.2: 160–175.

DOI: 10.2307/588692

In this classic article, Heidensohn assesses the absence of women from studies of deviance and challenges scholars to study female deviance “as an aspect of the female sex role and its relationship to the social structure.”

Heimer, Karen, and Candace Kruttschnitt, eds. 2006. Gender and crime: Patterns of victimization and offending . New York: New York Univ. Press.

A collection of original empirical and conceptual papers that address some of the current gaps in the gender and crime/victimization literature. Compares feminist constructs with more traditional criminological approaches and integrates criminological knowledge about victimization more generally into violence against women specifically. Examines the role of agency in offending, the link between offending and victimization, and the debate surrounding quantitative versus qualitative approaches to knowledge. Also includes cross-national comparisons. Appropriate for graduate students and academics.

Smart, Carol. 1992. The woman of legal discourse. Social and Legal Studies 1.1:29–44.

DOI: 10.1177/096466399200100103

Explores the ways in which law is gendered, how law is a gendering strategy, and the challenges faced by feminist socio-legal studies. Uses examples from Great Britain.

back to top

Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login .

Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here .

• About Criminology »
• Meet the Editorial Board »
• Active Offender Research
• Adler, Freda
• Adversarial System of Justice
• Adverse Childhood Experiences
• Aging Prison Population, The
• Airport and Airline Security
• Alcohol and Drug Prohibition
• Alcohol Use, Policy and Crime
• Alt-Right Gangs and White Power Youth Groups
• Animals, Crimes Against
• Back-End Sentencing and Parole Revocation
• Bail and Pretrial Detention
• Batterer Intervention Programs
• Bentham, Jeremy
• Big Data and Communities and Crime
• Biosocial Criminology
• Black's Theory of Law and Social Control
• Blumstein, Alfred
• Boot Camps and Shock Incarceration Programs
• Burglary, Residential
• Bystander Intervention
• Capital Punishment
• Chambliss, William
• Chicago School of Criminology, The
• Child Maltreatment
• Chinese Triad Society
• Civil Protection Orders
• Collateral Consequences of Felony Conviction and Imprisonm...
• Collective Efficacy
• Commercial and Bank Robbery
• Communicating Scientific Findings in the Courtroom
• Community Change and Crime
• Community Corrections
• Community Disadvantage and Crime
• Community-Based Justice Systems
• Community-Based Substance Use Prevention
• Comparative Criminal Justice Systems
• CompStat Models of Police Performance Management
• Confessions, False and Coerced
• Conservation Criminology
• Consumer Fraud
• Contextual Analysis of Crime
• Control Balance Theory
• Convict Criminology
• Co-Offending and the Role of Accomplices
• Costs of Crime and Justice
• Courts, Drug
• Courts, Juvenile
• Courts, Mental Health
• Courts, Problem-Solving
• Crime and Justice in Latin America
• Crime, Campus
• Crime Control Policy
• Crime Control, Politics of
• Crime, (In)Security, and Islam
• Crime Prevention, Delinquency and
• Crime Prevention, Situational
• Crime Prevention, Voluntary Organizations and
• Crime Trends
• Crime Victims' Rights Movement
• Criminal Career Research
• Criminal Decision Making, Emotions in
• Criminal Justice Data Sources
• Criminal Justice Ethics
• Criminal Justice Fines and Fees
• Criminal Justice Reform, Politics of
• Criminal Justice System, Discretion in the
• Criminal Records
• Criminal Retaliation
• Criminal Talk
• Criminology and Political Science
• Criminology of Genocide, The
• Critical Criminology
• Cross-National Crime
• Cross-Sectional Research Designs in Criminology and Crimin...
• Cultural Criminology
• Cultural Theories
• Cybercrime Investigations and Prosecutions
• Cycle of Violence
• Deadly Force
• Defense Counsel
• Defining "Success" in Corrections and Reentry
• Developmental and Life-Course Criminology
• Digital Piracy
• Driving and Traffic Offenses
• Drug Control
• Drug Trafficking, International
• Drugs and Crime
• Elder Abuse
• Electronically Monitored Home Confinement
• Employee Theft
• Environmental Crime and Justice
• Experimental Criminology
• Fear of Crime and Perceived Risk
• Felon Disenfranchisement
• Fencing and Stolen Goods Markets
• Firearms and Violence
• Forensic Science
• For-Profit Private Prisons and the Criminal Justice–Indust...
• Gangs, Peers, and Co-offending
• Gender and Crime
• General Opportunity Victimization Theories
• Genetics, Environment, and Crime
• Green Criminology
• Halfway Houses
• Harm Reduction and Risky Behaviors
• Hate Crime Legislation
• Healthcare Fraud
• Hirschi, Travis
• History of Crime in the United Kingdom
• History of Criminology
• Homelessness and Crime
• Homicide Victimization
• Honor Cultures and Violence
• Hot Spots Policing
• Human Rights
• Human Trafficking
• Identity Theft
• Immigration, Crime, and Justice
• Incarceration, Mass
• Incarceration, Public Health Effects of
• Income Tax Evasion
• Indigenous Criminology
• Institutional Anomie Theory
• Integrated Theory
• Intermediate Sanctions
• Interpersonal Violence, Historical Patterns of
• Interrogation
• Intimate Partner Violence, Criminological Perspectives on
• Intimate Partner Violence, Police Responses to
• Investigation, Criminal
• Juvenile Delinquency
• Juvenile Justice System, The
• Kornhauser, Ruth Rosner
• Labeling Theory
• Labor Markets and Crime
• Land Use and Crime
• Lead and Crime
• LGBTQ People in Prison
• Life Without Parole Sentencing
• Local Institutions and Neighborhood Crime
• Lombroso, Cesare
• Longitudinal Research in Criminology
• Mandatory Minimum Sentencing
• Mapping and Spatial Analysis of Crime, The
• Mass Media, Crime, and Justice
• Measuring Crime
• Mediation and Dispute Resolution Programs
• Mental Health and Crime
• Merton, Robert K.
• Meta-analysis in Criminology
• Middle-Class Crime and Criminality
• Migrant Detention and Incarceration
• Mixed Methods Research in Criminology
• Money Laundering
• Motor Vehicle Theft
• Multi-Level Marketing Scams
• Murder, Serial
• Narrative Criminology
• National Deviancy Symposia, The
• Nature Versus Nurture
• Neighborhood Disorder
• Neutralization Theory
• New Penology, The
• Offender Decision-Making and Motivation
• Offense Specialization/Expertise
• Organized Crime
• Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs
• Panel Methods in Criminology
• Peacemaking Criminology
• Peer Networks and Delinquency
• Performance Measurement and Accountability Systems
• Personality and Trait Theories of Crime
• Persons with a Mental Illness, Police Encounters with
• Phenomenological Theories of Crime
• Plea Bargaining
• Police Administration
• Police Cooperation, International
• Police Discretion
• Police Effectiveness
• Police History
• Police Militarization
• Police Misconduct
• Police, Race and the
• Police Use of Force
• Police, Violence against the
• Policing and Law Enforcement
• Policing, Body-Worn Cameras and
• Policing, Broken Windows
• Policing, Community and Problem-Oriented
• Policing Cybercrime
• Policing, Evidence-Based
• Policing, Intelligence-Led
• Policing, Privatization of
• Policing, Proactive
• Policing, School
• Policing, Stop-and-Frisk
• Policing, Third Party
• Polyvictimization
• Positivist Criminology
• Pretrial Detention, Alternatives to
• Pretrial Diversion
• Prison Administration
• Prison Classification
• Prison, Disciplinary Segregation in
• Prison Education Exchange Programs
• Prison Gangs and Subculture
• Prison History
• Prison Labor
• Prison Visitation
• Prisoner Reentry
• Prisons and Jails
• Prisons, HIV in
• Private Security
• Probation Revocation
• Procedural Justice
• Property Crime
• Prosecution and Courts
• Psychiatry, Psychology, and Crime: Historical and Current ...
• Psychology and Crime
• Public Criminology
• Public Opinion, Crime and Justice
• Public Order Crimes
• Public Social Control and Neighborhood Crime
• Punishment Justification and Goals
• Qualitative Methods in Criminology
• Queer Criminology
• Race and Sentencing Research Advancements
• Racial Threat Hypothesis
• Racial Profiling
• Rape, Fear of
• Rational Choice Theories
• Rehabilitation
• Religion and Crime
• Restorative Justice
• Risk Assessment
• Routine Activity Theories
• School Crime and Violence
• School Safety, Security, and Discipline
• Search Warrants
• Seasonality and Crime
• Self-Control, The General Theory:
• Self-Report Crime Surveys
• Sentencing Enhancements
• Sentencing, Evidence-Based
• Sentencing Guidelines
• Sentencing Policy
• Sex Offender Policies and Legislation
• Sex Trafficking
• Sexual Revictimization
• Situational Action Theory
• Snitching and Use of Criminal Informants
• Social and Intellectual Context of Criminology, The
• Social Construction of Crime, The
• Social Control of Tobacco Use
• Social Control Theory
• Social Disorganization
• Social Ecology of Crime
• Social Learning Theory
• Social Networks
• Social Threat and Social Control
• Solitary Confinement
• South Africa, Crime and Justice in
• Sport Mega-Events Security
• Stalking and Harassment
• State Crime
• State Dependence and Population Heterogeneity in Theories ...
• Strain Theories
• Street Code
• Street Robbery
• Substance Use and Abuse
• Surveillance, Public and Private
• Sutherland, Edwin H.
• Technology and the Criminal Justice System
• Technology, Criminal Use of
• Terrorism and Hate Crime
• Terrorism, Criminological Explanations for
• Testimony, Eyewitness
• Therapeutic Jurisprudence
• Trajectory Methods in Criminology
• Transnational Crime
• Truth-In-Sentencing
• Urban Politics and Crime
• US War on Terrorism, Legal Perspectives on the
• Victimization, Adolescent
• Victimization, Biosocial Theories of
• Victimization, Repeat
• Victimization, Vicarious and Related Forms of Secondary Tr...
• Victimless Crime
• Victim-Offender Overlap, The
• Violence, Youth
• Violent Crime
• White-Collar Crime
• White-Collar Crime, The Global Financial Crisis and
• White-Collar Crime, Women and
• Wilson, James Q.
• Wolfgang, Marvin
• Wrongful Conviction
• Privacy Policy
• Cookie Policy
• Legal Notice
• Accessibility

Powered by:

