Introduction
How does the factor of gender impact the concept of violent offending?
One of the most commonly held notions is that males have a higher propensity to commit violent crimes compared to women. This holding is one of the most widely held concepts in the area of criminology. However, there is a growing debate as to the scope of the “gender gap” in terms of violent offending has shifted in recent years. A number of commentators hold that the gap is described in terms of its stability; others proffer that there is an observable closing of the gap, particularly in terms of reporting a number of crimes in recent years. Regrettably, some of the perceptions of women as violent offenders have been tainted by media reports. The significance of the media reports are often overblown and are also portrayed as more belligerent than the men. Researchers however tend to debunk these holdings, averring that women have not “gone berserk” and that these are less violent than the men (Lauritsen, Heimer, Lynch, 2009, pp. 361-362).
Over the past several years, commentators have focused their works to the areas of gender and issues in violent crimes and victimization. Recently, there has been a great deal of interest in this issue was marked by shifts in arrest rates for women starting in the latter part of the 1980s that continued into the early part of the 2000s. At this time, arrest rates for girls committing belligerent crimes against persons such as assault skyrocketed and decelerated at a slower pace compared to the numbers for male offenders with the same crimes.
It was also noted that during this time frame, more female offenders entered high security detention facilities for crimes against persons such as simple and exacerbated assault cases. Though the data continued to show that women remained ‘traditional targets’ for violent crimes, the data also showed that women and girls are also shown to have a higher propensity for arrests and incarceration for violent crimes; this is particularly true in the area of marginalized women from the minorities in the society that are unequally represented in the data from the criminal as well as the juvenile criminal systems (Jones, Flores, 2013, p. 72).
Literature Review
What is currently known about the relationship of gender to violent crimes? Are these still holding up?
Though men are still considered the perpetrators in the large part of violent crimes, there is growing research data that the participation of women in the commission of belligerent has been on the upswing during the past decade. In this light, there is a heightening interest as to the reasons why women behave in a violent manner. In the data for female offenders in federal prisons, the literature proffers that one half of the women that have been accosted for belligerent crimes were either already in detention or were undergoing community rehabilitation programs. Many of the women arrested or in detention in a facility adjacent to their local community with many of these women serving sentences ranging from robbery to second degree murder; in addition, the women were in their mid-30s, and many of the women were “white (Bottos, 2007, p. 4).
There is an increased apprehension regarding the change in the behaviors among female truants, shifting from sexual looseness to that of the “hostile, aggressive, lethal” female criminal. Truant behaviors are commonly linked with expressions of masculinity from the working class; this conduct is also linked to women trying to assert themselves in a world dominated by men. This shift in the behavior of women from one traditionally associated with feminine attributes to a “masculinized” sociopathic, belligerent, and aggressive posture is commonly connected to cultural stereotypes that women are seen in the media; films such Mean Girls and Tomb Raider: Lara Croft and in television shows such as Ladettes portray an overly romanticized depiction of what is violent female behavior, seductive and brutal at both times (Carrington, 2013, pp. 5-6).
Denno (1994) avers that the factor of gender is one of the strongest indicators of crime. Arrests, self-disclosure and victimization statistics persistently evince the fact that males-adults and juveniles-commit more instances of crime, serious or not, compared to criminal information for females. This template is still widely held and defended even though there is data that criminal instances committed by females are on the rise. Proofs also posit that males are traditionally more belligerent than females even in the preschool years. Nevertheless, a number of postulates and reasoning for criminal activity are “gender blind.” These either skirt around the issue of gender or center on the reasons why females are different from the males in their disposition (pp. 80-81).
These widely-held stereotypes have resulted in the establishment and identification disparate ways of application of the law, particularly in the area of violent crimes committed by women against men. Brutal outbursts by male perpetrators such as the one committed by Eliot Rodgers has driven the attention of the media and was largely fueled by his anger at women. However, studies that show that women have been found to be the instigators of many cases of violent domestic assault cases have been causing a great deal of debate for the past four decades. Ever since the National Family Violence Survey was done by sociologists Murray Straus and Richard Gelles in 1975, it was disclosed that women also committed domestic violence on their spouse in almost the same frequency that these would disclose that these were also victims of their spouses.
