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Essay on Women as Violent Offenders
The growth rate of female offenders has continued to rise. The offenses that female offenders are committing have become more violent. The number of girls entering the juvenile system has continued to grow. Issues such as victimization demand more attention. The impact that incarcerated parents have on their children is still extreme. And staffing issues remain a concern and often a source of public controversy.
Although most research professes to see major changes over time in the female percentage of arrests, the numbers for 1960, 1975, and 1990 are perhaps more remarkable for their similarity than for their differences. For all three periods, the female share of arrests for most categories was 15% or less and was typically smallest for the most serious offenses. Major change is found principally for the female share of arrests for minor property crimes such as larceny and fraud, which averaged between 15% and 17% in 1960, but jumped to between 30% and 43% by 1990.
The relatively low female participation in serious offending is corroborated by data from the NCVS (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1992). In NCVS interviews, victims are asked the sex of offender, and totals turn out to be quite close to those found in UCR data. In 1990, for example, women are reported to be responsible for about 7% of robberies, 12% of aggravated assaults, 15% of simple assaults, 5% of burglaries, and 5% of motor vehicle thefts reported by victims. These percentages have held unchanged since the NCVS began in the mid-1970s.
The pattern of a higher female share of offending for mild forms of lawbreaking and a much lower share for serious offenses is confirmed by the numerous surveys in which persons (generally juveniles) have been asked to report on their own offenses. This holds both for prevalence of offending (the percent of the male and female samples that report any offending) andz.....
