Sex differences in crime

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Sex differences in crime are differences between men and women as the perpetrators and/or victims of crime.

Such studies may belong to fields such as criminology or sociobiology (which attempts to demonstrate a causal relationship between biological factors, in this case sex, and human behaviors), etc. Despite the difficulty to interpret them, crime statistics may provide a way to investigate such a relationship, whose possible existence would be interesting from a gender differences perspective. An observable difference in crime rates between men and women might be due to social and cultural factors, crimes going unreported, or to biological factors (as sociobiological theories claim). Furthermore, the nature of the crime itself must be considered.

Crime can be measured by such data as arrest records, imprisonment rates, and surveys. However, not all crimes are reported or investigated. Moreover, some studies show that men can have an overwhelming bias against reporting themselves to be the victims of a crime (particularly when victimized by a woman), and some studies have argued that women tend to get preferential treatment from law enforcement agencies and the courts.[1][2][3]

Studies generally find that males are incarcerated for crimes more often than females[citation needed], particularly for violent crimes[citation needed]. However, men are also generally more likely than women to be the victims of violent crime[citation needed], with the exception of rape.[citation needed]

Contents

Statistical data [edit]

In the United States [edit]

Further information: Crime in the United States

In the United States, men are much more likely to be incarcerated than women. Nearly 9 times as many men (5,037,000) as women (581,000) had ever at one time been incarcerated in a State or Federal prison at year end 2001. However, women are the fastest-growing demographic group in prison. [1].

In 2004, males were almost 10 times more likely than females to commit murder, including rape-homicides. However, men are also far more likely than women to be the victims of violent crime, with the exception of rape.[2]

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reports that for each year between 2000 and 2005, "female parents acting alone" were most likely to be perpetrators of child abuse.[4] Even after accounting for the greater number of females as primary caretakers of children, women still tend to commit more child abuse, neglect and homicide.[5]

In 2010, the National Institute of Justice reported that American adolescents were the age group most likely to be victims of violent crime, while American men were more likely than American women to be victims of violent crime, and blacks were more likely than Americans of other races to be victims of violent crime.[6]

One study showed that women were more likely than men to deem certain behaviors that are criminal or unethical, such as inflating an insurance claim or using "cheap foreign labor," to be less acceptable (Fisher, 1999).

In Canada [edit]

Further information: Crime in Canada

According to a Canadian Public Health Agency report, the rate of violent crime doubled among male youth during the late 1980s and 1990s, while it almost tripled among female youth. It rose for the latter from 2.2 per 1,000 in 1988 to a peak of 5.6 per 1,000 in 1996, and began to decline in 1999. Some researchers have suggested that the increase on crime statistics could be partly explained by the stricter approach to schoolyard fights and bullying, leading to a criminalization of behaviours now defined as "assault" behaviours (while they were simply negatively perceived before). The increase in the proportion of female violent crime would thus be explained more by a change in law enforcement policies than by effective behaviour of the population itself. According to the report aforementioned, "Evidence suggests that aggressive and violent behaviour in children is linked to family and social factors, such as social and financial deprivation; harsh and inconsistent parenting; parents’ marital problems; family violence, whether between parents, by parents toward children or between siblings; poor parental mental health; physical and sexual abuse; and alcoholism, drug dependency or other substance misuse by parents or other family members.".[7]

Aggressivity and gender [edit]

Further information: Aggression#Gender

Males are typically more openly and violently aggressive than females (Coie & Dodge 1997, Maccoby & Jacklin 1974, Buss 2005), which violent crime statistics support.

Some researchers have suggested that females are not necessarily less aggressive, but that they tend to show their aggression in more covert and less physical ways (e.g., Passive-aggressive behavior). For example, females may display more verbal and relational aggression, such as social rejection.[8][9] Additionally, some data shows that while men are more likely than women to use physical aggression overall, rates of physical aggression within the context of dating and marriage tend to be similar for men and women, or that women are even more likely to commit domestic violence against a partner.[10][11][12][13] However, such data generally shows that men tend to inflict the greater share of injuries in domestic violence.[14]

Sociobiological and evolutionary psychology perspective [edit]

Further information: Sociobiology and Sociobiological theories of rape

Evolutionary psychology has proposed several evolutionary explanations for gender differences in aggressiveness. Males can increase their reproductive success by polygyny which will lead the competition with other males over females. If the mother died this may have had more serious consequences for a child than if the father died in the ancestral environment since there is a tendency for greater parental investments and caring for children by females than by males. Greater caring for children also leads to difficulty leaving them in order to either fight or flee. Anne Campbell writes that females may thus avoid direct physical aggressiveness and instead use strategies such as "friendship termination, gossiping, ostracism, and stigmatization". [15]

Sociology of Gender and Crime [edit]

Further information: Feminist school of criminology

Considerations of gender in regard to crime have been considered to be largely ignored and pushed aside in criminological and sociological study, until recent years, to the extent of female deviance having been marginalised (Heidensohn, 1995). In the past fifty years of sociological research into crime and deviance sex differences were understood and quite often mentioned within works, such as Merton's theory of anomie, however, they were not critically discussed, and often any mention of female delinquency was only as comparative to males, to explain male behaviour's, or through defining the girl as taking on the role of a boy, namely, conducting their behaviour and appearance as that of a 'tomboy' and by rejecting the female role Gang Violence In The PostIndustrial Era, adopting stereotypical masculine traits.