• [66.249.64.20|162.248.224.4]
• 162.248.224.4

• Search Menu
• Browse content in Arts and Humanities
• Browse content in Archaeology
• Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Archaeology
• Archaeological Methodology and Techniques
• Archaeology by Region
• Archaeology of Religion
• Archaeology of Trade and Exchange
• Biblical Archaeology
• Contemporary and Public Archaeology
• Environmental Archaeology
• Historical Archaeology
• History and Theory of Archaeology
• Industrial Archaeology
• Landscape Archaeology
• Mortuary Archaeology
• Prehistoric Archaeology
• Underwater Archaeology
• Urban Archaeology
• Zooarchaeology
• Browse content in Architecture
• Architectural Structure and Design
• History of Architecture
• Residential and Domestic Buildings
• Theory of Architecture
• Browse content in Art
• Art Subjects and Themes
• History of Art
• Industrial and Commercial Art
• Theory of Art
• Biographical Studies
• Byzantine Studies
• Browse content in Classical Studies
• Classical History
• Classical Philosophy
• Classical Mythology
• Classical Literature
• Classical Reception
• Classical Art and Architecture
• Classical Oratory and Rhetoric
• Greek and Roman Papyrology
• Greek and Roman Epigraphy
• Greek and Roman Law
• Greek and Roman Archaeology
• Late Antiquity
• Religion in the Ancient World
• Digital Humanities
• Browse content in History
• Colonialism and Imperialism
• Diplomatic History
• Environmental History
• Genealogy, Heraldry, Names, and Honours
• Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
• Historical Geography
• History by Period
• History of Emotions
• History of Agriculture
• History of Education
• History of Gender and Sexuality
• Industrial History
• Intellectual History
• International History
• Labour History
• Legal and Constitutional History
• Local and Family History
• Maritime History
• Military History
• National Liberation and Post-Colonialism
• Oral History
• Political History
• Public History
• Regional and National History
• Revolutions and Rebellions
• Slavery and Abolition of Slavery
• Social and Cultural History
• Theory, Methods, and Historiography
• Urban History
• World History
• Browse content in Language Teaching and Learning
• Language Learning (Specific Skills)
• Language Teaching Theory and Methods
• Browse content in Linguistics
• Applied Linguistics
• Cognitive Linguistics
• Computational Linguistics
• Forensic Linguistics
• Grammar, Syntax and Morphology
• Historical and Diachronic Linguistics
• History of English
• Language Evolution
• Language Reference
• Language Acquisition
• Language Variation
• Language Families
• Lexicography
• Linguistic Anthropology
• Linguistic Theories
• Linguistic Typology
• Phonetics and Phonology
• Psycholinguistics
• Sociolinguistics
• Translation and Interpretation
• Writing Systems
• Browse content in Literature
• Bibliography
• Children's Literature Studies
• Literary Studies (Romanticism)
• Literary Studies (American)
• Literary Studies (Asian)
• Literary Studies (European)
• Literary Studies (Eco-criticism)
• Literary Studies (Modernism)
• Literary Studies - World
• Literary Studies (1500 to 1800)
• Literary Studies (19th Century)
• Literary Studies (20th Century onwards)
• Literary Studies (African American Literature)
• Literary Studies (British and Irish)
• Literary Studies (Early and Medieval)
• Literary Studies (Fiction, Novelists, and Prose Writers)
• Literary Studies (Gender Studies)
• Literary Studies (Graphic Novels)
• Literary Studies (History of the Book)
• Literary Studies (Plays and Playwrights)
• Literary Studies (Poetry and Poets)
• Literary Studies (Postcolonial Literature)
• Literary Studies (Queer Studies)
• Literary Studies (Science Fiction)
• Literary Studies (Travel Literature)
• Literary Studies (War Literature)
• Literary Studies (Women's Writing)
• Literary Theory and Cultural Studies
• Mythology and Folklore
• Shakespeare Studies and Criticism
• Browse content in Media Studies
• Browse content in Music
• Applied Music
• Dance and Music
• Ethics in Music
• Ethnomusicology
• Gender and Sexuality in Music
• Medicine and Music
• Music Cultures
• Music and Media
• Music and Religion
• Music and Culture
• Music Education and Pedagogy
• Music Theory and Analysis
• Musical Scores, Lyrics, and Libretti
• Musical Structures, Styles, and Techniques
• Musicology and Music History
• Performance Practice and Studies
• Race and Ethnicity in Music
• Sound Studies
• Browse content in Performing Arts
• Browse content in Philosophy
• Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art
• Epistemology
• Feminist Philosophy
• History of Western Philosophy
• Metaphysics
• Moral Philosophy
• Non-Western Philosophy
• Philosophy of Language
• Philosophy of Mind
• Philosophy of Perception
• Philosophy of Science
• Philosophy of Action
• Philosophy of Law
• Philosophy of Religion
• Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic
• Practical Ethics
• Social and Political Philosophy
• Browse content in Religion
• Biblical Studies
• Christianity
• East Asian Religions
• History of Religion
• Judaism and Jewish Studies
• Qumran Studies
• Religion and Education
• Religion and Health
• Religion and Politics
• Religion and Science
• Religion and Law
• Religion and Art, Literature, and Music
• Religious Studies
• Browse content in Society and Culture
• Cookery, Food, and Drink
• Cultural Studies
• Customs and Traditions
• Ethical Issues and Debates
• Hobbies, Games, Arts and Crafts
• Lifestyle, Home, and Garden
• Natural world, Country Life, and Pets
• Popular Beliefs and Controversial Knowledge
• Sports and Outdoor Recreation
• Technology and Society
• Travel and Holiday
• Visual Culture
• Browse content in Law
• Arbitration
• Browse content in Company and Commercial Law
• Commercial Law
• Company Law
• Browse content in Comparative Law
• Systems of Law
• Competition Law
• Browse content in Constitutional and Administrative Law
• Government Powers
• Judicial Review
• Local Government Law
• Military and Defence Law
• Parliamentary and Legislative Practice
• Construction Law
• Contract Law
• Browse content in Criminal Law
• Criminal Procedure
• Criminal Evidence Law
• Sentencing and Punishment
• Employment and Labour Law
• Environment and Energy Law
• Browse content in Financial Law
• Banking Law
• Insolvency Law
• History of Law
• Human Rights and Immigration
• Intellectual Property Law
• Browse content in International Law
• Private International Law and Conflict of Laws
• Public International Law
• IT and Communications Law
• Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law
• Law and Politics
• Law and Society
• Browse content in Legal System and Practice
• Courts and Procedure
• Legal Skills and Practice
• Primary Sources of Law
• Regulation of Legal Profession
• Medical and Healthcare Law
• Browse content in Policing
• Criminal Investigation and Detection
• Police and Security Services
• Police Procedure and Law
• Police Regional Planning
• Browse content in Property Law
• Personal Property Law
• Study and Revision
• Terrorism and National Security Law
• Browse content in Trusts Law
• Wills and Probate or Succession
• Browse content in Medicine and Health
• Browse content in Allied Health Professions
• Arts Therapies
• Clinical Science
• Dietetics and Nutrition
• Occupational Therapy
• Operating Department Practice
• Physiotherapy
• Radiography
• Speech and Language Therapy
• Browse content in Anaesthetics
• General Anaesthesia
• Neuroanaesthesia
• Clinical Neuroscience
• Browse content in Clinical Medicine
• Acute Medicine
• Cardiovascular Medicine
• Clinical Genetics
• Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics
• Dermatology
• Endocrinology and Diabetes
• Gastroenterology
• Genito-urinary Medicine
• Geriatric Medicine
• Infectious Diseases
• Medical Toxicology
• Medical Oncology
• Pain Medicine
• Palliative Medicine
• Rehabilitation Medicine
• Respiratory Medicine and Pulmonology
• Rheumatology
• Sleep Medicine
• Sports and Exercise Medicine
• Community Medical Services
• Critical Care
• Emergency Medicine
• Forensic Medicine
• Haematology
• History of Medicine
• Browse content in Medical Skills
• Clinical Skills
• Communication Skills
• Nursing Skills
• Surgical Skills
• Browse content in Medical Dentistry
• Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
• Paediatric Dentistry
• Restorative Dentistry and Orthodontics
• Surgical Dentistry
• Medical Ethics
• Medical Statistics and Methodology
• Browse content in Neurology
• Clinical Neurophysiology
• Neuropathology
• Nursing Studies
• Browse content in Obstetrics and Gynaecology
• Gynaecology
• Occupational Medicine
• Ophthalmology
• Otolaryngology (ENT)
• Browse content in Paediatrics
• Neonatology
• Browse content in Pathology
• Chemical Pathology
• Clinical Cytogenetics and Molecular Genetics
• Histopathology
• Medical Microbiology and Virology
• Patient Education and Information
• Browse content in Pharmacology
• Psychopharmacology
• Browse content in Popular Health
• Caring for Others
• Complementary and Alternative Medicine
• Self-help and Personal Development
• Browse content in Preclinical Medicine
• Cell Biology
• Molecular Biology and Genetics
• Reproduction, Growth and Development
• Primary Care
• Professional Development in Medicine
• Browse content in Psychiatry
• Addiction Medicine
• Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
• Forensic Psychiatry
• Learning Disabilities
• Old Age Psychiatry
• Psychotherapy
• Browse content in Public Health and Epidemiology
• Epidemiology
• Public Health
• Browse content in Radiology
• Clinical Radiology
• Interventional Radiology
• Nuclear Medicine
• Radiation Oncology
• Reproductive Medicine
• Browse content in Surgery
• Cardiothoracic Surgery
• Gastro-intestinal and Colorectal Surgery
• General Surgery
• Neurosurgery
• Paediatric Surgery
• Peri-operative Care
• Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
• Surgical Oncology
• Transplant Surgery
• Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery
• Vascular Surgery
• Browse content in Science and Mathematics
• Browse content in Biological Sciences
• Aquatic Biology
• Biochemistry
• Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
• Developmental Biology
• Ecology and Conservation
• Evolutionary Biology
• Genetics and Genomics
• Microbiology
• Molecular and Cell Biology
• Natural History
• Plant Sciences and Forestry
• Research Methods in Life Sciences
• Structural Biology
• Systems Biology
• Zoology and Animal Sciences
• Browse content in Chemistry
• Analytical Chemistry
• Computational Chemistry
• Crystallography
• Environmental Chemistry
• Industrial Chemistry
• Inorganic Chemistry
• Materials Chemistry
• Medicinal Chemistry
• Mineralogy and Gems
• Organic Chemistry
• Physical Chemistry
• Polymer Chemistry
• Study and Communication Skills in Chemistry
• Theoretical Chemistry
• Browse content in Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Architecture and Logic Design
• Game Studies
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Mathematical Theory of Computation
• Programming Languages
• Software Engineering
• Systems Analysis and Design
• Virtual Reality
• Browse content in Computing
• Business Applications
• Computer Security
• Computer Games
• Computer Networking and Communications
• Digital Lifestyle
• Graphical and Digital Media Applications
• Operating Systems
• Browse content in Earth Sciences and Geography
• Atmospheric Sciences
• Environmental Geography
• Geology and the Lithosphere
• Maps and Map-making
• Meteorology and Climatology
• Oceanography and Hydrology
• Palaeontology
• Physical Geography and Topography
• Regional Geography
• Soil Science
• Urban Geography
• Browse content in Engineering and Technology
• Agriculture and Farming
• Biological Engineering
• Civil Engineering, Surveying, and Building
• Electronics and Communications Engineering
• Energy Technology
• Engineering (General)
• Environmental Science, Engineering, and Technology
• History of Engineering and Technology
• Mechanical Engineering and Materials
• Technology of Industrial Chemistry
• Transport Technology and Trades
• Browse content in Environmental Science
• Applied Ecology (Environmental Science)
• Conservation of the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Environmental Sustainability
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Environmental Science)
• Management of Land and Natural Resources (Environmental Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environmental Science)
• Nuclear Issues (Environmental Science)
• Pollution and Threats to the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Environmental Science)
• History of Science and Technology
• Browse content in Materials Science
• Ceramics and Glasses
• Composite Materials
• Metals, Alloying, and Corrosion
• Nanotechnology
• Browse content in Mathematics
• Applied Mathematics
• Biomathematics and Statistics
• History of Mathematics
• Mathematical Education
• Mathematical Finance
• Mathematical Analysis
• Numerical and Computational Mathematics
• Probability and Statistics
• Pure Mathematics
• Browse content in Neuroscience
• Cognition and Behavioural Neuroscience
• Development of the Nervous System
• Disorders of the Nervous System
• History of Neuroscience
• Invertebrate Neurobiology
• Molecular and Cellular Systems
• Neuroendocrinology and Autonomic Nervous System
• Neuroscientific Techniques
• Sensory and Motor Systems
• Browse content in Physics
• Astronomy and Astrophysics
• Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
• Biological and Medical Physics
• Classical Mechanics
• Computational Physics
• Condensed Matter Physics
• Electromagnetism, Optics, and Acoustics
• History of Physics
• Mathematical and Statistical Physics
• Measurement Science
• Nuclear Physics
• Particles and Fields
• Plasma Physics
• Quantum Physics
• Relativity and Gravitation
• Semiconductor and Mesoscopic Physics
• Browse content in Psychology
• Affective Sciences
• Clinical Psychology
• Cognitive Psychology
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Criminal and Forensic Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Educational Psychology
• Evolutionary Psychology
• Health Psychology
• History and Systems in Psychology
• Music Psychology
• Neuropsychology
• Organizational Psychology
• Psychological Assessment and Testing
• Psychology of Human-Technology Interaction
• Psychology Professional Development and Training
• Research Methods in Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Browse content in Social Sciences
• Browse content in Anthropology
• Anthropology of Religion
• Human Evolution
• Medical Anthropology
• Physical Anthropology
• Regional Anthropology
• Social and Cultural Anthropology
• Theory and Practice of Anthropology
• Browse content in Business and Management
• Business Ethics
• Business Strategy
• Business History
• Business and Technology
• Business and Government
• Business and the Environment
• Comparative Management
• Corporate Governance
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Entrepreneurship
• Health Management
• Human Resource Management
• Industrial and Employment Relations
• Industry Studies
• Information and Communication Technologies
• International Business
• Knowledge Management
• Management and Management Techniques
• Operations Management
• Organizational Theory and Behaviour
• Pensions and Pension Management
• Public and Nonprofit Management
• Strategic Management
• Supply Chain Management
• Browse content in Criminology and Criminal Justice
• Criminal Justice
• Criminology
• Forms of Crime
• International and Comparative Criminology
• Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice
• Development Studies
• Browse content in Economics
• Agricultural, Environmental, and Natural Resource Economics
• Asian Economics
• Behavioural Finance
• Behavioural Economics and Neuroeconomics
• Econometrics and Mathematical Economics
• Economic History
• Economic Systems
• Economic Methodology
• Economic Development and Growth
• Financial Markets
• Financial Institutions and Services
• General Economics and Teaching
• Health, Education, and Welfare
• History of Economic Thought
• International Economics
• Labour and Demographic Economics
• Law and Economics
• Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
• Microeconomics
• Public Economics
• Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics
• Welfare Economics
• Browse content in Education
• Adult Education and Continuous Learning
• Care and Counselling of Students
• Early Childhood and Elementary Education
• Educational Equipment and Technology
• Educational Strategies and Policy
• Higher and Further Education
• Organization and Management of Education
• Philosophy and Theory of Education
• Schools Studies
• Secondary Education
• Teaching of a Specific Subject
• Teaching of Specific Groups and Special Educational Needs
• Teaching Skills and Techniques
• Browse content in Environment
• Applied Ecology (Social Science)
• Climate Change
• Conservation of the Environment (Social Science)
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Social Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environment)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Social Science)
• Browse content in Human Geography
• Cultural Geography
• Economic Geography
• Political Geography
• Browse content in Interdisciplinary Studies
• Communication Studies
• Museums, Libraries, and Information Sciences
• Browse content in Politics
• African Politics
• Asian Politics
• Chinese Politics
• Comparative Politics
• Conflict Politics
• Elections and Electoral Studies
• Environmental Politics
• European Union
• Foreign Policy
• Gender and Politics
• Human Rights and Politics
• Indian Politics
• International Relations
• International Organization (Politics)
• International Political Economy
• Irish Politics
• Latin American Politics
• Middle Eastern Politics
• Political Behaviour
• Political Economy
• Political Institutions
• Political Methodology
• Political Communication
• Political Philosophy
• Political Sociology
• Political Theory
• Politics and Law
• Public Policy
• Public Administration
• Quantitative Political Methodology
• Regional Political Studies
• Russian Politics
• Security Studies
• State and Local Government
• UK Politics
• US Politics
• Browse content in Regional and Area Studies
• African Studies
• Asian Studies
• East Asian Studies
• Japanese Studies
• Latin American Studies
• Middle Eastern Studies
• Native American Studies
• Scottish Studies
• Browse content in Research and Information
• Research Methods
• Browse content in Social Work
• Addictions and Substance Misuse
• Adoption and Fostering
• Care of the Elderly
• Child and Adolescent Social Work
• Couple and Family Social Work
• Developmental and Physical Disabilities Social Work
• Direct Practice and Clinical Social Work
• Emergency Services
• Human Behaviour and the Social Environment
• International and Global Issues in Social Work
• Mental and Behavioural Health
• Social Justice and Human Rights
• Social Policy and Advocacy
• Social Work and Crime and Justice
• Social Work Macro Practice
• Social Work Practice Settings
• Social Work Research and Evidence-based Practice
• Welfare and Benefit Systems
• Browse content in Sociology
• Childhood Studies
• Community Development
• Comparative and Historical Sociology
• Economic Sociology
• Gender and Sexuality
• Gerontology and Ageing
• Health, Illness, and Medicine
• Marriage and the Family
• Migration Studies
• Occupations, Professions, and Work
• Organizations
• Population and Demography
• Race and Ethnicity
• Social Theory
• Social Movements and Social Change
• Social Research and Statistics
• Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
• Sociology of Religion
• Sociology of Education
• Sport and Leisure
• Urban and Rural Studies
• Browse content in Warfare and Defence
• Defence Strategy, Planning, and Research
• Land Forces and Warfare
• Military Administration
• Military Life and Institutions
• Naval Forces and Warfare
• Other Warfare and Defence Issues
• Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution
• Weapons and Equipment

• < Previous chapter
• Next chapter >

12 Sex, Gender, and Crime

Rosemary Gartner is Professor of Criminology and Sociology at the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies at the University of Toronto. She is the co-author of three books: Violence and Crime in Cross-National Perspective (Yale, 1984), Murdering Holiness: The Trials of Edmund Creffield and George Mitchell (University of British Columbia Press, 2003) and Marking Time in the Golden State: Women's Imprisonment in California (Cambridge, 2005).

• Published: 18 September 2012
• Cite Icon Cite
• Permissions Icon Permissions

This article is organized as follows. Section I describes sex-specific patterns of offending and discusses explanations for sex similarities and differences in criminal behavior. Section II focuses on sex-specific patterns of victimization. Section III reviews data and research on how sex and gender influence criminalization, and outlines explanations for these influences. Section IV offers a brief discussion of the policy implications of current knowledge about sex, gender, and crime and priorities for future research.

Ask people to imagine a criminal and most will see a male, probably young and possibly nonwhite. Ask them to visualize a crime victim and many will picture a female, perhaps a small child or an elderly woman, a teenaged girl or a young wife. Ask them whether men and women are treated differently by the police or the courts and many will say women often receive sympathy, understanding, or a “slap on the wrist” for behaviors that men are convicted and imprisoned for.

In ways they have not in the past, scholars now recognize that notions about masculinity and femininity are embedded in, and influence criminal behaviors and the operation of, the criminal justice system. The term “gender”—a socially constructed characteristic of individuals, as well as social relations, interactions, and institutions—regularly appears in current research and policy about crime and criminal justice. In contrast, the term “sex,” where it refers to the categorization of people as biologically female or male 1 , has been relegated to the sidelines. Consider the number of surveys that ask people to identify not their “sex” but their “gender,” as either “male” or “female.” This shift in terminology has opened up new avenues for thinking about crime, but it also has important limitations. Offenders experience their crimes through both sexed and gendered bodies, and they target victims with sexed and gendered bodies. Furthermore, the criminal justice system—police, courts, jails, and prisons—acts on sexed and gendered bodies. 2

For these and other reasons, this article includes “sex” in its title. Sex deserves attention because official organizations and surveys provide data not on gender but on sex. For example, the FBI, in its Uniform Crime Reports (UCR), categorizes arrestees not as “masculine” or “feminine” but as “male” or “female.” As a legal category, sex also plays a role in the definition of some criminal acts. Only females can commit the crime of infanticide in legal systems that define this as a separate category of homicide. 3 Furthermore, sex is important to several explanations of criminal behavior including developmental, socio-biological, and psycho-physiological perspectives. This article, then, assumes that both sex and gender are reflected in criminal behavior, criminal justice institutions, and the criminal law.

Those who work on issues related to sex, gender, and crime do so for different reasons. Some, particularly criminologists, are interested in understanding and developing explanations for people’s criminal behavior. Because sex and gender are strongly associated with crime, they are expected to offer insights into its causes. Other scholars—especially historians and feminists—study sex, gender, and crime as a way to explore gender relations, social norms and cultural ideologies about masculinity and femininity, and gendered sources of inequality. They seek to identify the ways legal institutions, criminal justice practices, and criminal behavior reflect and reinforce a society’s gender order. 4 Developing appropriate interventions, services, and resources for women and men who come into contact with the criminal justice system, as victims or offenders, motivates the work of many criminal justice scholars and professionals. Finally, legal scholars, philosophers, and political scientists, among others, explore topics related to sex, gender, and crime out of an interest in concepts such as justice, equality, and discrimination. The first and second types of work are the focus of this article.

Section I describes sex-specific patterns of offending and discusses explanations for sex similarities and differences in criminal behavior. Section II focuses on sex-specific patterns of victimization, and follows the same organization as the previous section. Section III reviews data and research on how sex and gender influence criminalization, and outlines explanations for these influences. Section IV offers a brief discussion of the policy implications of current knowledge about sex, gender, and crime and priorities for future research.

Among the article’s major findings:

Males outnumber females as criminal offenders in all societies and time periods for which records are available. The more serious the crime, the more males outnumber females. Males are more criminally active than females because of the ways in which sex differences in neuro-cognitive functioning and in socialization interact with gendered social practices and inequalities.

Although female and male offenders engage in somewhat different types of crime and commit crimes in distinctive ways, they have much in common. Their early lives, personal characteristics, and motivations appear to be more similar than different. Furthermore, the social environments that increase their risks of offending are similar.

Males also outnumber females as victims of crime, but to a lesser extent and with some exceptions. In particular, females outnumber males as victims of serious intimate partner violence. However, most violent crime is between males and is motivated by what antagonists see as challenges to their masculinity. In times and places where masculinity is primarily defined in terms of dominance, aggression, and willingness to take risks, violence is more common and more male-dominated.

Rates of female and male offending and victimization, on the whole, have been declining in the United States since the early to mid-1990s. Sex-specific rates of many types of violent crime have reached their lowest levels in more than thirty years. In other words, both sexes have contributed to the “great American crime decline” (Zimring 2007 ).

Women’s involvement in violence, as both victims and offenders, appears to be less concentrated in the home and among family members and intimate partners than it has been in the past. This is due in part to a greater drop in “domestic violence” than other forms of violence in recent years.

Male offenders are treated more punitively by the criminal justice system than female offenders, even when legal factors such as prior record and seriousness of the crime are taken into account. The comparative lenience toward females has been linked to chivalry, paternalism, and pragmatism. Lawyers, judges, and juries have at times seen women as less responsible for their crimes, more sinned against than sinning, or in need of protection rather than punishment.

There is some evidence that the disparity in the treatment of females and males by the criminal justice system is diminishing. For example, growing intolerance for minor forms of violence has increased the likelihood that violence by women and girls will be criminalized.

Criminal offending and victimization are largely a “man’s game.” Variations over time and across societies in crime, especially violent crime, are driven primarily by men’s behavior. Where and when violent crime is more common, it is also more male-dominated. Despite this, the causes and consequences of both offending and victimization probably are less distinctive between the sexes than is often believed. One of the reasons for this belief is that gender shapes our understanding of crime and our assumptions about criminals and victims. This is as true of scholars as it is of anyone else. As a consequence, the ways society responds to crime and the ways scholars study crime almost inevitably reflect assumptions about sex and gender, men and women. These are some of the reasons that the topic of sex, gender, and crime is such an important and enduring area of inquiry.

I. Sex, Gender, and Offending

Probably the questions most often asked about sex, gender, and crime are how and why females and males differ in their criminal behavior, particularly their violent offending. In this section, I review evidence from the contemporary United States and from other countries and time periods that shows remarkable consistency in sex differences in violent offending. By comparison, the relationship between sex and nonviolent crime varies somewhat more over time and place.

Explanations of offending by females and males have focused on both similarities and differences between the sexes in their criminal behavior, and on both sex and gender as the sources of the differences.

