Gender, crime and justice

• Most crime appears to be committed by males. Three out of four convicted offenders are male.
• Among offenders, a higher proportion of females are convicted of property offences (except burglary), while a higher proportion of males are convicted of violent or sexual offences.
• Males are more likely to commit serious crimes.
• Chivalry thesis


  The idea that women are less likely to be prosecuted for their offences because the criminal justice system is more lenient to women
• Evidence for the chivalry thesis

  • Self-report studies suggest that female offenders are treated more leniently
  • Young males were 2.33 times more likely than females to admit to having committed an offence in the previous year, whereas the official statistics show males as four times more likely to offend
  • Compared with men, women are also more likely to be cautioned rather than prosecuted
  • Women were about one third less likely to be jailed in similar cases
  • Females are more likely to receive a fine and less likely to be sent to prison
• Evidence against the chivalry thesis

  • Women were not sentenced more leniently for comparable offences
  • Women who commit serious offences are not treated more favourably than men
  • Twice as many males shoplifting were witnessed, despite the fact that the numbers of male and female offenders in the official statistics are roughly equal
• Self-report studies show that males commit more offences, and the more serious the offence, the greater the gender gap.
• Many male crimes do not get reported, e.g. rape. Crimes of the powerful (mainly committed by men) are also under-reported.
• Bias against women


  Feminists argue that the criminal justice system treats women more harshly, especially when they deviate from gender norms of monogamous heterosexuality and motherhood
• Functionalist sex role theory


  • Women perform the expressive role at home, including responsibility for socialisation, which gives girls an adult role model, but boys reject feminine models of behaviour
  • Men take the instrumental role, performed largely outside the home, which also makes socialisation more difficult for boys
• Heidensohn's control theory


  • Patriarchal control operates at home, in public and at work to impose greater control over women, thus reducing their opportunities to offend
• Carlen's class and gender deals


  • Working-class women are generally led to conform through the promise of the class deal (a decent standard of living) and the gender deal (the material and emotional rewards of family life)
  • As they had gained nothing from either deal, they felt they had nothing to lose by using crime to escape from poverty
• Liberation thesis


  As women become liberated from patriarchy, their offending will become similar to men's
• Recent increases in female convictions for violence suggest women are now committing more 'male' crimes, which seems to support the liberation thesis.
• However, other evidence suggests there has been no change in women's involvement in violent crime, and the increase in female convictions may be due to the justice system 'widening the net' and prosecuting females for less serious violence than previously.
• More men than women are victims of violence or homicide, but more women than men are victims of intimate violence. One in four women will experience domestic abuse during their adult life.
• Five times more women reported having been sexually assaulted, but only 8% of females who had experienced serious sexual assault reported it to the police.
• Women have a greater fear of crime but the Crime Survey for England and Wales shows they are at less risk.
• Messerschmidt's concept of masculinity

  • Hegemonic masculinity is the dominant form of masculinity and the one that most men wish to accomplish, defined through paid work, the ability to subordinate women, and heterosexuality
  • Some lower-class and minority ethnic group men lack the resources to accomplish hegemonic masculinity and so turn to crime, while some middle-class men also use crime to achieve hegemonic masculinity, but in their case it is white-collar or corporate crime