Purpose and Need for Study (Heimer, Lauritsen & Lynch 2009): Authors seeks use this rejoinder to emphasize the “big picture”—the major issues that have emerged regarding changes in the gender gap in offending over time and the use of the NCVS to illuminate such changes. address the issue of counting female and male involvement in multiple-offender incidents, and the weighting adjustments to account for changes in the redesigned NCVS. The gender gap in violent offending appears to have narrowed over time, largely because male decreases in offending have been greater than female decreases since the middle 1990s. The researchers seeks to introduce the new trends in the gender gap in offending, and by correcting some substantive misstatements about our article by SSZA.
Main Findings: (Heimer, Lauritsen & Lynch 2009):
- Authors disagree with the critique of their work by the SSZA (2009) regarding the statement on the utility of the NCVS as a source of data on crime trends, especially in case of crime disaggregated by gender. Authors underline, that this same team of researchers from SSZA previously maintained that the NCVS is a suitable data describing of the gap in female and male UCR arrest rates (Steffensmeier et al., 2005, 2006)
- Contrary, the NAS report concludes about the real decreases in the rate of crime over time, prevented the NCVS has reached a point where it cannot detect reasonably large year-to-year changes in some crime rates.
- NAS committee’s task of
The findings on the website show how female offenders have been perceived as less violent offender compared to males (NCJRS). Although, in the past females were perceived to commit minor offenses, but there has been a rise in females committing violent offense (NCJRS). There has also been a rise in the percentage of female offender overall, which younger girls represent a larger proportion of juvenile arrest (NCJRS). The reason for this could be many younger girls are experiencing trauma, abuse, violence, and poverty issues at home. For example, if a younger female leaves in a home and all she sees is her mother and father fight, which could lead her to think that it’s okay. She also gets beaten by her father and her mother never say anything so she might think it’s a way of life. This cause for whenever this younger female gets into a confrontation at school, she automatically leads to violence. The reason why is that’s all she seen growing up. The victimization that the female offender go through cause them to have different needs compared to male offenders. The findings on NCJRS states how due to the different victimization females go through they are more likely to be addicted to drugs and have mental
The official statistics often comply with the common assumption that men commit more crimes then women. According to official statistics, in 2005, 1.8 million offenders were guilty in which 79% were male and 7% of these were aged fewer than 18. The ratio of
The United States criminal justice system, an outwardly fair organization of integrity and justice, is a perfect example of a seemingly equal situation, which turns out to be anything but for women. The policies imposed in the criminal justice system affect men and women in extremely dissimilar manners. I plan to examine how gender intersects with the understanding of crime and the criminal justice system. Gender plays a significant role in understanding who commits what types of crimes, why they do so, who is most often victimized, and how the criminal justice system responds to these victims and offenders. In order to understand the current state of women and the way in which gender relates to crime and criminal justice, it is first
In chapter 4 the chapter considers a variety of possible explanations for the significant drop in crime and crime rates that occurred in the 1990s. Based on articles that appeared in the country’s largest newspapers, the authors compile a list of the leading, commonly offered explanations. The next step is to systematically examine each explanation and consider whether available data support the explanation. What the authors, in fact, demonstrate is that in all but three cases–increased reliance on prisons, increased number of police, and changes in illegal drug markets–correlation was erroneously interpreted as causation and in some cases, the correlation wasn’t even that strong.
The results of other studies have shown that females are often underrepresented in every arrest category except for status offenses and larceny theft when compared with self-report data on delinquent behavior (Bartollas,
The unanticipated declines in rates of violent crimes in the United States caught many policymakers and researchers off guard. From 1991 to 1997, murder rates declined in five of the six years and robbery rates declined in all six years. Murder rates dropped by 30.6% and robbery by 31.8%. Rape rates fell by 15.1% and aggravated assault rates by 11.8%. This decline was one of the most substantial police and researchers had seen.”