A. Research on the Gender Gap in Crime

A good deal of research on sex, gender, and offending 5 has looked at what is called “the gender gap in crime”—or the disparity between males and females in the prevalence of offending. The questions typically posed are: “Has the gender gap narrowed over time?” and “Are women becoming ‘more like men’ in their criminal behavior?” For over a century, scholars have predicted that the gap would become smaller as gender inequality diminished but have found little support for this prediction. Nevertheless, the debate over whether the gender gap in crime has narrowed is as strong as ever and is fueled by disagreements over how to measure the gap, how to explain trends in it, and what constitutes stability vs. change (see, e.g., Heimer, Lauritsen, and Lynch 2009 ; Lauritsen, Heimer, and Lynch 2009 ; Schwartz et al. 2009 ). With each passing year there are more data to analyze and more sophisticated methods with which to analyze them, thus there is unlikely to be a natural end to the debate.

Research on the gender gap in crime is not without its critics. Some object to what they see as the implicit assumption that female crime is of interest largely in terms of how it compares to male crime (Heidensohn and Gelsthorpe 2007 ). Another limitation is that many studies report trends only in the gender gap but not in the separate male and female rates that constitute it, making it impossible to determine whose rates have changed and how. For example, the gender gap in offending could narrow because female and male crime rates both decrease, but the latter decreases more; female rates increase while male rates decrease or remain stable; female and male rates both increase, but the former increases more. Interpreting a narrowing of the gender gap in crime depends on which of these trends is responsible for it. Explaining a decrease in the gender gap by focusing on changes in women’s lives could be misguided if changes in men’s offending are largely responsible for it. For these and other reasons, I do not discuss findings from research specifically about trends in the gender gap in crime.

B. Sex-specific Levels and Trends in Offending

For more than one hundred years, scholars from different disciplines have documented, analyzed, and attempted to explain similarities and differences between female and male offenders. Cesare Lombroso ( 1893 ) and Willem Bonger ( 1916 ) did so in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; W. I. Thomas ( 1923 ) and Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck ( 1934 ) followed in the 1920s and 1930s; Otto Pollak ( 1951 ) and Gisela Konopka ( 1966 ) contributed to this work in the 1950s and 1960s; and in the 1970s feminist perspectives on women and crime emerged (Klein 1973 ; Smart 1976 ). Much of the work prior to the 1970s has been roundly criticized and relegated to footnotes in criminology texts. This is unfortunate because early scholarship provides important historical data on the ways crime has been patterned by sex, along with revealing earlier taken-for-granted notions about sex, gender, and crime. 6 I draw on some of these data below but first present more recent evidence about sex and offending.

Criminal behaviors of females and males can be described using official arrest statistics, crime victims’ descriptions of their assailants, and self-reports of offending. Each source tells the same story: Males commit more crime than females. This sex difference varies, however, by the type of crime, characteristics of the offenders, and social context.

1. Violent Offending in the United States

Data on arrests for criminal homicide provide one of the most accurate pictures of sex differences in violent offending. Males greatly outnumber females among those arrested for homicide in the United States, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR). 7 In 2007, for example, males accounted for 90 percent of all people arrested for homicide. Despite this difference in magnitude, male and female homicide arrest rates share many of the same structural correlates 8 and follow similar trends over time (Steffensmeier and Haynie 2000 ; Schwartz 2006 ). At the beginning of the twenty-first century, homicide arrest rates for both sexes reached their lowest points since the 1960s.

The size of the sex difference in homicide varies by other characteristics of offenders. For example, arrest rates for black males aged eighteen to twenty-four are about seventeen times larger than rates for black females in the same age group, whereas arrest rates for white males aged eighteen to twenty-four are about eleven times larger than rates for white females in the same age group. In other words, homicides by blacks are more male-dominated than homicides by whites. Similarly, homicides by those under eighteen are more male-dominated than homicides by those eighteen and older.

Women and men differ in whom they kill. Males are most likely to kill what police term “acquaintances” 9 (55 percent of homicides by males); strangers make up the next largest proportion of male killers’ victims (25 percent). Intimate partners account for only about 10 percent of the victims of male killers. By contrast, female killers are most likely to target their intimate partners (37 percent of homicides by females) or their children (10 percent). Less than 10 percent of female killers target strangers. The proportion of victims of female homicides who are family members or intimate partners has decreased somewhat over time (Zahn and McCall 1999 ). This shift is due partly to a dramatic drop in killings of males by their female intimate partners since the early 1990s (Rosenfeld 2009 ).

Sex differences in nonlethal violence can be measured with both UCR arrest data and data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) 10 , which asks victims of violence about the sex of their victimizers. According to both data sources, the sex difference in offending is not as large for nonlethal violence as it is for homicide, although males still commit about 80 percent of all nonlethal violent crime (table 12.1 ). In general, the more serious the violence, the more males predominate among offenders.

The “crime drop” that began in the early to mid-1990s in the United States is a consequence of reductions in violent offending by both sexes. Robbery and aggravated and simple assault rates decreased for females and males, and were lower in the first years of the twenty-first century than in the previous three decades, according to the NCVS (Lauritsen, Heimer, and Lynch 2009 ); UCR arrest data largely, but not completely, parallel these findings. Arrests of females and males for robbery and aggravated assault have dropped since at least the mid-1990s. Despite this decline, arrests of females for aggravated assault are still substantially higher now than in the 1980s (Schwartz, Steffensmeier, and Feldmeyer 2009 ). Two interpretations of the relatively high arrest rates of females for assault early in the twenty-first century have been offered. They could reflect a real change in women’s violence. Alternatively, they could reflect changes in police responses, such that women’s violence is more likely to be criminalized now than in the past. There is support for both interpretations and, of course, both could be correct. Nonetheless, the weight of the evidence indicates that both men and women contributed to the 1990s crime drop in the United States by reducing their violent behavior.

Sex differences in the relationships between offenders and their victims are less dramatic for nonlethal violence than for lethal violence. For example, intimate partners account for a similar and relatively small percentage (approximately 10 percent) of the victims of both female and male violent offenders. Female violent offenders, however, are much more likely to know their victims than are male violent offenders. Since about 1994, arrests of males and females for nonlethal violence against all types of victims have dropped, with one exception. The exception is arrests of women for nonlethal intimate partner violence, which—in contrast to intimate partner homicide by women—have not declined since the early 1990s. This may reflect real stability in intimate partner violence by females; or it may reflect greater willingness of males to report violence by their female partners, greater willingness of police to arrest women for intimate partner violence, or both (Chesney-Lind 2002 ; Miller 2005 ; Henning, Renauer, and Holdford 2006 ).

2. Violent Offending in Other Countries

The overrepresentative of males among homicide offenders extends to other countries. For example, in Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, England and Wales, and most European countries males account for between 87 percent and 92 percent of homicide offenders (Broadhurst 1999 ; Aebi et al. 2006 ; Li 2008 ; Australian Institute of Criminology 2009 ; Povey et al. 2009 ). 11 Sex-specific trends in homicide arrest rates track each other relatively closely over time in other Western countries, as they do in the United States. There is another important similarity between trends in homicide in the United States and trends elsewhere: Homicides by women have been shifting away from the home and the family in recent decades. In Canada, for example, about 80 percent of female killers targeted family members or intimate partners in the 1960s compared to only 50 percent in recent years (Gartner 1995 ; Dauvergne 2005 ).

Nonlethal violence in other countries appears to be even more male-dominated than in the United States. In countries reporting data to the European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics (ESCCJ), males accounted for an average of 91 percent of arrests for assault, 93 percent of arrests for robbery, and 99 percent of arrests for rape (Aebi et al. 2006 ). Victimization and self-report offending data replicate these patterns (van Kesteren, Mayhew, and Nieuwbeerta 2004 ; Budd, Sharp, and Mayhew 2005 ; Hansen 2006 ; van Dijk, van Kesteren, and Smit 2007 ).

3. Nonviolent Offending in the United States

Compared to violent crimes, nonviolent crimes in the United States are less male-dominated, and in a few cases not male-dominated at all. Although males accounted for 66 percent of all property crime arrests in the United States in 2007, females were more likely than males to be arrested for embezzlement, prostitution, and running away. The last two offenses have historically been thought of as “female crimes.” That females continue to outnumber males in arrests for prostitution and running away—which are profoundly influenced by discretionary enforcement practices and decisions—indicates that the US criminal justice system remains gendered in important respects.

Sex-specific trends in nonviolent crimes have been documented using unpublished sources and data sets. Heimer ( 2000 ) did so and found that between the mid-to late 1980s and 1997, male arrest rates for a range of property crimes declined. The picture for females is more complicated. While arrests of females for larceny, motor vehicle theft, and burglary declined (albeit negligibly in some cases), arrests of females for forgery and embezzlement increased.

4. Nonviolent Offending in Other Countries

Nonviolent crimes are also largely the province of males in other countries. In Canada and England and Wales, for example, males accounted for (respectively) 76 percent and 69 percent of arrests for property crimes, a slightly larger percentage than in the United States (Kong and AuCoin 2008 ; Ministry of Justice 2009 ). In most European countries males account for an average of 85 percent of arrests for theft and drug offenses (Aebi et al. 2006 ), meaning that nonviolent crimes may be more male-dominated in other countries than in the United States. However, similar to the United States, in other countries females consistently outnumber males in arrests for prostitution-related offenses.

5. Offending by Young People in the United States

Arrest data from the UCR, self-report offending data and victimization reports from the NCVS all show that male youths are more likely to engage in crime, especially violent crime, than female youths. The proportions of juvenile arrests accounted for by males are remarkably similar to the proportions of adult arrests accounted for by males: 82 percent of juveniles arrested for violent crime and 66 percent of juveniles arrested for property crime were male. Crime victims similarly report that about 85 percent of the juveniles who victimized them were males. Self-reports from high school students collected annually from 1991 for the Monitoring the Future (MTF) project show males outnumbered females in each of the thirteen different violent and property crimes measured in the survey; this sex difference tended to be largest for the most serious crimes (Johnston, Bachman, and O’Malley various years).

Violence by girls and boys has—depending on the data source—either been stable or decreased since the early 1990s, with one exception. After the mid-1990s arrests of girls for simple assaults increased, whereas arrests of boys decreased. Net-widening practices by schools and criminal justice institutions—such as zero tolerance and mandatory arrest policies—appear to be responsible for much if not all of this increase (Steffensmeier et al. 2005 ; Chesney-Lind and Irwin 2008 ; Goodkind et al. 2009 ). Consequently, popular concerns about a rise in violence by young females are very likely misplaced.

6. Offending by Young People in Other Countries

The sex distribution of offending by young people in other countries largely parallels that in the United States. In the International Self-Reported Delinquency Study, boys reported much greater involvement than girls in serious and violent offending in each of the ten European countries participating in the survey. In contrast, girls and boys reported similar levels of truancy and running away, and only small differences (with higher rates for boys) in property offending and vandalism (Junger-Tas, Marshall, and Ribeaud 2003 ). These patterns are consistent with official statistics and other self-report surveys in these and other countries. Girls outnumber boys only in prostitution-related arrests and—in some cases—in self-reported shoplifting (Wikstrom and Butterworth 2007 ; Sprott and Doob 2009 ). In the United Kingdom and Canada, as in the United States, arrests of girls for less serious assaults have increased. This too appears to reflect not so much a change in girls’ violence as a change in official responses to it (Carrington 2006 ; Heidensohn and Gelsthorpe 2007 ; Sprott and Doob 2009 ).

7. Offending Over the Centuries

Historical research in various jurisdictions shows that men have outnumbered women among serious and violent offenders in virtually all societies and eras for which information is available. In their summaries of dozens of studies in Europe from the thirteenth century on, both Eisner ( 2003 ) and Gurr ( 1989 ) concluded that males consistently accounted for between about 85 percent and 95 percent of serious violent offenses. Bonger ( 1916 ) reported a similar sex distribution in violent offending in late nineteenth-century Germany, Italy, France, the Netherlands, and England.

Similarly, in North America from colonial times to the nineteenth century, about 90 percent of serious violent offenses were committed by males (Lane 1997 ; Bellesiles 1999 ), with a few notable but unsurprising exceptions. In some frontier areas and early settlements dominated by the military, males were responsible for more than 95 percent of serious violent crimes. This was a consequence of both highly skewed sex ratios and the cultures of violence that often develop in places with many young, unattached males (Courtwright 1996 ; May and Phillips 2001 ; Peterson del Mar 2002 ). Another exception is the southern United States, where historically serious violence has been unusually male-dominated (Vandal 2000 ). These are places and times in which homicide rates were quite high, suggesting that where serious violence is more prevalent, it is also more male-dominated—a pattern that occurs in victimization as well. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the sex distribution of homicide offending in major North American cities looked much as it did over the rest of the twentieth century, with males on average accounting for between 85 percent to 90 percent of killers (Lane 1997 ; Monkkonen 2001 ; Adler 2006 ).

The conclusion that historically homicide offending has been an overwhelmingly male phenomenon can be challenged in one important respect. Discarded and badly buried bodies of newborns and infants who showed signs of violence were discovered with considerable frequency in Europe and America from at least the sixteenth century to the early twentieth century. Certainly many more infants’ bodies were never found, and those that were often did not receive serious investigation (Jackson 2002 ; Adler 2006 ; Gartner and McCarthy 2006 ). If infanticides could be accurately counted and included in homicide rates, women may well have outnumbered men as killers in some times and places.

There is substantial consensus that serious interpersonal violence in the Western world decreased from the sixteenth century on (Gurr 1989 ; Eisner 2003 ). This appears to have been driven by a drop in brawls, duels, knife fights, and other types of violence typically engaged in by young males in public places (Spierenburg 1998 ; Shoemaker 2002 ; Kaspersson 2003 ). While some have explained this by reference to an apparently gender-neutral “civilizing process,” others argue that changing notions of masculinity were deeply implicated in this long-term decline in violence. In the early modern period, ideal masculinity was defined in terms of a passionate and impulsive willingness to use violence to defend one’s honor, one’s family, and one’s possessions. By the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a new form of masculinity—one that emphasized self-restraint, control, rationality, and notions of fairness—began to emerge, particularly in England and later in North America (Wiener 2004 ; Emsley 2005 ). Of course, this ideal masculinity was just that and not the only form of masculinity available. Many men still engaged in public displays of violence as well as violence behind closed doors. Importantly, however, the law became less tolerant of male violence over time, wherever it occurred, reflecting and reinforcing a new version of masculinity.

While reliable data on property crimes by women and men over the centuries are not available, it is possible to get a general sense of sex differences in property offending from the historical record. Most types of property crime had much smaller sex differences than violent crimes. In fact, at times women apparently were as likely or even slightly more likely than males to engage in thefts, frauds, and other property offenses. Just over half of those charged with property crimes at the Old Bailey between 1690 and 1713 were female (Beattie 2001 ), a proportion similar to that in Amsterdam and other northern European cities in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Eisner 2003 ). The particularly harsh economic climate faced by women who migrated to cities from rural areas was partly responsible for their relatively high rates of property crime. In addition, women’s participation in the pre-industrial mercantile economy provided them many opportunities to engage in economic crimes. As production moved from the home to the factory in the eighteenth century, women’s share of property offending dropped (Feeley and Little 1991 ). By the late nineteenth century, women accounted for about 20 percent of those charged with and convicted of thefts and frauds in England, Austria, Italy, France, and the Netherlands 12 (Bonger 1916 )—a smaller proportion than in these countries currently. This may represent a real reduction in women’s property crimes; or perhaps the new form of masculinity that emerged in the nineteenth century encouraged greater lenience in legal responses to women’s property crimes.

C. Characteristics of Female and Male Offenders

In the United States and elsewhere, males and females who engage in crime have much in common. They tend to be young, undereducated and underemployed, economically disadvantaged, and not married. Often they abuse drugs and/or alcohol. Dysfunctional family backgrounds, histories of physical abuse, sexual abuse, and mental health problems also characterize the childhood and adolescence of many offenders, both male and female (Lanctôt and LeBlanc 2002 ; Farrington and Painter 2004 ; Junger-Tas, Ribeaud, and Cruyff 2004 ). The types of childhood conduct problems that predict violence in adulthood, including violence against intimate partners, are the same for females and males (Moffitt et al. 2001 ; Henning, Jones, and Holdford 2003 ). Furthermore, the developmental patterns, pathways to serious offending by adolescents, and linkages between adolescent and adult offending are also similar for the two sexes (Lanctôt and LeBlanc 2002 ; Odgers et al. 2008 ; Johansson and Kempf-Leonard 2009 ), as are the processes of desistance from crime (Giordano, Cernkovich, and Rudolph 2002 ). Thus, while there are sex differences in the trajectories into and out of offending—for example, females’ involvement in crime tends to begin, peak, and end earlier—these are differences more of degree than kind.

There has been and continues to be considerable debate over whether females’ and males’ motivations for crime are distinctly different. Research suggests that on the whole they are not. Women and men, now and in the past, engage in property crimes for a diverse but common array of reasons—economic need, peer pressure, greed, alcohol and drug habits, excitement, and impulse (Maher 1997 ; Walker 2003 ; Palk 2006 ). In contrast to violence by men, violence by women conventionally is viewed as a response to victimization, a consequence of mental disorder, or a desperate, impulsive loss of control. This is a narrow reading of women’s violence. Preservation of honor, reputation and respect, retaliation, jealousy, self-help, and illicit gain all emerge as motivations for violence for both sexes, in contemporary times and in the past (Kruttschnitt and Carbone-Lopez 2006 ; Miller and Mullins 2006 ; Spierenburg 2008 .) Violence by females, similar to violence by males, is often the intentional behavior of a self-conscious agent, albeit one whose “choice is not completely free in a world of intersubjective construction and power disparity” (Sjoberg and Gentry 2007 , 17; see also Morrissey 2003 ; Murphy and Whitty 2006 ). 13 None of this is to deny that the ways and situations in which females and males commit crimes are distinctive in some respects. For example, men are much more likely to use firearms when committing violent crimes and to engage in “overkill” in intimate partner homicides; women’s violence is more likely to take place in private locations and is probably motivated by self-preservation more often than men’s. Nevertheless, the sexes are much more distinctive in the extent of their involvement in crime than in the reasons for that involvement.

