Crime and Gender
When looking at crime statistics, we are often astonished by the gender gap. In the
United States in 2003, only 23 percent of people arrested for all crimes were women.
The gender gap narrowed only in three white-collar crimes—forgery, fraud, and
embezzlement—and women outranked men in prostitution and runaways. Otherwise,
women were significantly less likely to be arrested, less likely to be convicted, and
less likely to serve sentences. And yet the United States has the largest female arrest
and conviction rate in the world: 8.54 per 1,000, nearly double the United Kingdom
and four times higher than Canada (Justice Policy Institute, 2005; Schaffner, 2006).
Nonetheless, when we say crime,we might as well say male.
The gender gap may be influenced by the “chivalry effect”: police, judges, and
juries are likely to perceive women as less dangerous and their criminal activities less
consequential, so they are more often let go with a warning (Pollak, 1978). Women
who belong to stigmatized groups, who are Black, Hispanic, or lesbian, are more likely
to be arrested and convicted, perhaps because they are not granted the same status
as women in the mainstream. Feminists note that women receive harsher treatment
when their behavior deviates from feminine stereotypes, that is, when they “act like
a man” (Edwards, 1986).
But even when we take the chivalry effect into account, men still commit more
violent crimes and property crimes than women. Some criminologists argue that bio-
logically, males are a lot more aggressive and violent, and that explains the high lev-
els of assaults and other violent crimes. However, this biological theory does not
CRIME IN THE UNITED STATES 189Firearm Death Rates
Deaths per 100,000war zonefewer than 5
5–11
more than 11
no dataPuerto RicoHaitiJamaica
VenezuelaBrazilColombia
EcuadorHondurasEl SalvadorGuatemalaAlgeriaIvory
CoastLiberiaSudanUganda
KenyaDem. Rep.of the Angola
CongoSouth
AfricaSwaziland
LesothoRussiaKashmirNepalIndonesiaAlbania IraqPapua
New GuineaUnited States—10.08
Japan—0.08Highest:
Lowest:Switzerland—6.40
South Korea—0.10France—4.93
England/Wales—0.31Finland—4.51
Poland—0.44Belgium—3.67
Spain—0.75Industrialized countries’ death rates from firearmsFIGURE 6.3 Guns: The Global Death Toll
Source: Newsweek, April 30, 2007.