gender and crime

• In 2012 4/5 convicted offenders in England and Wales were male
• Polak said men have a protective attitude to women and hate to arrest or accuse them
• Farrington and Morris studied 408 offences of theft and that women were not sentenced more leniently
• Heidnson said that the patriarchal society imposes greater control over women, reducing opportunities to offend
• Dobash said that men have financial control to deny activities to keep women confined
• Carlen says humans are controlled by rewards to confirm to norms e.g class and gender deals
• Adler said that growing female criminality is due to changing gender roles
• Jackson Katz says that men have a tough guise that they learn early in life to prove their masculinity
• Messerschmidt says that men turn to crime to assert masculinity when other means are blocked
• Theories on gender and crime include: assertion of masculinity theory, sex role theory, chivalry thesis, patriarchal control and the liberation thesis
• Parsons put forward the sex role theory that boys and girls are socialised differently making boys more predisposed to crime
• The female crime rate began rising in 1950 - long before the women's liberation movement, which emerged in late 1950s.