Simply put, gender cannot be used as a barometer as to the prevalence of who inflicts and who is victimized in acts of violent offending. In addition, succeeding polls have shown that if the female respondents were questioned as to who initiated the violence, the prevalence that the women were the instigators were the same as the statistics that the men started the incident. This factor has been supported by approximately 200 investigations delving into the subject of intimate partner violence. However, opponents have proffered that the strategy used in collating and organizing the data, the “Conflicts Tactics Scale,” is faulty and is prone to omit some of the worst incidents of violence committed against women.
Nevertheless, two research initiatives that engaged two distinct methodologies- the National Violence against Women Survey (2000) commissioned by the National Institute of Justice and the Centers for Diseases Control National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (2014) have shown that four out ten reports of domestic violence were done by men; however, the gap in actual reports can be attributed to the lack of any societal or institutional support if these were to report acts of violent offense committed against them since societies sees them as instigators rather than victims (Young, 2014).
Hypothesis and Research Questions
Are traditional holdings that men commit more violent crimes compared to women being challenged or debunked by recent research findings?
There is an alternate possibility that is developing in the subject and that the hostile behavior of the females and males in society has not changed significantly over the decades, and that the restricting of the ‘gender gap’ in the area of arrests has been due to the changing definitions of what constitutes belligerence. This position argues that the shifts in the concept of violence evinces itself in ways that will see a reduction in the ‘gender gap’ in arrests; however, in reality, these ‘changes’ do not display any substantive changes. In this angle, efforts at decreasing the inequalities between men and women or the overall desensitization and acceptance of the public of certain acts depicted as violent may have an impact on the perception of the police of what comprises female violent crimes; this instance may have resulted in the view that this area of study in terms determining criminal activity by gender is problematic at the least.
The changes can result in a higher instance of arrests for women for acts that were once not considered as criminal or violent. In addition, the shifts can also result in a revision of the punishment for the crime that, in the past, would have merited a lesser offense and the resulting sentence. For example, instances of domestic violence that were not viewed as violence or were not regarded as “reportable” to the police in the past are recently now coming increasing scrutiny and focus in the criminal justice system and with the heightened attention has drawn the audience of the public as well as policy makers and lawmakers to enact laws that will regard this as a criminal mandating an arrest (Lauritsen, Heimer, Lynch, 2009, pp. 364-365).
In this light, we can proffer these questions in this regard:
Is the instance of violent offending influenced by gender, i.e., are males innately more violent than females?
Are the growing restrictions in the gaps between the apprehensions for male and female offenders due to changes in the changes in the perceptions of what is violent or are societal issues impacting the decreasing breadth of that gap?
Research Design
How is the impact measured and gauged?
In the research of Lauritsen et al (2009), recent literature proffers that trends that compare male and female trends in Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) data in terms of violent offending as well as the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) in the same category showed that the two sources produce different findings. Engaging data from National Crime Survey (NCS) and NCVS sources from 1973-2005, it was noted that gender-to-offense ratios, particularly for violent crimes, rose over time and were similar to the data shown in the UCR. In the articulation of the data, it was seen that the decreases in the commission of crime rates that are attributable to gender are actual and not anecdotal (Lauritsen, Heimer, Lynch, 2009).
Another factor that impacts the issue of gender and violent crimes is the possibility that females will be given lighter sentences that negates the violence of the crime and the corresponding punishment attendant to the same. The digression here is that owing to the gender of the offender, judges or prosecutors will ask for jail sentences or probation for the offender. Studies have shown that women offenders have a lesser chance of getting sentenced to prison compared to males; however, for the females and the males that are meted out prison sentences, the effect of gender on sentencing, though pronounced, is not as pervasive in the area. Other studies also show that women offenders, if these are meted out sentences, are traditionally given lighter sentences compared to their male counterparts; nonetheless, there are a limited number of studies that show that female juveniles receive more acerbic sentences compared to male juveniles (Rodriguez, Curry, Lee, 2006, pp. 318-320).