Many scholars have explored the generality of theories of crime for females and males and asked if similar characteristics are associated with their criminal behaviors. In general, the answer is yes. For example, delinquent or criminal peers; absence of informal social controls from family and school; limited attachment to parents and teachers; and harsh and erratic parental discipline all predict involvement in crime for adolescent females and males (Meadows 2007 ; Wikstrom and Butterworth 2007 ; Bell 2009 ). Similarly, although the concept of “blurred boundaries” between victimization (as a child or an adult) and subsequent offending was initially applied to women’s offending (Daly 1992 ), offenders of both sexes tend to have extensive histories of victimization in their early lives (Belknap and Holsinger 2006 ; Daigle, Cullen, and Wright 2007 ; Cernkovich, Lanctôt, and Giordano 2008 ). Living in unsafe neighborhoods, attending poorly resourced and dangerous schools, belonging to ethnic/cultural/racialized groups that are disadvantaged and discriminated against—all of these raise the risks of criminal behavior for both males and females. In multivariate analyses, the effects of some explanatory variables are sometimes stronger for one sex than the other; the sex differences in these effects are not consistent across studies and therefore do not make a strong case for sex- or gender-specific theories of crime.

D. Explanations of Sex Differences in Offending

If the sexes are more alike than different in the nature of their criminal behavior and the factors associated with it, why are they so different in the levels of their offending? One important reason is sex differences in socialization practices and family supervision that encourage conventional behavior among girls and risk-taking behavior among boys (Hagan 1988 ). Girls are less likely to engage in delinquent acts because they are socialized to fear risky behaviors, to develop empathy for others, to value close personal and family relationships, and to avoid aggression; and because they are likely to spend more time with family members and other girls who reinforce conventional behavior. In contrast, boys are typically encouraged to value risk-taking, to associate masculinity with physical power and control, and to prize autonomy and independence; and they are likely to spend their time with male peers who reinforce these characteristics. Delinquent activities for boys then tend to be more rewarding and more affirming of their identities. These tendencies are reinforced as boys and girls move into adolescence and early adulthood, when women’s criminal opportunities are more limited than men’s, and women’s family responsibilities make the costs of crime greater for them (Steffensmeier and Allan 1996 ).

There is widespread agreement that these differences in gender socialization are an important source of sex differences in crime generally, as well as the larger sex difference in violent crime. There are, however, other approaches to understanding sex differences in criminal behavior: while they do not fundamentally challenge this explanation, they frame it differently. Some approaches do so by emphasizing sex, others do so by emphasizing gender as a social institution and a social practice.

Biological sex is key to developmental approaches that focus on differences between males and females in neuro-cognitive functioning and deficits (Moffitt et al. 2001 ). 14 Males are more likely than females to experience poor impulse control, hyperactivity, and difficult temperaments. Females tend to acquire social information processing skills earlier in life, which allow them to develop empathy and anticipate the consequences of their actions (Bennett, Farrington, and Huesmann 2005 ). As a consequence of these differences, boys are more vulnerable than girls to stressful life events and to risk factors—particularly delinquent peers and poor parental supervision—associated with problem behavior and crime. In general, males and females are endowed with some sex-specific biological and genetic factors that shape how they understand, interact with, and are affected by their environments from a very early age.

An alternative way to frame the socialization explanation of sex differences in crime emphasizes gender, not sex. Here gender is a characteristic not only of individuals, but also a feature of social relations and interactions, power arrangements, and institutional processes. Many gender-based perspectives argue that sex differences in socialization, supervision, family attachments, and peer networks are all a function of and exist within a broader set of patriarchal arrangements (Giordano, Deines, and Cernkovich 2006 ). Parents do not “naturally” choose to socialize girls to spend more time with their families, avoid risky activities and deviant peers, or define crime as a male activity. Nor do parents “naturally” socialize boys so that they spend less time with their families and more time in unsupervised activities with male peers, seek excitement through risk-taking, and find criminal behavior rewarding. Rather, these are gendered social practices (Bottcher 2001 \) that reflect and reinforce modern Western society’s gender order and the inequalities that accompany it. One of the consequences of these practices is the sex difference in crime.

One criticism of all of these approaches is that they depict females and males as essentially passive beings whose behaviors are determined by socialization, brain functioning, and/or patriarchal structures. To counterbalance this tendency, some work has treated gender as an emergent property of social relations and interactions, not a fixed role or trait. Because gender is accomplished, not given, and because it is highly flexible, females and males are active participants in creating it and make choices about how to enact it. Committing crimes that are risky, violent, and allow one to dominate others is a way for men and boys to accomplish a certain type of masculinity. For women and girls, these sorts of crimes are unlikely to be resources for accomplishing femininity in most contexts (Messerschmidt 2004 ; Hobbs, O’Brien, and Westmarland 2007 ).

Each of these accounts contributes to our understanding of why males are more likely to engage in crime than females. The factors and processes identified in these accounts almost certainly interact with each other, altering their role in criminal behavior in complex ways. More research is needed that integrates concepts and findings from the extensive research on sex and gender differences in crime and that avoids treating these as competing ways of understanding the criminal behavior of females and males.

II. Sex, Gender, and Victimization

Compared to research on offending, research on how victimization is shaped by sex and gender is of more contemporary origin. In the 1970s, feminist criminologists generated a variety of theoretical frameworks that encouraged and informed work on the victimization of women. In addition, the development and growth of large-scale victimization surveys in the 1970s and 1980s provided greater opportunities for research on sex differences in victimization.

A. Sex-specific Levels and Trends in Violent Victimization

Sex-specific patterns of violent victimization can be documented from official statistics on homicide and from victimization surveys on other types of violence. According to evidence from the United States and other countries, while males outnumber females among victims of violence, sex differences in victimization are much smaller than sex differences in offending. This section reviews data on lethal and nonlethal victimization, in general, and then turns to intimate partner victimization. It concludes with a brief discussion of explanations for sex differences in victimization.

1. Violent Victimization in the United States

The more serious the violence, the greater the sex differences in victimization. Currently in the United States almost 80 percent of homicide victims are male. Even so, trends in female and male homicide victimization rates—as with homicide offending rates—track each other closely over time (Marvel and Moody 1999 ) and are associated with similar social characteristics (Batton 2004 ). In 2007 rates for both sexes reached their lowest point since the mid-1960s, having dropped steadily from about 1993 (fig. 12.1 ).

Male and Female Homicide Victimization Rates, United States, 1964–2007

The association between sex and homicide victimization is conditioned by other factors. In particular, race differences in homicide victimization can cancel out or even reverse sex differences. For example, in 2007, the victimization rate for black females (5.8 per 100,000 black females) was higher than the rate for white males (4.6 per 100,000 white males). Furthermore, the size of the sex difference also varies by race. Black males were six times more likely to be victims of homicide than black females, whereas white males were only about two-and-one-half times more likely to be victims of homicide than white females in 2007. Race is not the only characteristic that can shape victimization risks more strongly than sex. Age is another: the homicide victimization rate for females aged twenty to twenty-four is greater than the rate for males aged sixty-five to sixty-nine.

Currently in the United States, both females and males are more likely to be killed by an acquaintance than by a family member, intimate partner, or stranger. For males, this has been consistently the case over time; until recently, however, females were more likely to be killed by family members or intimate partners than by acquaintances or strangers. The shift away from “domestic” homicides of females is due in part to a steady drop in family and intimate partner killings of both sexes since the early 1990s (Rosenfeld 2009 ).

Sex differences in nonlethal victimization are not as large as sex differences in homicide. According to the NCVS, only slightly more than half (53 percent) of the more than 5 million victims of violent crime in 2007 were males (Rand 2008 ). Males outnumbered females as victims of robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault, whereas females outnumbered males as victims of sexual assault/rape (table 12.2 ). As with homicide, race conditions the relationship between sex and victimization. For example, black females have higher victimization rates than white males.

Females and males are victimized by different types of people. In 2007 half of male victimizations were by strangers, whereas only 3 percent were by intimate partners. In contrast, strangers accounted for 28 percent of female victimizations whereas intimate partners accounted for fully 23 percent. Similar percentages (44–46 percent) of female and male victims were harmed by acquaintances and family members. Overall, then, males have more distant (if any) relationships with their victimizers compared to females. Indeed, much of the sex difference in victimization is due to the higher rates at which men are attacked by strangers (Lauritsen and Heimer 2008 ). Describing sex-specific trends in victimization is complicated because of design changes to the NCVS. After correcting for these, Lauritsen and Heimer ( 2008 ) found the risks of robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault declined for both males and females from the mid-1990s through 2007.

2. Violent Victimization in Other Countries

Sex differences in homicide vary greatly cross-nationally. In some European nations, where homicide rates are low, males are only slightly more likely than females to be victims (LaFree and Hunnicutt 2006 ). 15 In Great Britain and its ex-colonies, Canada and Australia, between 60 percent and 65 percent of homicide victims are male. Compared to the United States, then, homicide victimization is not nearly as male dominated in other Western industrialized countries. However, in countries with very high homicide rates—such as Venezuela, Mexico, and Puerto Rico—males account for more than 90 percent of victims. This suggests that where homicide is more common, the population of victims is likely to be more male-dominated. National context can override the rule that males almost universally are at greater risk of homicide than females. For example, between 1950 and 2000, females in Canada, on average, were more likely to be killed than males in Ireland. One pattern consistent across different countries is that females are much more likely to be killed by family members or intimate partners than are males; and males are more likely to be killed by strangers and acquaintances than are females.

For other types of violent victimization, estimates of sex differences vary widely because of differences among countries in victimization survey designs. For example, the British Crime Survey (BCS) and the Personal Safety Survey in Australia find that males are almost twice as likely to be victims of nonlethal violence as females (Kershaw, Nicholas, and Walker 2008 ; Australian Bureau of Statistics 2005 ). However, Canada’s General Social Survey (GSS) finds little or no sex difference in victimization (Gannon and Mihorean 2005 ). 16 The International Crime Victim Survey (ICVS) uses the same methodology in participating countries to minimize the effects of design differences. According to the ICVS, male victimization rates are consistently higher than female rates in Europe and North America. In contrast, in Africa, South and Central America, and Asia, women report being victims of nonlethal violence much more often than men (van Kesteren, Mayhew, and Nieuwbeerta 2004 ; van Dijk 2008 ). 17

3. Intimate Partner Violence in the United States

Women are between three and four times more likely than men to be killed by their intimate partners in the United States. As with total homicide, the sex difference in intimate partner homicide varies by race: white female victims of intimate partner homicide outnumber white male victims by more than four times, whereas black female victims outnumber black male victims by about two-and-one-half times. Since the mid-1970s, the risks of intimate partner homicide have decreased for both women and men (Rosenfeld 2009 ), although the drop has been greater for male victims. Overall homicide rates for both sexes have declined over time, so it is unclear how much of the drop in intimate partner homicide is attributable to a more general downturn in violence and how much is due to changes specific to intimate partner homicide. At least some of decline in intimate partner homicides is a consequence of the expansion of domestic violence services and legal reforms. These changes, however, have had the unexpected effect of reducing intimate partner killings of men, but not of women (Dugan, Nagin, and Rosenfeld 2003 ).

While there is no dispute that women are more likely than men to be killed by an intimate partner, there is considerable debate over whether women are also more likely to be victims of nonlethal partner violence. 18 The debate is fueled by differences across data sources in estimates of partner violence and differences in ideology (Hines 2009 ). 19 According to the NCVS and the National Violence Against Women Survey (NVAWS) 20 , women’s risks of nonlethal partner violence are greater than men’s (Tjaden and Thoennes 2000 ). According to the National Family Violence Surveys, 21 a slightly larger proportion of men are victims of nonlethal intimate partner violence (Straus 2004 ). In general, surveys that capture less severe forms of violence are more likely to find similar or somewhat higher rates of male victimization. Conversely, surveys that capture more serious and more frequent violence find a larger proportion of female victims (Dobash and Dobash 2004 ). Nonlethal intimate partner violence, like intimate partner homicide, has declined since the mid-1970s, but unlike intimate partner homicide, this is largely due to a drop in female victimization.

4. Intimate Partner Violence in Other Countries

Females outnumber males as victims of intimate partner homicide around the world. However, as with homicide generally, in countries where rates of intimate partner homicide are very high, males account for a particularly large proportion of the killers (WHO 2005 ). Intimate partner homicide rates have declined over the last several years in some countries—such as Canada and Australia—but not in others—such as England and Wales (Coleman, Hird, and Povey 2006 ). Estimates of nonlethal partner violence vary greatly cross-nationally, in part because of differences in the way national surveys define and measure it. For example, estimates of the annual prevalence of nonlethal partner violence against women in different countries range between 2 percent and 52 percent (United Nations 2006 ). The best evidence suggests that in Western countries women are only somewhat more likely than men to be victims of less serious forms of intimate partner violence. In contrast, in less developed countries, female victims greatly outnumber male victims (WHO 2005 ; Johnson, Öllus, and Nevala 2008 ; Muratore and Corazziari 2008 ). In all countries, however, women are much more likely than men to be victims of serious forms of intimate partner violence, especially homicide.

5. Victimization of Young People in the United States

Similar to patterns for adults, teenaged males are more likely than teenaged females to be victims of violence. Victimization rates for male youth are about 40 percent higher than those for female youth, according to the NCVS. Male high school seniors in the Monitoring the Future project also report higher rates of both violent and property victimization than female seniors. As with adults, race alters the relationship between sex and victimization. African American girls face much higher risks of victimization compared to girls from all other racial groups and compared to boys from some other racial groups (Lauritsen 2003 ; Miller 2008 ). The victimization risks for male and female youths of all races have decreased since the mid-1990s, according to the NCVS and the MTF survey.

6. Victimization of Young People in Other Countries

Boys and young males are at particularly high risk of victimization not just in the United States but in other countries as well. Their rates exceed rates for girls and young women by a substantial amount, when excluding nonsexual and intimate partner violence (van Dijk 2008 ). In Great Britain and Canada, nonlethal victimization rates for young males and females, and the differences between them, are similar to those in the United States (e.g., Tanner and Wortley 2002 ; Wikstrom and Butterworth 2007 ).

7. Victimization over the Centuries

Sex differences in violent victimization have varied more than sex differences in violent offending over the centuries. In pre-modern Europe, when homicide rates were particularly high, the proportion of male victims (about 93 percent) was much greater than in Europe today (Eisner 2003 ). As homicide rates declined, victimization became less male-dominated. Males accounted for about 85–90 percent of homicide victims in the seventeenth century, but only about 75 percent in the eighteenth century. By the nineteenth century in many cities in Britain and northern Europe, the proportion of male homicide victims had dropped to 65 percent (Johnson and Monkkonen 1996 ; Spierenburg 2008 ). In contrast, in major cities in the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, where homicide rates were higher than in their European counterparts, the percentage of homicide victims who were male remained relatively high, at between 75–85 percent (Lane 1997 ; Monkkonen 2001 ; Adler 2006 ).

These patterns are consistent with those noted earlier and with the conclusions of other scholars: Where and when homicide rates are higher, the proportion of victims who are male is greater (Verkko 1951 ; Eisner 2003 ; Spierenburg 2008 ). Changes in total homicide rates, then, are largely driven by changes in male victimization. Conversely, female homicide victimization rates are more stable over time and place. The long-term decline in lethal violence in the Western world, as noted earlier, primarily resulted from a drop in serious male-on-male violence. 22

B. Characteristics of Female and Male Victims

Victims of violence are similar in many respects to violent offenders. Regardless of their sex, those who are young, economically disadvantaged, not married, members of marginalized racial and ethnic groups, unemployed, and who frequent bars and clubs are at much greater risk of victimization (Kershaw, Nicholas, and Walker 2008 ; van Dijk 2008 ; Australian Institute of Criminology 2009 ; Rosenfeld 2009 ). Furthermore, victims of violence, especially male victims, often have histories of violent offending. For some types of victimization, risk factors differ between the sexes. For example, women who are separated from their intimate partners are at much higher risk of being killed by them than are women living with their partners. Separation does not, however, appear to raise men’s risks of intimate partner homicide. Nevertheless, overall male and female victims appear to be more like each other and more similar to male and female offenders than is often assumed.

Given these commonalities, it is not surprising that the same types of social and cultural characteristics are associated with high rates of violent victimization for both sexes. Societies with extreme levels of economic and gender inequality tend to be more dangerous for females and males (Verweij and Nieuwbeerta 2001 ; Ghanim 2009 ). In a number of Middle Eastern, Latin and South American, Asian, and African countries, gender relations are strongly patriarchal and the distribution of income and wealth is highly skewed. In many of these countries, both females and males face high risks of violent victimization (Manderson and Bennett 2003 ; WHO 2005 ; Johnson, Öllus, and Nevala 2008 ).

C. Explanations of Sex Differences in Victimization

Males outnumber females among both victims and perpetrators of serious violence, but the sex difference in victimization is smaller than the sex difference in offending. For example, in the United States, females account for 10 percent of homicide offenders but about 20 percent of homicide victims; and they account for about 15–20 percent of other serious violent offenders but about 45 percent of the victims of serious violence. In other words, when females are involved in violence, they are more likely to be victims than offenders. Conversely, when males are involved in violence, they are more likely to be offenders than victims.

Many explanations of sex differences in victimization point to differences in risk-taking, routine daily activities, and informal controls—the same factors associated with sex differences in offending. Given that females are relatively more likely to be victims than offenders, though, these explanations do not go far enough. What is needed, according to many scholars, is more attention to gender inequalities and the ways in which men use violence against women as an expression of patriarchal control (Renzetti, Edleson, and Bergen 2001 ; Bahun-Radunović and Rujan 2008 ). Women live under conditions of unequal personal and systemic power that affect all aspects of their lives, including their risks of violence. Within this context, men feel freer to use violence and coercive behaviors as one means to maintain power and control over women. This “gender inequality” model of violence against women predicts that where the economic, political, and social disadvantages women face are greater, their risks of victimization will also be greater. As suggested earlier, cross-national research has consistently confirmed this prediction; research conducted within the United States, however, has found at best mixed support for it (Verweij and Nieubeerta 2001 ; Kruttschnitt, Gartner, and Ferraro 2002 ; Johnson, Öllus, and Nevala 2008 ).

