Gender

• Heidensohn


  Gender differences are perhaps the most significant feature of recorded crime.
• Official statistics

  4/5 convicted offenders in England and Wales are male.

  By age 40, 9% of females had a criminal conviction, compared to 32% of males.
• Gender differences in crime

  Men - ‘more serious crime’ - violent crime, sexual offences, repeat offenders.

  Women - ‘less serious crime’ - property crime, mostly shoplifting, prostitution.
• Lombroso & Ferrero

  Criminality is innate and there are very few ‘born female criminals.’
• Dabbs & Carr

  Testosterone hypothesis:

  Found that those convicted of violent crimes such as rape and murder had high levels of testosterone compared to those convicted of non-violent crimes.
• Pollack

  Chivalry thesis:

  Men have a protective attitude towards women, therefore the criminal justice system is more lenient with women.
• Graham & Bowling

  Research found that males were 2.33 times more likely to admit to having committed an offence in the previous 12 months, whereas official statistics show males are 4x more likely to offend.
• Flood-Page et al

  Found that, whilst only 1 in 11 female self-reported offenders had been cautioned or prosecuted, the figure for males was over 1 in 7 self-reported offenders.
• Women more likely to be cautioned than prosecuted

  According to the Ministry of Justice (2009), 49% of females recorded as offending received a caution compared to males, who’s figure was 30%.
• Hood

  Study found that women were about 1/3 less likely to be jailed in similar cases.
• Farrington & Morris

  Study of sentencing of 408 offences of theft in a magistrates court found that women were not sentenced more leniently for comparable offences.
• Buckle & Farrington


  Observational study of shoplifting:

  Twice as many males than females witnessed shoplifting.

  Suggests female shoplifters may be more likely to be prosecuted than men.
• Box


  If women are treated more leniently, it is because their offences are less serious.
• Heidensohn


  Courts treat women more harshly when they deviate from gender norms.
• Parsons

  Difficulty socialising boys as men play the instrumental role, leaving women responsible for socialising children.
• The New Right 


  The absence of a male role model in line parent families leads to boys turning to criminal street gangs as a source of status and identity.
• Walklate 


  Criticises the functionalist sex role theory for its biological assumptions. Argues that Parsons wrongly assumes that because women can bare children, they are best suited to the expressive role.
• Heidensohn (feminist explanation) 


  Patriarchal control theory:

  Control at home - women’s domestic role, domestic violence (Dobash & Dobash), control over daughters (bedroom culture).

  Control in public - threat of male violence, respectability.

  Control at work.

  Fewer opportunities for crime.
• Messerschmidt

  Crime and deviance is a means that some men may use to accomplish masculinity:

  White m/c youths - have to subordinate themselves to teachers. Outside school their masculinity takes an oppositional form.

  White w/c youths - less chance of educational success so their masculinity is always oppositional.

  Black lower w/c youths - may have few expectations of a reasonable job so use gang membership or violence to express their masculinity, or property crime to achieve material success.
• Winlow

  Globalisation -> deindustrialisation -> loss if traditionally male jobs -> express their masculinity through other careers -> bouncers -> paid work, opportunity for illegal business ventures, violence.
• Adler

  Liberation thesis:

  If patriarchal control prevents women from offending, in an equal society women’s crime rates will be the same as men’s.