Female youth, under the age of 18, encompass one of the fastest growing divisions in the juvenile justice system. In past years, female youth arrests accounted for 670,800 arrests, or a total of 27%, during 1999. During 1990 and 1999, their arrests increased over males in most offense categories and overall increased 83%. In 2006, the FBI statistics indicated that aggravated assaults decreased for both boys and girls, but in the category of simple assaults, boys again decreased but shockingly the girl’s
(Cauffman 5). Research shows that the person-offense case rates for girls have increased thirteen percent while boys’ fell eleven percent between a twelve year span (1995-2007) (Stevens et al. 2). Understanding the increase of girls’ presence in violent crime is an important step in explaining the gender disparity in the system as a whole. These statistics suggest that girls are simply becoming more violent, very quickly, while boys are becoming less violent. Criminologists and sociologists are not convinced that this is the case. The first section of this paper will discuss alternative explanations as to why there is such an increase of girls in the juvenile justice system.
Violent offenders are readily one of the most interesting topics of criminal justice. In 2015, blank percent of crime was accounted for by homicide, robbery, assault, and more. Research on violent offenders typically focuses on male offenders, however, emerging research has focused more on violent female offenders. A small amount of studies that have examined violent offenders using an intersectional approach have found that offenders often differ in their acts based on gender, race, class, and other structural factors (Bernard, 2013; Potter, 2013; Baskin & Sommers, 1993; Miller, 1998 add more). These differences could be due to various elements and constructs; however, it is something to further explore as they can relate back to systems of inequality.
Gender is clearly one of the major factors in the causes of crime as men commit far more crimes than women. “90% of those found guilty are men.” – the poverty site
In the UK females hold over half the population but yet have always played a lesser role in crime statistics. This has been a pattern seen throughout the last century with statistics, the criminal justice system and crime remaining male dominated. This
The characteristics of these offenders and the crimes they are committing are also changing over time. Demographically the juvenile female offender is most likely coming from a single parent home and may have been physically or sexually abused at some point in her life. She will also most likely be under the age of 15 and even more likely to be a woman of color, African-American young woman comprise almost 50 percent of all young women in secure detention, while Hispanics make up 13 percent (Bergsmann, 1994). In 1996, females represented 57 percent of the arrests for running away. In 1996, females represented 15 percent of juvenile arrests for violent crimes, while arrests of boys for violent offenses declined by 9 percent (Snyder, 1997). Aggravated assault, the most frequent of the violent offenses committed by juveniles, represented 20 percent of all arrests for juvenile females, while declining for boys by 10 percent (Snyder, 1997). In considering these changes it is still important to note that girls are still arrested more often for status offenses it is becoming more evident that girls are engaging in delinquent behaviors more often
Overall, the population of women in the criminal justice system is the fastest growing (Ramirez, 2012). Women in prison have gone up over twenty percent and over fifteen percent in probation. Another staggering percentage is women arrested after getting out which is thirty percent of sixty
Female Criminality consists of several outdated statistics regarding the rise of female offending. However, in viewing the current research on the subject, it appears that the overall theme of this dissertation's discussion is still relevant despite changes in the accompanying statistics as seen in viewing the following topics: the rise in female offending; the continual rise that females are committing more crimes than men; and the types of crimes that women are committing. In viewing Bruce Gross's 2009 article, "Battle of the Sexes: The Nature of Female Delinquency," as well as Elizabeth Cauffman's 2008 article, "Understanding the Female Offender," one can begin to see where current statistics regarding the female criminal lie.
The social process and traditional structure theory explained why female crime rates are rather lower than males. The social process theory tend to explain the traditional crime with regards to differential opportunity to lean criminal techniques and values. The use of the traditional theory shows evidence in which considered the overlap on the causes of crimes committed by both genders. Studies shows that both male and female offenders that came in contact with the criminal justice system often came from a social background that are typically of low socioeconomic status, poorly educated, under or unemployed, and minority groups (Steffensmeir and Allan, 1995). The only difference between male and female offenders is, female