III. Sex, Gender, and Criminalization

Processes of criminalization are inevitably shaped by sex and gender because the criminal justice system has been and continues to be dominated by males who focus their attention on the actions of other males. However, these institutions are gendered for reasons not solely due to the sex of the individuals populating them. Policing is considered a masculinist institution because of its hierarchical, authoritarian structure and the value it places on action, excitement, physical toughness, and violence (Fielding 1994 ; Waddington 1999 ). The law is considered gendered because it has conceptualized legal subjects based on characteristics culturally associated with the masculine (Lacey 2002 ; Naffine 2002 ). Thus, cultural notions about gender are deeply embedded within the criminal justice system.

Most research on sex, gender, and criminalization focuses on whether females and males are dealt with differently by the criminal justice system. Decisions by police about whom to arrest and with what to charge them determine subsequent patterns in criminal justice processing. Because this is one of the least visible points of decision making in the criminal justice process, we have only limited evidence about whether men and women are treated differently by police. We know a great deal more about sex disparities after the arrest stage, particularly in sentencing and imprisonment, from research analyzing quantitative data from historical and contemporary sources. In addition, some scholars have used qualitative approaches to explore the ways in which female and male defendants and victims are constructed in the courtroom, the ways in which the courtroom serves as an arena for performing gender, and how these influence criminal justice outcomes.

A. Sex, Gender, and Criminalization: Quantitative Evidence

There is substantial consensus that the recent increase in arrests of women and girls for assault in the United States (and elsewhere) is due more to changes in how police and other authorities respond to violence by females than to changes in females’ violent behaviors. In other words, violent behavior by women and girls appears to have been increasingly criminalized over the past several years. Consistent with this is evidence suggesting that mandatory charging policies have had a disproportionate effect on women’s arrest rates for domestic violence (Chesney-Lind 2002 ). Thus, some behaviors by females that previously may not have led to a formal response are now resulting in arrests and criminal charges. This means that a person’s sex may now have less influence on arrest and charging decisions than in the past. 23

1. Sex, Gender, and Criminalization in the Contemporary United States

Once charged with a crime, a defendant’s sex matters to different degrees at different stages of the criminal justice process. According to data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, conviction rates in American state courts vary little, if at all, by sex. For example, males constituted 82 percent of all felony defendants and 82 percent of all felony convictions in 2004. For violent crimes there was a small disparity: males accounted for 86 percent of those charged with, but 90 percent of those convicted of violent crimes (US Department of Justice 2008 a ). In other words, among those charged with violent crimes, females were slightly less likely than males to be convicted.

In contrast to conviction decisions, decisions about incarceration and sentence length consistently show substantial sex disparities. In 2004 in both state and federal courts, convicted males were more likely to be incarcerated than convicted females. At the federal level, for example, 83 percent of convicted males and 58 percent of convicted females were sentenced to incarceration. Sex disparities exist across all crime types, but are smaller for more serious crimes. Among those sentenced to prison, males also receive substantially longer sentences. Of those sentenced to prison for violent offenses in 2004 the average sentence lengths for males and females were, respectively, one hundred months and seventy-seven months (US Department of Justice 2008 b ). 24 These patterns have changed little over time.

Sex differences in incarceration and sentence length could be due to differences in the characteristics of male and female defendants or to differences in the nature of their crimes. Males are more likely to have criminal records and commit more serious crimes, factors that judges are expected to consider in sentencing. When studies take these into account, by controlling for legally relevant variables, they find that a defendant’s sex, alone or in combination with other characteristics, still influences sentencing decisions. While the strength of this effect appears to have diminished over time, studies done before and after the introduction of sentencing reforms and guidelines in the 1990s find that women were and still are less likely to be incarcerated if convicted, especially if they are mothers of dependent children, married, or white (Daly and Tonry 1997 ). Women, particularly those convicted of property or drug offenses, also tend to receive shorter sentences than males (Koons-Witt 2002 ; Griffin and Wooldredge 2006 ; Rodriguez, Curry, and Lee 2006 ; Johnson, Ulmer, and Kramer 2008 ). Conversely, some studies find that young black males receive longer sentences than any other sex/race/age group (Steffensmeier, Ulmer, and Kramer 1998 ; Mustard 2001 ).

The sex of a defendant’s victim can also influence court decision making. According to some studies, those charged with victimizing women are more likely to be convicted and to receive longer sentences, especially if the defendant is male and the victim is white (Glaeser and Sacerdote 2000 ; Curry, Lee, and Rodriguez 2004 ).

2. Sex, Gender, and Criminalization in Other Countries

In other Western countries, men’s crimes also are responded to more severely than women’s crimes. England and Wales is one of the few countries to publish data on police decision making. There, men and boys are less likely to be cautioned (i.e., reprimanded or warned) and more likely to be formally proceeded against than women and girls, a difference that exists across all crime types and is especially large for adults. In other words, females are diverted from prosecution more often than males in England and Wales. When proceeded against, however, women and men are about as likely to be released on bail and to be found guilty (Steward 2006 ). For decisions about imprisonment and sentence length, sex disparities in favor of women reappear. Convicted males are more likely to be given prison sentences and sentences of greater length than convicted women, who are more likely to receive fines as sentences (Ministry of Justice 2009 ).

While data on sex differences in criminalization from other countries are limited, they show that in most European countries and Canada, women also are less likely to be convicted, if arrested, than males (Aebi et al. 2006 ; Kong and AuCoin 2008 ). Convicted males also receive longer sentences than convicted females in some countries, including Canada and New Zealand (Jeffries 2001 ). One notable departure from this pattern of harsher treatment of men regards drug crimes. In England and other European countries there is typically little or no sex difference in imprisonment decisions for drug offenses; and in Canada among those convicted of drug crimes, women are somewhat more likely to be imprisoned than men (Kong and AuCoin 2008 ).

3. Historical Patterns in Sex, Gender, and Criminalization

The best historical evidence about sex disparities in the criminal process comes from records of the Old Bailey in London. Based on these historical records, it appears that from the late sixteenth to at least the late nineteenth centuries female defendants were more likely to have their charges reduced, were less likely to be found guilty, and received less severe sentences than male defendants (Beattie 2001 ; Wiener 2004 ; Hurl-Eamons 2005 ; King 2006 ). In other times and places, however, there were sometimes no differences in the treatment of male and female offenders, and where differences existed, which sex was the beneficiary varied by place, type of crime, and type of court (Phillips and May 2002 ; Walker 2003 ; Martin 2008 ). In general, however, historically females tend to have been treated less harshly by the courts, whether because of chivalry, paternalism, pragmatic reasons, or other factors.

B. Sex, Gender, and Criminalization: Qualitative Evidence

Because courtroom proceedings and the documents produced by and for them often are public, there is a good deal of qualitative evidence about how sex and gender have influenced the trial stage of the criminalization process. Historical work documents the complex and at times surprising ways in which notions about femininity and masculinity, especially as these have been influenced by race and class, have infused legal proceedings and outcomes. Judicial paternalism toward women at times has depended on whether defendants demonstrate appropriate feminine characteristics, such as deference, vulnerability, and sobriety (Rublack 1999 ; Palk 2006 ). A defendant’s social class, race, or ethnicity in combination with her or his sex also can shape legal responses to crime. Working class, immigrant, and non-Caucasian males in many instances have received harsher treatment than their more well-to-do white brethren charged with similar crimes (Peterson del Mar 1996 ; Emsley 2005 ). To the extent the formers’ criminal behavior was targeted at similar others and coincided with notions about what “those types of men” were like, it could go relatively unpunished (Adler 2006 ). Poor, minority, and immigrant women, even when they committed homicide, also have been beneficiaries of stereotypes about feminine defenselessness, emotionality, and weakness (Strange 1992 ; Conley 2007 ); but when such women engaged in sex freely or got drunk in public places they often were dealt with more harshly than their male counterparts.

Responses to female and male offenders have also varied because of different cultural tolerances for certain crimes or cultural anxieties about changing gender and family relations. Attitudes toward male violence, particularly violence toward wives, hardened in England in the nineteenth century leading to more severe punishments for violent males (Wiener 2004 ; Wood 2004 ; Conley 2007 ). In Germany and elsewhere, how rigorously women were prosecuted for killing their newborns and infants varied greatly between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries (Hoffer and Hull 1981 ; Rublack 1999 ).

Gender also has played a role in courtroom dramas through the construction of victims and the performance of lawyers. This is well documented for rape victims, whose claims to respectable femininity have often been challenged in court to the benefit of defendants. But defense lawyers also have attempted to construct males, both victims and offenders, as not appropriately masculine, cowardly, conniving, or debauched and thus less deserving of sympathy (Phillips and Gartner 2003 ; Strange 2003 ). The courtroom itself is a sort of stage on which male lawyers have performed masculinity in various ways: as chivalrous toward women on the stand, as aggressive toward each other and toward male defendants, and as upholders of the law more generally.

While much of the qualitative evidence about sex, gender, and criminalization comes from historical research, there is evidence that the criminal process continues to be influenced by notions about gender although in less obvious ways than in the past. Since Allen ( 1987 ) showed how women, even those who commit horrendous crimes, can be constructed by medical and legal experts as not truly responsible for their acts and therefore as in need of help not punishment, others have noted how notions about femininity and masculinity still shape legal decision making (Kilty and Frigon 2006 ; Baker 2008 ).

C. Explanations of Sex Differences in Criminalization

Explanations of sex differences in criminalization typically focus on what is seen as the lenience afforded women by the criminal justice system and the concepts of chivalry and paternalism, which imply somewhat different reasons for treating women less severely than men. Women can be said to be beneficiaries of chivalric justice to the extent that male lawyers, judges, and juries are inclined to respect womanhood, to see women as the upholders of morality and to behave toward them with gentleness and graciousness. While examples of chivalric justice exist, paternalistic justice appears to be more common. Paternalistic justice assumes that women are the weaker sex, in need of protection from themselves as well as others, and not fully responsible for their actions. Sometimes this has lead to imprisonment and longer sentences for women, but more often it has resulted in less severe outcomes compared to men (Morash 2006 ).

According to this approach to sex differences in criminalization, women’s treatment by the criminal justice system is gendered because it departs from the standard set by the treatment of men. This ignores the possibility that men’s treatment by the criminal justice system is also gendered, in other words, based on hierarchies of and notions about masculinity (Strange 2003 ). To the extent that some types of masculinity are associated with dangerousness, aggression, and defiance of authority, men who are seen to embody these characteristics may be targets of highly punitive responses by the male-dominated criminal justice system. What links male punitiveness toward some male defendants—especially those who are poor and nonwhite—to male mercifulness toward some female defendants is a version of masculinity embraced by courtroom actors.

Another perspective on sex differences in criminalization points to the pragmatic concerns of judges. Sentencing women who have children to prison places a burden on others or the state to assume care of the children; since men are much less likely to be the sole caregivers of their children, the same concern rarely arises for male defendants (Daly and Tonry 1997 ). As a consequence, women are sometimes sentenced to community alternatives instead of incarceration as a way to preserve the family and reduce costs to society.

IV. Implications for Policy and Future Research

The evidence discussed in this chapter suggests that programs designed to prevent, reduce, or respond to crime are likely to be similarly effective (or ineffective) for both sexes. This is because female and male offenders share many characteristics and environments; and their rates of offending and victimization follow similar trends and are affected by similar individual and contextual characteristics. Programs found to be effective for both sexes—such as home visiting nurses and preschool enrichment programs for children, and drug treatment and prison vocational education programs for adult offenders (MacKenzie 2006 ; Olds 2007 )—should therefore have higher priority than sex-specific policies and programs. Unfortunately, many correctional and community programs have been evaluated for their effects on men only. Despite the commonalities between female and male offenders, we cannot assume these programs will affect women in similar ways. Often correctional policies and practices developed with male offenders in mind—such as risk assessment tools—are applied to female offenders with little or no evidence of their usefulness for either sex or much thought about differential effects on females and males.

One of the most important implications for social policy is that both sexes will be less inclined to crime and safer if their social environments—families, schools, neighborhoods, and cities—provide them with a sense that they are connected to and valued by others. Conversely, and at a broader level, in societies that send many of their members the opposite message, we can expect both sexes to have high rates of offending and victimization. One way to send such a message is by criminalizing an ever-increasing portion of the population. Doing so may have a greater effect on women and girls than on men and boys; as the criminal justice net widens, it pulls in a larger proportion of those who commit less serious crimes. And, as we have already seen, females make up a relatively large proportion of those arrested for less serious crimes.

For decades, scholars studying the relationships among sex, gender, and crime tended to focus either explicitly on women or implicitly on men. Those whose work focused on women typically treated their findings as specific to women. Those who studied men’s criminal behavior typically implied their findings were applicable generally to all criminals. In a major advance in the field, scholars have started to integrate work on both sexes, attending not just to what is similar and different between them but also to what makes crime a gendered activity and victimization a gendered experience. The next step is to integrate work across disciplinary boundaries and understandings of sex, gender, and crime, rather than treating these as in competition with each other.

We now know a good deal about sex, gender, and crime, but most of what we know is from the Western world. The ways in which sex, gender, and crime are related elsewhere may be very different, not least because gender relations, ideologies, and inequalities—as well as definitions of crime—vary so much around the world. Important efforts have been made to gather information on crime from other countries, particularly through victimization surveys. However, such surveys, which were initially developed in the West, may not adequately capture women’s and men’s experiences of crime and victimization elsewhere—especially in highly authoritarian and highly patriarchal countries. Yet it is precisely such countries in which crime and violence may have particularly profound effects on the lives of women and men (Ghanim 2009 ). In countries riven by warfare, violence is not limited to battlefields but is a daily reality for everyone. A decade of investigations by international bodies has shown how states and armies use rape as a weapon of war and an instrument of terror; and how genocides are accomplished through sexual violence, which is often targeted at certain racial and ethnic groups (Hagan and Rymond-Richmond 2009 ). Sexual violence puts gender inequalities into stark relief, especially when it is state supported. Research on how sex and gender shape violence in such contexts requires attention to how states and collectivities are organized to exploit and reinforce gender inequalities in a number of spheres of life—with harmful outcomes for both women and men. Focusing on these aspects of sex, gender, and crime is important as a way to advance knowledge, pursue justice, and improve people’s lives.

Sex, like gender, can be seen as socially constructed. Typically, however, sex is used to refer to a biologically determined characteristic that is dualistic.

The conventional distinction between gender as socially constructed and sex as biologically given is contested by some scholars. They argue that this distinction creates a false duality between the biological (sex/body) and the cultural (gender/mind); and that in practice sex and gender incorporate each other (Harrison 2006 ; Merry 2009 ).

For example, according to the Canadian Criminal Code (R.S., c. C-34, s.216), “a female person commits infanticide when by a willful act or omission she causes the death of her newly born child, if at the time of the act or omission she is not fully recovered from the effects of giving birth to the child and by reason thereof or of the effect of lactation consequent on the birth of the child her mind is then disturbed.”

Gender order refers to patterns of power relations between masculinities and femininities that are widespread throughout society.

This applies to research on victimization, though to a lesser extent.

Scholars are beginning to resurrect some of this work so that its contributions can be more adequately assessed (see, e.g., Rafter and Gibson 2004 ).

References to arrest rates in the United States here and throughout the remainder of this chapter are based on the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports for 2007. See “Crime Data Sources” after the references for links to this and other data sources used in this chapter.

Sex-specific robbery and assault rates also share similar correlates.

The acquaintance category includes a wide range of relationships, from friends and neighbors to gang members who know each other by sight or reputation.

The National Crime Victimization Survey, the most extensive victimization data source in the world, has been conducted on a continuous basis in the United States since 1972. Reference to NCVS data here and throughout the remainder of this chapter is based on the 2007 survey, unless otherwise noted.

There is some year-to-year variation outside of this range because of the small number of homicides in some countries. However, the range applies, on average, to most European countries.

Only in late nineteenth-century Germany did women account for a substantial proportion (40 percent) of those charged with theft.

There is an ongoing debate, particularly among feminist criminologists, over how to understand serious violence by women. Some scholars argue that women’s violence is largely a consequence of and determined by the patriarchal structure of society. From this perspective, such violence is self-defensive, due to male coercion, and/or committed by women who are accomplices to males. Others argue that this portrayal denies women agency and infantilizes them, and that it is not supported by the evidence. The latter perspective, which is represented by the quotation in the text by Sjoberg and Gentry ( 2007 ), acknowledges that gender inequalities disadvantage women in many ways, but do not take away their ability to make choices within the constraints of these inequalities.

Sex is also key to other perspectives on the sex difference in crime, such as evolutionary psychology. In addition, “sexed bodies” and “sexed subjectivities” are at least as important as gender in some theorizing on crime (Collier 1998 ).

Among the thirty-five countries in LaFree and Hunnicutt’s ( 2006 ) analysis, there is a strong positive correlation (.84) between the size of the homicide rate and the percentage of male victims.

Surveys that ask more detailed questions about sexual assault and intimate partner violence tend to find little or no sex difference in victimization.

Despite the efforts of the ICVS designers and administrators, estimates of the prevalence of some types of victimization in some countries are highly questionable. For example, the ICVS found one-year prevalence rates of sexual assault of 0 in Egypt, Zimbabwe, and Mexico (van Dijk, van Kesteren, and Smit 2007 ).

Same-sex partners account for about 4 percent of female intimate partner victimizations and about 18 percent of male intimate partner victimizations, according to the NCVS.

Differences in estimates are due to variation across the surveys in their framing, definitions of violence, and data collection instruments.