Data Collection Methods
Research Site and Sampling Strategy
Criminologists can describe violent offending committed by men or women as either extremely alike or extremely different depending on the mechanism being used to adjudge the two. There have been numerous approaches engaging gender differences in the commission of violent crimes. These methodologies can range from interrogations with sentenced offenders to extensive analysis and collation of facts from law enforcement documents. Each approach results in the generation of a slightly different analysis of the subject; this makes it imperative to examine the subject from multiple sources of data. Nonetheless, regardless of the methodology engaged, the results must be interpreted and the commentators’ theoretical grounding to the differences of the two genders-whether men and women, in the context of violent offending, are the same or innately different.
In this light, what is the most significant difference is the gender or identity of the victim; the data shows that for women, these mainly kill members of the family. The literature showed that six out of 10 women killers murdered a child, their intimate partner, or another member of the family. For the men, the data showed that only 20 percent of the victims of men were family members. Nearly one third of the victims of female killers were their boyfriend or spouse; 19 percent of the victims of women offenders were children. For men, 13 percent of the violent crimes were committed on their intimate partners or spouses and only 3 percent were committed against children. As a result of these analyses, three out of four of the victims of women were men. In a similar vein, three out of four of the victims of men were also men, but half of the incidents the victims were acquaintances of the perpetrators. The data shows that men tend to kill strangers more than members of their family (29 percent to 22 percent, respectively). On the other hand, females rarely murder strangers and murder acquaintances (DeLisi, Conis, 2012, pp. 189-191).
Conclusion
Are the commonly held concepts of gender and violent offending still being accepted or must these holdings change in the light of new research?
Feminists argue that society must grant women equal status as that given to men. However, if this angle were to be followed, the society must recognize that women have the same potential for leadership and competitiveness; it (society) must also recognize that women are capable of the same violence and belligerency that men can inflict on women. Widely held stereotypes regarding weak and innocent women have resulted in two sets of rules that have rendered attacks by women on men to be regarded as trivial or comical or even to be tolerated. Feminist views have engendered and sustained these stereotypes; it must be recognized that if society were to truly regard women as equals, then it must be open to seeing not only the positive aspects and facets of women, but the negative and often times’ criminal side of their personality (Young, 2014).
References
Bottos, S (2007) “Women and violence: theory, risk, and treatment implications” Retrieved from <http://www.csc-scc.gc.ca/research/092/r198-eng.pdf
Carrington, K (2013) Girls and violence: the case for a feminist theory of female violence. Journal of Criminal Justice Volume 2 issue 2 pp. 1-12
Committee on Understanding Crime Trends, Committee on Law and Justice, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education (2009) Understanding crime trends: workshop report. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press
DeLisi, M., Conis, P.J. (2011) Violent offenders: theory, research, policy, and practice. Burlington: Jones and Bartlett Learning
Denno, D. W (1994) Gender, crime and criminal law defenses. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology Volume 85 issue 1 pp. 80-
Jones, N., Flores, J (2013) At the intersections: race, gender and violence. Renzetti, C.M., Miller, S.L., Gover, A.R (Eds). Routledge international handbook of crime and gender studies. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge
Lauritsen, J.L., Heimer, K., Lynch, J.P (2009) “Trends in the gender gap in violent offending: new evidence from the National Crime Victimization Survey” Criminology Volume 47 number 2 pp. 361-399
Lauritsen, J.L., Heimer, K., Lynch, J.P (2009) “Trends in the gender gap in violent offending: new evidence from the National Crime Victimization Survey” Retrieved from <https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/publications/abstract.aspx?ID=249312
Rodriguez, S., Curry, T.R., Lee, G (2006) Gender differences in criminal sentencing: do effects vary across violent, property, and drug offenses? Social Science Quarterly Volume 87 number 2 pp. 318-337
Young, C. (2014) “The surprising truth about women and violence” Retrieved from <http://time.com/2921491/hope-solo-women-violence/