One key reason contended for this lack of attention to females in crime and deviance is due to the view that female crime has almost exclusively been dealt with by men, from policing through to legislators, and that this has continued through into the theoretical approaches, quite often portraying what could be considered as a one-sided view, as Mannheim suggested Feminism and Criminology In Britain (Heidensohn, 1995).

However, other contentions have been made as explanations for the invisibility of women in regard to theoretical approaches, such as: females have an '...apparently low level of offending' (Heidensohn, 1995); that they pose less of a social threat than their male counterparts; that their 'delinquencies tend to be of a relatively minor kind' Girls In The Youth Justice System(Heidensohn, 1995), but also due to the fear that including women in research could threaten or undermine theories, as Thrasher and Sutherland feared would happen with their research (Heidensohn, 1995).

Further theories have been contended, with many debates surrounding the involvement and ignoring of women within theoretical studies of crime, however, with new approaches and advances in feminist studies and masculinity studies, and the claims of increases in recent years in female crime, especially that of violent crime Girls In The Youth Justice System more attention seems to be becoming of this topic.

Sex Differences Within the Court System [edit]

At least one study has noted substantial differences in the treatment and behavior of defendants in the courts on the basis of gender; female criminologist Frances Heidensohn postulates that for judges and juries it is often "impossible to isolate the circumstances that the defendant is a woman from the circumstances that she can also be a widow, a mother, attractive, or may cry on the stand."[16] Furthermore, male and female defendants in court have reported being advised to conduct themselves differently in accordance with their gender; women in particular recall being advised to express "mute passivity," whereas men are encouraged to "assert themselves" in cross-examinations and testimony.[17]

See also [edit]

References [edit]

  1. ^ "[M]en who are involved in disputes with their partners, whether as alleged victims or as alleged offenders or both, are disadvantaged and treated less favorably than women by the law-enforcement system at almost every step." Brown, G. (2004). Gender as a factor in the response of the law-enforcement system to violence against partners. Sexuality and Culture, 8, (3-4), 3-139.
  2. ^ Felson, R. B., & Pare, P. (2005). The reporting of domestic violence and sexual assault by nonstrangers to the police. Journal of Marriage and Family, 67, 597-610
  3. ^ Felson, R. B. (2008). The legal consequences of intimate partner violence for men and women. Children and Youth Services Review, 30, 639-646.
  4. ^ Stats for 2000; Stats for 2001; Stats for 2002; Stats for 2003; Stats for 2004; Stats for 2005.
  5. ^ "A 1999 report by the US Department of Health and Human Services revealed that, adjusting for the greater number of single mothers, a child is five times more likely to be murdered by a single mother than by a single father, and that children are 88% more likely to be seriously injured from abuse or neglect by their mothers than by their fathers." Glenn Sacks, "American Fathers Get A Bad Rap." (2002), accessed 01 March 2013
  6. ^ "Victims and Victimization," modified September 20, 2010, accessed 01 March 2013
  7. ^ Aggressive Girls, Public Health Agency of Canada, last updated 10 June 2006, URL accessed on April 13, 2007
  8. ^ Bjorkqvist, Kaj, Kirsti M. Lagerspetz, and Karin Osterman. "Sex Differences in Covert Aggression." Aggressive Behavior 202 (1994): 27-33. 6 Dec. 2006
  9. ^ Hines, Denise A., and Kimberly J. Saudino. "Gender Differences in Psychological, Physical, and Sexual Aggression Among College Students Using the Revised Conflict Tactics Scales." Violence and Victims 18 (2003): 197-217. 7 Dec. 2006
  10. ^ Archer, J. (2000). Sex differences in aggression between heterosexual partners: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 126, 651-680.
  11. ^ "[W]omen reported the expression of as much or more violence in their relationships as men." Bookwala, J., Frieze, I. H., Smith, C., & Ryan, K. (1992). Predictors of dating violence: A multi variate analysis. Violence and Victims, 7, 297-311.
  12. ^ Dutton, D. G., Nicholls, T. L., & Spidel, A. (2005). Female perpetrators of intimate abuse. Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, 41, (4) 1-31.
  13. ^ "[R]ates of commission of acts and initiation of violence were similar across gender." Makepeace, J. M. (1986). Gender differences in courtship violence victimization. Family Relations, 35, 383-388.
  14. ^ Archer, 2000
  15. ^ The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, edited by David M. Buss, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2005. Chapter 21 by Anne Campbell.
  16. ^ Heidensohn, Frances (1986). Women and Crime. New York: New York University Press. 
  17. ^ Heidensohn, Frances (1986). Women and Crime. New York: New York University Press. 

Bibliography [edit]

External links [edit]
Gender and sexual identities
Gender identities
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See also
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