The National Violence Against Women Survey was a nationwide survey conducted in 1995 and 1996. Nearly 12,000 women and men were interviewed about their experiences of violence, including intimate partner violence. For more information, see Tjaden and Thoennes ( 2000 ).

Three National Family Violence Surveys were conducted in 1975, 1985, and 1992 and were designed to provide a comprehensive examination of violence arising from conflicts within the family, including spouse abuse.

Nevertheless, it is still the case that long-term trends in male and female homicide victimization are very similar (Eisner 2003 ).

As noted earlier, for some behaviors—such as minor sexual misdemeanors, running away, and prostitution—women and, in particular, girls are still more likely than males to be dealt with formally. However, this sex disparity also appears to have decreased somewhat over time.

Race conditions this sex effect. Black males and females are sentenced to an average of twelve more months of prison if convicted of a violent offense, compared to white males and females convicted of a violent offense.

Adler, Jeffrey S. 2006 . First in Violence, Deepest in Dirt: Homicide in Chicago, 1875–1920 . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Google Scholar

Google Preview

Aebi, Marceki F., Kauko Aromaa, Bruno Aubusson de Cavarlay, Gordon Barclay, Beata Gruszczyñska, Hanns von Hofer, Vasilika Hysi, Jörg-Martin Jehle, Martin Killias, Paul Smit, and Cynthia Tavares. 2006 . European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics—2006 . The Hague: Minister of Justice, the Netherlands.

Allen, Hilary. 1987 . Justice Unbalanced: Gender, Psychiatry, and Judicial Decisions. Milton Keynes, UK: Open University Press.

Australian Bureau of Statistics. 2005 . Personal Safety Survey . Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Australian Institute of Criminology. 2009 . Homicide Offender Statistics . Canberra: Australian Institute of Criminology. http://www.aic.gov.au/research/homicide/stats/html .

Bahun-Radunović, Sanja, and V. G. Julie Rujan, eds. 2008 . Violence and Gender in the Globalized World: The Intimate and the Extimate . Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

Baker, Helen. 2008 . “ Constructing Women Who Experience Male Violence: Criminal Legal Discourse and Individual Experiences. ” Liverpool Law Review 29:123–42.

Batton, Candice. 2004 . “ Gender Differences in Lethal Violence: Historical Trends in the Relationship Between Homicide and Suicide Rates. ” Justice Quarterly 21:423–62.

Beattie, John M. 2001 . Policing and Punishment in London, 1600–1750. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Belknap, Joanne, and Kristi Holsinger. 2006 . “ The Gendered Nature of Risk Factors for Delinquency. ” Feminist Criminology 1:48–71.

Bell, Kerryn E. 2009 . “ Gender and Gangs: A Quantitative Comparison. ” Crime and Delinquency 55:363–87.

Bellesiles, Michael A., ed. 1999 . Lethal Imagination: Violence and Brutality in American History. New York: New York University Press.

Bennett, Sara, David P. Farrington, and L. Rowell Huesmann. 2005 . “ Explaining Gender Differences in Crime and Violence: The Importance of Social Cognitive Skills. ” Aggression and Violent Behavior 10:263–88.

Bonger, Willem. 1916 . Criminality and Economic Conditions . New York: Little, Brown.

Bottcher, Jean. 2001 . “ Social Practices of Gender: How Gender Relates to Delinquency in the Lives of High-risk Youths. ” Criminology 39:893–931.

Broadhurst, Roderic. 1999. “Homicide in Hong Kong: The Homicide Monitoring Data Base, 1989–1997.” Paper presented at the Hong Kong Sociological Association, December 10. University of Hong Kong.

Budd, Tracey, Clare Sharp, and Pat Mayhew. 2005 . Offending in England and Wales: First Results from the 2003 Crime and Justice Survey. London: Home Office Research, Development and Statistics Directorate.

Carrington, Kerry. 2006 . “ Does Feminism Spoil Girls? Explanations for Official Rises in Female Delinquency. ” Australia and New Zealand Journal of Criminology 39:34–53.

Cernkovich, Stephen A., Nadine Lanctôt, and Peggy C. Giordano. 2008 . “ Predicting Adolescent and Adult Antisocial Behavior among Adjudicated Delinquent Females. ” Crime and Delinquency 54:3–33.

Chesney-Lind, Meda. 2002 . “ Criminalizing Victimization: The Unintended Consequences of Pro-arrest Policies for Girls and Women. ” Crime and Public Policy 2:81–90.

Chesney-Lind, Meda, and Katherine Irwin. 2008 . Beyond Bad Girls: Gender, Violence and Hype . New York: Routledge.

Coleman, Kathryn, Celia Hird, and David Povey. 2006. Violent Crime Overview, Homicide and Gun Crime 2004/2005 . Home Office Research, Development and Statistics Directorate. http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs06/hosb0206.pdf .

Collier, Richard. 1998 . Masculinities, Crime and Criminology: Men, Heterosexuality and the Criminal(ised) Other. London: Sage.

Conley, Carolyn A. 2007 . Certain Other Countries: Homicide, Gender and National Identity in Late 19th Century England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales . Columbus: Ohio State University Press.

Courtwright, David T. 1996 . Violent Land: Single Men and Social Disorder from the Frontier to the Inner City. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996.

Curry, Theodore, Gang Lee, and S. Fernando Rodriguez. 2004 . “ Does Victim Gender Increase Sentencing Severity? Further Explorations of Gender Dynamics and Sentencing Outcomes. ” Crime and Delinquency 50:319–43.

Daigle, Leah E., Francis T. Cullen, and John Paul Wright. 2007 . “ Gender Differences in the Predictors of Juvenile Delinquency: Assessing the Generality-specificity Debate. ” Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice 5:254–86.

Daly, Kathleen. 1992 . “ Women’s Pathways to Felony Court: Feminist Theories of Lawbreaking and Problems of Representation. ” Southern California Review of Law and Women’s Studies 2:11–52.

Daly, Kathleen, and Michael Tonry. 1997 . “Gender, Race, and Sentencing.” In Crime and Justice: A Review of Research , vol. 22, edited by Michael Tonry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Dauvergne, Mia. 2005 . “ Homicide in Canada, 2004. ” Juristat 25:1–27.

Dobash, Russell P., and R. Emerson Dobash. 2004 . “ Women’s Violence to Men in Intimate Relationships: Working on a Puzzle. ” British Journal of Criminology 44:324–49.

Dugan, Laura, Daniel Nagin, and Richard Rosenfeld. 2003 . “ Exposure Reduction or Retaliation? The Effects of Domestic Violence Resources on Intimate Partner Homicide. ” Law and Society Review 37:169–98.

Eisner, Manuel. 2003 . “Long-term Historical Trends in Violent Crime.” In Crime and Justice: A Review of Research , vol. 30, edited by Michael Tonry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Emsley, Clive. 2005 . Hard Men: Violence in England Since 1750. London: Hambledon and London.

Farrington, David P., and Kate A. Painter. 2004 . Gender Differences in Offending: Implications for Risk-Focused Prevention . Home Office OnLine Report 09/04. London: Home Office.

Feeley, Malcolm, and Deborah L. Little. 1991 . “ The Vanishing Female: The Decline of Women in the Criminal Process, 1687–1912.”   Law and Society Review 25:719–57.

Fielding, Nigel. 1994 . “Cop Canteen Culture.” In Just Boys Doing Business: Men, Masculinity and Crime , ed. Tim Newburn and Elizabeth Stanko. London: Routledge.

Gannon, Maire, and Karen Mihorean. 2005 . “ Criminal Victimization in Canada, 2004. ” Juristat 25:1–25.

Gartner, Rosemary. 1995 . “Homicide in Canada.” In Violence in Canada: Socio-political Perspectives , ed. Jeffrey I. Ross. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press.

Gartner, Rosemary, and Bill McCarthy. 2006 . “Killing One’s Children: Maternal Infanticide and the Dark Figure of Homicide.” In Gender and Crime: Patterns of Victimization and Offending , ed. Karen Heimer and Candace Kruttschnitt. New York: New York University Press.

Ghanim, David. 2009 . Gender and Violence in the Middle East . Westport, CT: Praeger.

Giordano, Peggy, Stephen Cernkovich, and Jennifer L. Rudolph. 2002 . “ Gender, Crime, and Desistance: Toward a Theory of Cognitive Transformation. ” American Journal of Sociology 4:990–1064.

Giordano, Peggy, Jill Deines, and Stephen Cernkovich. 2006 . “In and Out of Crime: A Life Course Perspective on Girls’ Delinquency.” In Gender and Crime:Patterns in Victimization and Offending, edited by Karen Heimer and Candace Kruttschnitt. New York: New York University Press.

Glaeser, Edward L., and Bruce Sacerdote. 2000 . “The Determinants of Punishment: Deterrence, Incapacitation and Vengeance.” Harvard Institute of Economic Research . Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.

Glueck, Sheldon, and Eleanor Glueck. 1934 . Five Hundred Delinquent Women . New York: Knopf.

Goodkind, S., J. Wallace, J. Shook, Jerald Bachman, and Patrick M. O’Malley. 2009 “ Are Girls Really Becoming More Delinquent? Testing the Gender Convergence Hypothesis by Race and Ethnicity, 1976–2005. ” Children and Youth Services Review 31:885–95.

Griffin, Timothy, and John Wooldredge. 2006 . “ Sex-based Disparities in Felony Dispositions Before Versus After Sentencing Reform in Ohio. ” Criminology 44:893–924.

Gurr, Ted R. 1989 . “Historical Trends in Violent Crime: Europe and the United States.” In The History of Crime, vol. 1, Violence in America , ed. Ted R. Gurr. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Hagan, John. 1988 . Structural Criminology . Cambridge: Polity Press.

Hagan, John, and Winona Rymond-Richmond. 2009 . Darfur and the Crime of Genocide . New York: Cambridge University Press.

Hansen, Kirstine. 2006 . “Gender Differences in Self-reported Offending.” In Gender and Justice: New Concepts and Approaches , ed. Frances Heidensohn. Cullompton, UK: Willan.

Harrison, Wendy. 2006 . “The Shadow and the Substance: The Sex/Gender Debate.” In Handbook of Gender and Women’s Studies , ed. Kathy Davis, Mary Evans, and Judith Lorber. London: Sage.

Heidensohn, Frances, and Lorraine Gelsthorpe. 2007 . “Gender and Crime.” In Oxford Handbook of Criminology , 4th ed., ed. Mike Maguire, Rod Morgan and Robert Reiner. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Heimer, Karen. 2000 . “Changes in the Gender Gap in Crime and Women’s Economic Marginalization.” In The Nature of Crime: Continuity and Change, Criminal Justice 2000 , vol. 1, ed. Gary LaFree. Washington, DC: National Institute of Justice.

Heimer, Karen, Janet L. Lauritsen, and James P. Lynch. 2009 . “ The National Crime Victimization Survey and the Gender Gap in Offending: Redux. ” Criminology 47:427–38.

Henning, Kris, Angela Jones, and Robert Holdford. 2003 . “ Treatment Needs of Women Arrested for Domestic Violence: A Comparison with Male Offenders. ” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 18:839–56.

Henning, Kris, Brian Renauer, and Robert Holdford. 2006 . “ Victim or Offender: Heterogeneity Among Women Arrested for Intimate Partner Violence. ” Journal of Family Violence 21:351–68.

Hobbs, Dick, Kate O’Brien, and Louise Westmarland. 2007 . “ Connecting the Gendered Door: Women, Violence and Doorwork. ” British Journal of Sociology 58: 21–38.

Hines, Denise A. 2009 . “Domestic Violence.” In The Oxford Handbook of Crime and Public Policy , ed. Michael Tonry. New York: Oxford University Press.

Hoffer, Peter C., and N. E. H. Hull. 1981 . Murdering Mothers: Infanticide in England and New England, 1558–1803. New York: New York University Press.

Hurl-Eamons, Jennine. 2005 . Gender and Petty Violence in London, 1680–1720. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.

Jackson, Mark, ed. 2002 . Infanticide: Historical Perspectives on Child Murder and Concealment, 1550–2000. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.

Jeffries, Samantha. 2001. “Gender Judgments: An Investigation of Sentencing and Remand in New Zealand.” Paper presented at the 2001 Australian Sociological Association Annual Conference, Sydney.

Johansson, Pernilla, and Kimberly Kempf-Leonard. 2009 . “ A Gender-specific Pathway to Serious, Violent, and Chronic Offending? Exploring Howell’s Risk Factors for Serious Delinquency. ” Crime and Delinquency 55:216–40.

Johnson, Brian, Jeffrey Ulmer, and John H. Kramer. 2008 . “ The Social Context of Circumvention: The Case of Federal District Courts. ” Criminology 46:737–83.

Johnson, Eric A., and Eric H. Monkkonen, eds. 1996 . The Civilization of Crime: Violence in Town and Country since the Middle Ages . Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Johnson, Holly, Natalia Öllus, and Sami Nevala. 2008 . Violence Against Women: An International Comparison. New York: Springer.

Johnston, Lloyd D., Jerald Bachman, and Patrick M. O’Malley. Various years. Monitoring the Future Project . Ann Arbor: Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan.

Junger-Tas, Josine, Ineke Haen Marshall, and J. Denis Ribeaud. 2003 . Delinquency in International Perspective: The International Self-Reported Delinquency Study . Monsey, NY: Criminal Justice Press.

Junger-Tas, Josine, J. Denis Ribeaud, and Maarten J.L.F. Cruyff. 2004 . “ Juvenile Delinquency and Gender. ” European Journal of Criminology 1:333–75.

Kaspersson, Maria. 2003 . “‘The Great Murder Mystery’ or Explaining Declining Homicide Rates.” In Comparative Histories of Crime , ed. Barry S. Godfrey, Clive Emsley, and Graeme Dunstall. Portland, OR: Willan.

Kershaw, Chris, Sian Nicholas, and Alison Walker. 2008 . Crime in England and Wales 2007–2008: Findings from the British Crime Survey and Police Recorded Crime. London: Home Office Research, Development and Statistics Directorate.

Kilty, Jennifer M., and Sylvie Frigon. 2006 . “ Karla Homolka: From a Woman in Danger to a Dangerous Woman: Chronicling the Shifts. ” Women and Criminal Justice 17:37–61.

King, Peter. 2006 . Crime and Law in England, 1750–1840: Remaking Justice from the Margins . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Klein, Dorie. 1973 . “ The Etiology of Women’s Crime: A Review of the Literature. ” Issues in Criminology 8:3–30.

Kong, Rebecca, and Kathy AuCoin. 2008 . “ Female Offenders in Canada. ” Juristat 28:1–22.

Konopka, Gisela. 1966 . The Adolescent Girl in Conflict . Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Koons-Witt, Barbara. 2002 . “ The Effect of Gender on the Decision to Incarcerate Before and After the Introduction of Sentencing Guidelines. ” Criminology 40:297–327.

Kruttschnitt, Candace, and Kristin Carbone-Lopez. 2006 . “ Moving Beyond the Stereotypes: Women’s Subjective Accounts of Their Violent Crime. ” Criminology 44:321–52.

Kruttschnitt, Candace, Rosemary Gartner, and Kathleen Ferraro. 2002 . “ Women’s Involvement in Serious Interpersonal Violence. ” Aggression and Violent Behavior 7:529–65.

Lacey, Nicola. 2002 . “Violence, Ethics and Law: Feminist Reflections on a Familiar Dilemma.” In Visible Women: Essays on Feminist Legal Theory and Political Philosophy , ed. Susan James and Stephanie Palmer. Oxford: Hart.

LaFree, Gary, and Gwen Hunnicutt. 2006 . “Female and Male Homicide Victimization Trends: A Cross-national Context.” In Crime and Gender: Patterns in Victimization and Offending , ed. Karen Heimer and Candace Kruttschnitt. New York: New York University Press.

Lanctôt, Nadine, and Mare LeBlanc. 2002 . “Explaining Deviance by Adolescent Females.” In Crime and Justice: A Review of Research , vol. 29, edited by Michael Tonry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Lane, Roger. 1997 . Murder in America: A History . Columbus: Ohio State University Press.

Lauritsen, Janet. 2003 . How Families and Communities Influence Youth Victimization . Juvenile Justice Bulletin. Washington, DC: US Department of Justice.

Lauritsen, Janet, and Karen Heimer. 2008 . “ The Gender Gap in Victimization, 1973–2004. ” Journal of Quantitative Criminology 24:125–47.

Lauritsen, Janet, Karen Heimer, and James P. Lynch. 2009 . “ Trends in the Gender Gap in Violent Offending: New Evidence from the National Crime Victimization Survey. ” Criminology 47:361–99.

Li, Geoffrey. 2008 . “ Homicide in Canada, 2007. ” Juristat 28:1–26.

Lombroso, Cesare, and Guglielmo Ferrero. 1893 . La donna delinquente, la prostituta e la donna normale. Turin: Roux.

MacKenzie, Doris L. 2006 . What Works in Corrections: Reducing the Criminal Activities of Offenders and Delinquents . New York: Cambridge University Press.

Maher, Lisa. 1997 . Sexed Work: Gender, Race and Resistance in a Brooklyn Drug Market. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Manderson, Lenore, and Linda Rae Bennett, eds. 2003 . Violence Against Women in Asian Societies . New York: Routledge.

Marvel, Thomas B., and Carlisle Moody. 1999 . “ Female and Male Homicide Victimization Rates: Comparing Trends and Regressors. ” Criminology 37:879–902.

Martin, Randall. 2008 . Women, Murder and Equity in Early Modern England . Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

May, Allyson N., and Jim Phillips. 2001 . “ Homicide in Nova Scotia, 1749–1815. ” Canadian Historical Review 82:625–61.

Meadows, Sarah O. 2007 . “ Evidence of Parallel Pathways: Gender Similarity in the Impact of Social Support on Adolescent Depression and Delinquency. ” Social Forces 85:1143–67.

Merry, Sally E. 2009 . Gender Violence: A Cultural Perspective . Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell.

Messerschmidt, James W. 2004 . Flesh and Blood: Adolescent Gender Diversity and Violence . Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.

Miller, Jody. 2008 . Getting Played: African American Girls, Urban Inequality and Gendered Violence. New York: New York University Press.

Miller, Jody, and Christopher Mullins. 2006 . “Stuck Up, Telling Lies, and Talking Too Much: The Gendered Contexts of Young Women’s Violence.” In Gender and Crime: Patterns of Victimization and Offending, ed. Karen Heimer and Candace Kruttschnitt. New York: New York University Press.

Miller, Susan L. 2005 . Victims as Offenders: The Paradox of Women’s Violence in Relationships . New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Ministry of Justice. 2009 . Statistics on Women and the Criminal Justice System . London: The Institute for Criminal Policy Research, School of Law, King’s College.

Moffitt, Terrie E., Avshalom Caspi, Michael Rutter, and Phil Silva. 2001 . Sex Differences in Anti-Social Behavior: Conduct Disorder, Delinquency, and Violence in the Dunedin Longitudinal Study . New York: Cambridge University Press.

Monkkonen, Eric H. 2001 . Murder in New York City . Berkeley: University of California Press.

Morash, Merry. 2006 . Understanding Gender, Crime and Justice . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Morrissey, Belinda. 2003 . When Women Kill: Questions of Agency and Subjectivity. London: Routledge.

Muratore, Maria G., and Isabella Corazziari. 2008 . “The New Italian Violence Against Women Survey.” In Victimisation Surveys in International Perspective , ed. Kauko Aromaa and Marku Heiskanen. Helsinki: European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control.

Murphy, Thérèsa, and Noel Whitty. 2006 . “ The Question of Evil and Feminist Legal Scholarship. ” Feminist Legal Studies 14:1–26.

Mustard, David B. 2001 . “ Racial, Ethnic and Gender Disparities in Sentencing: Evidence from the US Federal Courts. ” Journal of Law and Economics 44:285–314.

Naffine, Ngaire, ed. 2002 . Gender and Justice . Aldershot, UK: Dartmouth.

Odgers, Candice L., Terrie E. Moffitt, Jonathan M. Broadbent, Nigel Dickson, Robert J. Hancox, Honalee Harrington, Richie Poulton, Malcolm Sears, W. Murray Thomson, and Avshalom Caspi. 2008 . “ Female and Male Antisocial Trajectories: From Childhood Origins to Adult Outcomes. ” Development and Psychopathology 20:673–716.

Olds, David L. 2007 . “ Home Visiting Nurses? Preventing Crime by Improving Pre-natal and Infant Health and Development. ” Criminal Justice Matters 69:4–5.

Palk, Diedre. 2006 . Gender, Crime and Judicial Discretion, 1780–1830. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press.

Peterson del Mar, David. 1996 . What Trouble I Have Seen: A History of Violence Against Wives . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Peterson del Mar, David. 2002 . Beaten Down: A History of Interpersonal Violence in the West . Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Phillips, Jim, and Allyson N. May. 2002 . “ Female Criminality in 18th-Century Halifax. ” Acadiensis 31:71–97.

Phillips, Jim, and Rosemary Gartner. 2003 . Murdering Holiness: The Trials of Franz Creffield and George Mitchell. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.

Pollak, Otto. 1951 . The Criminality of Women . New York: Barnes.

Povey, David, Kathryn Coleman, Peter Kaiza, and Stephen Roe. 2009 . Homicides, Firearm Offenses and Intimate Violence 2007/08. London: Home Office Research, Development and Statistics Directorate.

Rafter, Nicole Hahn, and Mary Gibson. 2004 . Translation of and introduction to Criminal Woman, the Prostitute, and the Normal Woman , by Cesare Lombroso and Guglielmo Ferraro. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Rand, Michael R. 2008 . Criminal Victimization, 2007 . NJC 224390. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Renzetti, Claire M., Jeffrey L. Edleson, and Raquel Kennedy Bergen, eds. 2001 . Sourcebook on Violence Against Women . Thousand Oaks. CA: Sage.

Rodriguez, S. Fernando, Theodore Curry, and Gang Lee. 2006 . “ Gender Differences in Criminal Sentencing: Do Effects Vary Across Violent, Property and Drug Offenses ?” Social Science Quarterly 87:318–39.

Rosenfeld, Richard. 2009 . “Homicide and Serious Assaults.” In The Oxford Handbook of Crime and Public Policy , ed. Michael Tonry. New York: Oxford University Press.

Rublack, Ulinka. 1999 . The Crimes of Women in Early Modern Germany . Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Schwartz, Jennifer. 2006 . “ Effects of Diverse Forms of Family Structure on Female and Male Homicide. ” Journal of Marriage and the Family 68:1291–312.

Schwartz, Jennifer, Darrell Steffensmeier, and Ben Feldmeyer. 2009 . “ Assessing Trends in Women’s Violence via Data Triangulation: Arrests, Convictions, Incarcerations, and Victim Reports. ” Social Problems 56:494–525.

Schwartz, Jennifer, Darrell J. Steffensmeier, Hua Zhong, and Jeff Ackerman. 2009 . “ Trends in the Gender Gap in Violence: Reevaluating NCVS and Other Evidence. ” Criminology 47:401–26.

Shoemaker, Robert. 2002 . “ The Taming of the Duel: Masculinity, Honour and Ritual in London, 1660–1800. ” Historical Journal 45:525–45.

Sjoberg, Laura, and Caron E. Gentry. 2007 . Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Women’s Violence in Global Politics. London: Zed Books.

Smart, Carol. 1976 . Women, Crime and Criminology: A Feminist Critique. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Spierenburg, Pieter, ed. 1998 . Men and Violence: Gender, Honor and Rituals in Modern Europe and America. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.

Spierenburg, Pieter, ed. 2008 . A History of Murder: Personal Violence in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present . Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.

Sprott, Jane B., and Anthony N. Doob. 2009 . Justice for Girls? Stability and Change in the Youth Justice Systems of the United States and Canada. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Steffensmeier, Darrell, and Emilie Allan. 1996 . “ Gender and Crime: Toward a Gendered Theory of Crime. ” Annual Review of Sociology 22:459–87.

Steffensmeier, Darrell, and Dana Haynie. 2000 . “ Gender, Structural Disadvantage, and Urban Crime: Do Macrosocial Variables Explain Female Offending Rates ?” Criminology 38:403–39.

Steffensmeier, Darrell, Jennifer Schwartz, Hua Zhong, and Jeff Ackerman 2005 . “ An Assessment of Recent Trends in Girls’ Violence Using Diverse Longitudinal Sources: Is the Gender Gap Closing ?” Criminology 43:355–405.

Steffensmeier, Darrell, Jeffrey Ulmer, and John H. Kramer. 1998 . “ The Interaction of Race, Gender and Age in Criminal Sentencing: The Punishment Cost of Being Young, Black and Male. ” Criminology 36:763–87.

Steward, Kate. 2006 . “Gender Considerations in Remand Decision-making.” In Gender and Justice: New Concepts and Approaches, ed. Frances Heidensohn. Cullompton, UK: Willan.

Strange, Carolyn. 1992 . “Wounded Womanhood and Dead Men: Chivalry and the Trials of Clara Ford and Carrie Davies.” In Gender Conflicts , ed. Franca Iacovetta and Mariana Valverde. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Strange, Carolyn. 2003 . “ Masculinities, Intimate Femicide and the Death Penalty in Australia, 1890–1920. ” British Journal of Criminology 43:310–39.

Straus, Murray. 2004 . “Women’s Violence Toward Men is a Serious Social Problem.” In Current Controversies on Family Violence , ed. Donileen R. Loseke, Richard J. Gelles, and Mary M. Cavanaugh. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Tanner, Julian, and Scot Wortley. 2002 . The Toronto Youth Crime and Victimization Survey: Overview Report . Toronto: Centre of Criminology.

Thomas, William I. 1923 . The Unadjusted Girl. Boston: Little Brown.

Tjaden, Patricia, and Nancy Thoennes. 2000. Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence: Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nih/victdocs.htm#2000.

United Nations. 2006 . In-Depth Study of All Forms of Violence Against Women. Report of the Secretary General. New York: United Nations.

US Department of Justice. 2008a. Felony Defendants in Large Urban Counties, 2004 Statistical Tables. http:///www.ojp.usdog.gov/bjs.put/html/fdluc/2004/tables/fdluc04st02.htm

US Department of Justice. 2008b. State Court Sentencing of Convicted Felons, 2004 Statistical Tables. http:///www.ojp.usdog.gov/bjs.put/html/scscf04/tqbles/scs04206tab.htm

Vandal, Giles. 2000 . Rethinking Southern Violence: Homicide in Post-Civil War Louisiana, 1866–1884. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.

van Dijk, Jan. 2008 . World Crime: Breaking the Silence on Problems of Security, Justice and Devlopment Across the World . Los Angeles, CA: Sage.

van Dijk, Jan, John van Kesteren, and Paul Smit. 2007 . Criminal Victimization in International Perspective: Key Findings from the 2004–2005 ICVS and EU ICS . Den Haag: Boom Juridische uitgevers.

van Kesteren, John, Pat Mayhew, and Paul Nieuwbeerta. 2004 . Criminal Victimization in Seventeen Industrialized Countries: Key Findings from the 2000 International Crime Victims Survey . Den Haag: Boom Juridische uitgevers.

Verkko, Veli. 1951 . “ Are There Regular Sequences in Crime Against Life Which Can Be Formulated as Laws? ” Homicides and Suicides in Finland and Their Dependence on National Character. Scandinavian Studies in Sociology , 3:50–57. Copenhagen: Gads Forlag.

Verweij, Antonia, and Paul Nieuwbeerta. 2001 . “Gender Differences in Violent Victimization in 18 Industrialized Countries: The Role of Emancipation.” In International Comparison of Crime and Victimization: The International Crime Victimization Survey , ed. Helmut Kury. Willowdale, ON: de Sitter.

Waddington, P. A. J. 1999 . “ Police (Canteen) Subculture: An Appreciation. ” British Journal of Criminology 39:287–309.

Walker, Garthine. 2003 . Crime, Gender and Social Order in Early Modern England. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Wiener, Martin J. 2004 . Men of Blood: Violence, Manliness and Criminal Justice in Victorian England. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Wikstrom, Per-Olof H., and David Butterworth. 2007 . Adolescent Crime: Individual Differences and Lifestyles . Cullompton, UK: Willan.

Wood, J. Carter. 2004 . Violence and Crime in 19th-Century England: The Shadow of Our Refinement. London: Routledge.

World Health Organization. 2005 . WHO Multi-Country Study on Women’s Health and Domestic Violence Against Women: Summary Report of Initial Results on Prevalence, Health Outcomes and Women’s Responses . Geneva: WHO.

Zahn, Margaret A., and Patricia L. McCall. 1999 . “Homicide in the 20th-Century United States.” In Studying and Preventing Homicide , ed. M. Dwayne Smith and Margaret A. Zahn. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Zimring, Franklin E. 2007 . The Great American Crime Decline . New York: Oxford University Press.

Crime Data Sources

2005 Australian Personal Safety Survey. http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/[email protected]/DetailsPage/4906.02005.

British Crime and Justice Survey. http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/FindingData/snDescription.asp?sn=5258 .

British Crime Survey. http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/crimeew0709.html.

European Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics. http://www.europeansourcebook.org/index_e3doc.html.

Canadian General Social Survey. http://www.statcan.gc.ca/dli-ild/data-donnees/ftp/gss-eng-end.htm.

International Crime Victimization Survey. http://ruljis.leidenuniv.nl/group/jfcr/sss/icvs/ .

National Crime Victimization Survey. http://www.ojp.usdog.gov/bjs/ .

National Family Violence Survey http://www.socio.com/srch/summary/afda/fam32.htm .

National Violence Against Women Survey. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nih/victdocs.htm#2000 .

Uniform Crime Reports. http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm.

• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Institutional account management
• Rights and permissions
• Get help with access
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Gender Equality and Crime

This essay will examine the relationship between gender equality and crime rates. It will analyze how gender dynamics influence criminal behavior, the representation of genders in crime statistics, and the impact of gender equality initiatives on crime prevention. At PapersOwl too, you can discover numerous free essay illustrations related to Crime.

How it works

The court and the Judiciary, in general, are guided by the basic principles of justice to all. Judges usually give rulings based on the rule of law with the intention of protecting the public, deterring crime, rehabilitating law offenders, punishing offenders and offering reparation to the victim. The principles of justice mean fairness, protecting the rights of all regardless of gender, race or religion. However, gender equality has been a significant issue for many years, and there has been a debate on when convicted of a crime, which sentences should be handed based on gender.

Numerous studies establish that women are the most significant beneficiaries of gender during sentencing, judges are more lenient to women (Hopkins, Light and Lovbakke, 2011).

The researchers also identify that judges should look at the type of crime committed by the offender before issuing a judgment. Women are given short sentences as compared to men. More so, the lenient treatment of women goes beyond the duration of the sentence, they are also advantaged in various other ways such as ladies are likely to get bails, they are also more likely to be released. Women are also given short sentence for a similar crime with a male counterpart and serve a smaller portion of their judgment before being released. For that reason, you find a large number of men in prison as compared to women.

In this essay, I aim at discussing if this kind of preferential treatment given to women is discrimination against men or is the course of justice performed by the judicial system. Women are perceived as weak as compared to men the court considers the ability of the lady to commit the misdeed. Women have since traditionally been taken to play a critical role in the family, most of them are mothers. Because they are the key players, long sentences would mean a separation of the mother from significant functions such as caring for a child.

The court should consider several other factors apart from gender when issuing judgment to criminalsJudging women differently from men may not be fair because it encourages women to do more crimes since they are privy of the fact that they will get lenient judgments and sentences. But, in the past decades, women have been discriminated in various fields, including politics, business, and in organizations, women usually receive the small share. But at the moment, with multiple campaigns for women rights, women are now equal to men in all fields. If you look at the number of women in the job market, for example, it is increasing at a high rate as compared to men. Therefore, gender parity should not be used anymore to favor ladies against men in the judicial system.

The best interest should be determining the factor for the particular action, the benefit of the third party is also used as the central factor in the court when influencing the court outcome. The judge should consider individual elements, for example, if the suspected person is a lady with a young child, then the court should consider giving lenient judgment for the interest of the child. The law requires that a child should not be separated with the mother. The best interest of the child is chief. However, it should not be the only merit used in court. Whether private or public, the social welfare of the institutions, the court are mandated to protect law and offer administrative judgment.

Gender-based sentencing is conditioned by crimes, which benefits women from feminist crimes such as drug offending, property because they are given preferential treatment. Selective judgment will also have an impact on small crimes if the courts provide ruling depending on one’s sex. If the factors related to the crime committed by the person is not gender-related then, there is no need to issue the sentence that is gender bias. Gender-based judgment is a public relation exercise, rather than seeking to find justice and punish offenders. The judges have created a public image that the courts fight against gender parity, and at the long-run, it will cause more harm to men, and in the process undermining the courts (Mona, 2013).

Traditionally men are perceived as healthy and can fight for themselves, but ladies are known to be weak, and vulnerable, and they need more attention and protection from the third person. That explains the reason why males receive harsh sentences than females, but they also receive more treatment. The court should consider the gender when sentencing criminal so that they can protect women. Also, men are more likely to commit crimes than ladies, which explains the reason why there are several men compared to women at the criminal prisons. Ladies rarely commit crimes, and when they do, they are transgressed and break the gender beliefs. When a simple sentence is delivered to them, ladies feel that they are being punished double.

For example, when a lady fails to be a mother and she is considered a law offender. Failing to be a mother would mean that the children would be victims as well, in some countries when a mother has been imprisoned the kid also stays in prison with her. The act leads to psychological problems to the child as he or she is growing. Even, in many countries such as the United Kingdom and Wales, ladies account for only 5 percent of the total prison population. Thus, when ladies are jailed, they feel they are being stigmatized double. Moreover, men and women react differently if they face the same situation. The theory of Moral development suggests that females are more emotionally and psychologically affected when they are in prison.

While ladies see moral life as care rather than justice, men, on the other hand, take it as responsibility. This theory makes sense because if you make a keen observation about the women when they are arrested, they so emotional and they feel that lack of care. But men are concerned with the truth and justice. Thus, they are not affected psychologically (Banks, 2013). Men are more often guilty until proven innocent, while women appear to be honest especially when the crime relates to domestic cases. The judges also consider gender when they are issuing judges based on the individual judge’s gender. Women judge are lenient to fellow ladies, and the male judge may also be gender biased.

The other reasons why the sentences should be based on gender is that, women are the most affected by the domestic violence. The court should then be seeking justice for these women are suffering at the hands of ignorant men. The sentence issued should serve as a lesson to other men with similar behavior and will go a long way to reduce domestic violence. However, the latest statistics show that men are also victims of domestic violence, but most of them do not report to the police. The criminal court should be careful to identify the victim and also assist the men who are silently suffering underground.

Also, men’s crimes are worse to a level that justifies the reason for an increase in the number of men in prisons as compared to women. Men are more likely to be sentenced than ladies because women are less criminally compared to men. A large percentage of the offenders are men, and they are being jailed because of their criminal activities. Men on average receive longer sentence than ladies and they serve the more significant proportion of sentences (Mona, 2013). Most of the ladies criminals are not criminals or do not commit the offense by choice, they are being forced by men to do so. Most of them are given death threats so that they commit any crimes. In such a situation the gender issue is used in determining the charges someone should face. The lady would be given less judgment, and the men are given many years to serve their punishment.

It has been established that men are the subject of gender parity in the courts of law. If male offenders were to be given similar treatment to women, then it would mean that one-sixth of the male in jail. In fact, more than 60,000 men would not have been in prison if they were women. The findings speak volume and the need of being gender sensitive when issuing the criminal sentence. In some instances, women convicts have poor health, have little education, and they have children to look after. The children suffer a lot when the mother is jailed as compared to when the father is imprisoned. Although either situation makes the children separated from the parent, the gravity is much more significant when the lady is arrested and accused of the crime (James, 1990).

The gender disparity in the criminal justice courts results from multiple places. When two people man and woman commit the same crime, the judges rule based on the law but also use the stereotype that females are less dangerous, less threatening and less culpable. As a result of such stereotype, the court imposes a harsh punishment because they are believed to be more dangerous and more menacing. Also, looking at the criminal history ladies have committed fewer crimes compared to their male counterparts who commits crimes occasionally. The fact that girls have less criminal history can also have an impact on the decision.

Since there are no sentencing guidelines, the judges decide on their own and impose the sentence in whatever manner he or she thinks it is suitable. The decision is influenced by gender because a lady may appear weaker in the eyes of the deciding judge.During the medieval era, women were crucial in the society, but they never had the same rights as men. The community did not identify them as full citizens, so the status of a lady in that era depended on the father or husband. If the husband or the father held a crucial position in the society and a lady is convicted of the crime, she will receive preferential treatment. To make it worse men held important jobs in the community and no woman could defend the rest, the crimes committed by ladies at the time were something to do with basic needs. If a lady was not married, she could engage herself in petty theft because of lack of employment, and when she was convicted, she received the most terrible and humiliating punishment (Lawrence and Tracey, 2000).

Looking at the enlightenment time, a period between 17000 and 1820 women had become more enlightened in the society, and they committed different crimes as today. History has shown that ladies are always seen as the only victims, back then ladies were not considered as capable as gentlemen when committing offenses. Although they were capable of being brutal just like men, women never committed severe crimes as males. The first misdeed ladies conducted during that period include assault, prostitution, robbery, homicide and property crimes. Mothers are less likely to involve themselves in crimes than men. When a lady commits murder, it includes a domestic partner. Ladies who were caught committing crimes and were sentenced in court particularly if she had committed a violent crime (James, 1990). The woman would receive a harsh punishment than men.

In addition to the petty theft, women were accused of witchcraft, and they were not spared capital punishmentIn the 19th century, the rate of crimes among the ladies decreased, but the population and the institutions dealing with the women crimes had increased. The females at this era were seen as caring, passive and moral individuals. So if the lady commits an offense, she had also broken the traditional ideas of the feminists. Most of the ladies convicted of sin during this period were mostly the lower class because the upper level didn’t worry about money, their husbands provided them with enough money. Those from humble background did not have enough money, so they resorted to crime.

The common crimes committed by women during this era included housebreaking, petty theft such as pickpocketing and selling stolen items on behalf of men. The judicial system deals with this women in different ways. A lady who was convicted of small crimes is given lenient judgment. The court realized that ladies needed protection from negative influencers. The harsh punishment was directed towards men because they committed significant mistakes than ladies. Those women who were found guilty of committing horrible acts like homicide were punished by the judiciary and also labeled as problematic in the society (Lucia, 1991).

Also, from the history, it is found that ladies usually learn from the past mistake, and they often avoid any form of crime once they are released from the prison, but men are likely to repeat the same offense over and over even after serving many years in jail. Thus, the court should be hard on them. Research from 2003 to 2013 shows that female offenders are less likely than men lawbreakers to have been warned before for the last ten years. Only one-fifth of men are the first time offenders and two-thirds of the ladies are beginning time criminal.

The study suggests that men are likely to repeat the same crime he was previously convicted. Thus supporting the need to consider the gender during sentencing. Being lenient to women would be better since once she is out of prison, she is less likely to commit the same offense. Men, on the other hand, are likely to make the same mistake when they are released from jail. The judges, therefore, should give a harsh punishment to warn them of the consequences of breaking the law.

In 2013, ladies were most likely than men to have encouraging factors for offenses such as theft, dishonesty, fraud, and public order offenses. Men are also likely to have aggravating issues used in crimes than the other gender. The core mitigating factors for ladies include being remorse, the age of the accused, caring duties and lack of previous convictions. But gentlemen are less likely to have these elements considered the responsibility of care primarily men are not supposed to be central in taking care of the children, it is ladies who are believed to have the direct responsibility (Michael, 2013). The aggravating behaviors for men include previous convictions, being a member of particular gangster group, evidence of a degree of pre-meditation and the location of the offense. All these characters are rare to appear in ladies, but the use of weapons seems in similar proportions.

The different application of aggravating and mitigating factors by the sex contributed to a more significant extend the sentence, with men having the high probability of being given custody than ladies.

Shoplifting affects both genders in equal measures, but the proportion is higher for ladies than men. This offense made more than half of all the women who are convicted and almost a quarter of the sentenced are men. But men are likely to get the immediate custodial sentence.

The other factor that the court considers is the fact that men are more likely than women to run or break out of the prison once they are in jail. The ladies are patience enough to complete their term, a higher proportion of ladies will serve their sentence until it is over. But men are attempts to run out of a cell. The judge is hard to men because they are believed to break the law repeatedly. It is also known that ladies are less likely to defy the court order, but men do breach the court order.

Thus, leading them into more trouble with judges. Ladies are sincere, and they will tell the truth in the court, but gentlemen do lie mostly. One the court established that someone lied to the court, the accused is likely to serve the longer sentence than the one who spoke the truth at the court chambers. Research conducted in 2011 indicates that men offenders are likely to be imprisoned to immediate custody for breaching the court order. More than 73 percent of men received custodial sentence (Hopkins, Light and Lovbakke, 2011).

The scientist has also explained the reason why men and women are criminal in a different manner. The initial explanations of the female criminal stated that human and criminal behavior relates to biological and social factors. These theories argued that female and their criminal nature are secondary to that of men. The born penal theory believes that gender is the determinants of illegal characters, a man with primitive features are likely to be criminal. The argument concludes that the criminal ladies possess male features (Belknap, 2004).

The other idea is Criminality of Women states that the type of offense committed by ladies such as petty theft and shoplifting are not represented in statistics because concealment in the justice system and that they are not reported. The idea states that the criminality in men and women are the same, but it is less prevalent in ladies. The theory further suggests that females have deceitful nature, which is rooted in their role, ladies are the mastermind of crimes and convince men to perpetuate the act. By doing so, they clean their name, and the man is labeled criminal.

In conclusion, when convicted of the crime, the court should issues sentence based on gender because ladies are less dangerous, and their evil is an auxiliary to men. Females always commit minor mistakes as opposed to men. Also, women are more remorse, they are more likely to commit a crime only once, but gentlemen do it repeatedly. The most critical factor that the court considers is the role a lady plays in the family, she has the responsibility to take care of children, and once a lady is arrested with a young kid, the child is also jailed until a certain age where he or she is allowed to go home. Men are likely to breach the court orders as compared to ladies, which explain the reason why court issue sentence to gentlemen as soon as they are put under custody.

Banks, C. (2013). Criminal Justice Ethics. Journal of Justice, 46-65.

Belknap, J. (2004). Gender, Criminal and Justice. Journal of Criminology and Crime, 36-41.

Greenfelf Lawrence and Snell Tracey. (2000). Women Offenders. Statistics on Bureau of Justice, 3-14.

James, B. (1990). The Punishment of Women. In J. Burford, the Bridles and Burnings (pp. 206-227). New York: Press London.

Kathryn Hopkins, Miriam Light, and Jorgen Lovbakke. (2011). Evaluating Gender as A Factor Linked with Custodial Sentence for Breaching Court Order. Ministry of Justice, 2-7.

Lucia, Z. (1991). Women, Crimes and Penal Responses. A Historical Account, 307-360.

Michael, D. (2013). Research on Ladies and Criminal Justice System in 2013. Ministry of Justice, 62-67.

Mona, C. (2013). The Other Gender Divide: Where Men Suffer. The Guardian, 10-16.`

Cite this page

Gender equality and Crime. (2019, Nov 01). Retrieved from https://papersowl.com/examples/gender-equality-and-crime/

"Gender equality and Crime." PapersOwl.com , 1 Nov 2019, https://papersowl.com/examples/gender-equality-and-crime/

PapersOwl.com. (2019). Gender equality and Crime . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/gender-equality-and-crime/ [Accessed: 17 May. 2024]

"Gender equality and Crime." PapersOwl.com, Nov 01, 2019. Accessed May 17, 2024. https://papersowl.com/examples/gender-equality-and-crime/

"Gender equality and Crime," PapersOwl.com , 01-Nov-2019. [Online]. Available: https://papersowl.com/examples/gender-equality-and-crime/. [Accessed: 17-May-2024]

PapersOwl.com. (2019). Gender equality and Crime . [Online]. Available at: https://papersowl.com/examples/gender-equality-and-crime/ [Accessed: 17-May-2024]

Don't let plagiarism ruin your grade

Hire a writer to get a unique paper crafted to your needs.

Our writers will help you fix any mistakes and get an A+!

Please check your inbox.

You can order an original essay written according to your instructions.

Trusted by over 1 million students worldwide

1. Tell Us Your Requirements

2. Pick your perfect writer

3. Get Your Paper and Pay

Hi! I'm Amy, your personal assistant!

Don't know where to start? Give me your paper requirements and I connect you to an academic expert.

short deadlines

100% Plagiarism-Free

Certified writers

Gender and Crime Essay

Gender and Crime Sex is commonly used to describe the innate biological characteristics of humans constituting their femaleness or maleness. Gender on the other hand, covers the social characteristics and usages associated with one sex or the other. Since such roles and customs can vary and be modified it follows that masculine and feminine the terms applied to the respective genders are much more flexible than female and male. In order to cover the subject of gender and crime it is important to explain its prehistory and standing as well as addressing the extensive material which appeared in the modern …show more content…

These studies suggest a correlation between changing perceptions of women by bodies who enforce the criminal law and the increase in recorded female crime. Thirty years ago women were less likely to be suspected of crime, when suspected they were less likely to be change and prosecuted and finally, when prosecuted they were less likely to be convicted than they are today. Today they are more generally seen as being equally capable of committing both legitimate and illegitimate activities . in other words belief in the constitutional idea that women are somehow, physically or psychologically incapable or unlikely to be criminal is weakening . this is reflected in the more than proportionate increase in the number of women in prison. And most of types of crime committed by women are also committed by men and to a large extent both sexes live in the same environment and are subject to the same types of peer group pressures and effects on upbringing. There are a number of different strands of feminism each of which has impacted on criminology in different ways. Liberal feminism views women as an equal part of society. It centers on rights and non-discrimination. Criminology much of the work of this group has been associated with a study of the discriminatory practices of the criminal justice system,

Female Offenders Essay

The number of women incarcerated is growing at a rapid pace. This calls for a reevaluation of our correction institutions to deal with women’s involvement in crime. Increasing numbers of arrests for property crime and public order offenses are outpacing that of men. The “War on Drugs” has a big influence on why our prisons have become overcrowded in the last 25 years. Women are impacted more than ever because they are being convicted equally for drug and other offenses. Female criminal behavior has always been identified as minor compared to Male’s criminal behavior. Over the years women have made up only small part of the offender populations. There is still only a small

The Treatment Of Women Within The Criminal Justice System

There have been many changes in the treatment of offenders by the Criminal Justice System in England and Wales, particularly the treatment of female offenders. The handling of women within the criminal justice system has been closely tied to their social characteristics, and to what might be described as their ‘social construction’. On the other hand, women who compromise more than half of the world’s population, account for only 15% of criminal activity and as a consequence, relatively little attention has been given to them. This essay will explore how this has changed from a historical point of view to modern times, with exploration from cross-culture comparisons and an overview of the treatments of females in prisons.

Gender Politics in the Criminal Justice System Essay

• 16 Works Cited

The United States criminal justice system, an outwardly fair organization of integrity and justice, is a perfect example of a seemingly equal situation, which turns out to be anything but for women. The policies imposed in the criminal justice system affect men and women in extremely dissimilar manners. I plan to examine how gender intersects with the understanding of crime and the criminal justice system. Gender plays a significant role in understanding who commits what types of crimes, why they do so, who is most often victimized, and how the criminal justice system responds to these victims and offenders. In order to understand the current state of women and the way in which gender relates to crime and criminal justice, it is first

Gender and Serial Killers Essay

• 5 Works Cited

The stereotype that exists for individuals who commit serial murder is one that mainly includes males of a specific race. However, it is now known that white males are not the only individuals who commit serial murder. Men and women from all racial and ethnic backgrounds and socio-economic statuses have been found to be serial murderers. Although this information has been presented to society, the cultural schema of the white male serial killer is still prevalent. The assumptions that involve serial murderers often include two aspects, the serial murderer is male and the serial murder is a type of “lust murder”, often involving sexual crimes by a sadist (Keeney and Heide, 1995). Keeney and Heide (1994) define serial murder to be the

Essay On Women In Criminal Justice

A while ago when someone thinks of careers in criminal justice, they most likely imagine men in any positions that come to mind. Maybe because most feel the field of criminal justice is unsafe, stressful, and unpredictable. Before 1972, the number of women employed in the criminal justice system as police officers, correctional officers, lawyers, and judges was a small number. This is understandable: statistics from a study conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs – Bureau of Justice Statistics show that men outnumber women in all areas of federal law enforcement, in most places making up at least 75 percent of the workforce. Now according to the United States Department of Labor, women make up 46.8% of the US workforce.

The Media Of Female Offenders

Criminality is still assumed to be a masculine characteristic and women lawbreakers are therefore observed to be either ‘not women’ or ‘not criminals’ (Worrall 1990, p. 31). Female offenders are hallmarked for tireless and inescapable coverage if they fit into the rewarding newsworthy categories of violent or sexual. It is always important to note the reason for overrepresentation of women criminals in the media. “Women who commit serious offences are judged to have transgressed two sets of laws: criminal laws and the laws of nature” (Jewkes 2011, p. 125). Such women are hence “doubly deviant and doubly damned” (Lloyd, 1995). When women commit very serious crimes, such as murder, they attract

Women in Law Enforcement Essay

• 8 Works Cited

Gender inequality still plays a huge role in today’s society. Women comprise only a small percentage of the local law enforcement agencies across the nation. Women have been a part of law enforcement since the 20th century but have only been noticed within the last 40 years. Back in the 1970’s women rarely held positions in law enforcement and if they did it was mainly clerical/desk positions. Even though the amount of women in law enforcement today has increased, women still only make up roughly around 13 percent of the law enforcement work force (Public). Women can make such an impact in the Law Enforcement field if given a fair chance but they may face many problems when doing so. Some say that women don’t belong, while others suggest

Essay on Female Serial Killers

Since 1970, there has been an increasing and alarming rise 138 percent of violent crimes committed by women. Still, while the equivalent percentage compared to male violence is small 15 percent to 85 percent the fact that the numbers have elevated so drastically points to something changing in society.

Feminism And The Criminal Justice System

According to Lilly, Cullen, and Ball (232) Feminist theory has been on the back burner of modern criminology until the late 19th century. As with the other criminology theories there are many thoughts and ideas on why females commit crimes. In the beginning the theories seem to revolve around the victimization of the female gender. Then criminologist took a look at female delinquency, prostitution, and gender inequality in the criminal justice system. Lilly (233) wrote that Lombroso used physiological traits to determine what type of women would commit crime. Lombroso also argued that the women that committed the most crime were more masculine then the women who did not commit crime. He used physiological immobility, and passivity to make the argument. Lilly (235) also wrote that Sigmund Freud believed the reason women committed crime was because they has “penis envy”. Since women were physical different than men, women would become more aggressive trying to act like the male counterpart in order to fit in with the status quo.

What Has Feminism Feminist Criminology?

The way feminism relates to criminology shows it has had an impact, this has led to change as well as differences in opinion. Feminism was introduced as a way to focus on destroying the inequalities between men and women. According to the views and opinions on criminal or deviant behaviour in the 1970s is that the relations made lead to further information been discovered in the 1980s and 1990s. Also, different types of feminism were made known such as liberal, socialists, radical and bourgeois.

Female Offenders And Male Offenders

Statistics show that the number of female offenders in the legal system has been increasing steadily. The number of female offenders entering the American justice system is growing at a rate faster than males. Statistics from the United States in 2010 show the female offender population to be increasing by 2.7% each year, compared to the male population at a rate of 1.8% each year, with similar statistics being seen in other Western countries (West & Sabol, 2010). The continued increase has made understanding female offenders and their catalysts for committing crime more imperative.

Implications of Feminist Criminology for Criminal Justice

All feminist theorists share a common focus on gender inequality; however feminism can be described as a set of perspectives rather than a single viewpoint (Strider, N.d.). Therefore, challenging gender biasness in the criminal justice system from the feminist perspective can take many forms given the fact that there a lot of sources of gender inequality in the system. For example, the early theories of criminal behavior largely ignored gender all together and as a result the field has become largely male dominated and males have also been shown to commit more crimes than women on average.

Social deprivation and crime are inextricably linked

Gender is clearly one of the major factors in the causes of crime as men commit far more crimes than women. “90% of those found guilty are men.” – the poverty site

Describe the Basis of Feminist Criminology

I believe that this train of thought addresses the cause of criminal behavior in women because many viewpoints that fall under the umbrella of feminism are given as different causes of criminal conduct in women .Feminist criminology lacks evidence of a woman’s crime. Women's activist theories not only strive to elucidate criminal wrong doing, exploitation and additionally join together theory with practice to create more impartial answers for the crime at hand.

Essay on Feminist Criminology

Feminist criminology emerged out of the realisation that criminology has from its inception centred on men and the crimes they commit. Although it can be argued female criminality was researched by Lombroso, as far back as 1800’s, female crime, it’s causes and the impact in which it had on society was largely ignored by the criminological futurity. Those Criminologist who did attempt to research female crime such as Thomas and Pollak were not only very damning of women but were also very condescending, choosing to stereotype them as either Madonna or whore (Feinman).

Related Topics

• Criminal justice