Crimes are rampant nowadays. Newspapers, televisions, and radios often present us with the different faces of crime and one might observe that crime rates continue to increase over time and many have become witnesses and victims of murders, rape, kidnapping, etc. Moreover, any act that is committed intentionally and is considered socially harmful, prohibited, defined, and punishable under the law is considered a crime. As such, many factors have been associated in the commitment of crime such as age, race and culture among others. Aside from these, gender has also been associated with crime intensely and relentlessly and it has been observed that males and females commit crime in a different manner as to the pattern of crime, offense rates and victimasation.
Meanwhile, according to Braithwaite (1989), ‘crime is committed disproportionately by males’ and it has been an area of interest in the 21st century as to what is the relationship between the masculine gender and crime and perhaps the work of Neil Boyd entitled The Beast Within is the most notable in the prediction of violence- gender. In fact, surveys reveal that as of January 2003, for the overall prison population of 163,493 inmates, males make up 93.2% (152,300) while females take up 6.9% (11,193) and the percentage of women undergoing federal correction is statistically significantly smaller than the percentage of men undergoing the same (see Table 1).
According to Boyd, in both historical and cross- cultural context, vast number of killings and other forms of violence are committed by men despite the intensity of violence in a society. As to the quality of violence, males and females differ, too. In the area of family violence, women are likely to murder their partners after tolerating a history of abuse. On the other hand, men engage in stalking and killing their partners only after they are subjected to prolonged abuse; killing after knowing that adultery has been committed by their partners; committing familicidal massacres and killing after sexual assaults and included on his list are honour killings where the loss of virginity or adultery will be the ground for killing the female members of the family. Women rarely engage in any of these acts. Moreover, group violence, whether in the form of more modern “swarming” by youth or genocidal rampages in Bosnia, Rwanda, or East Timor, is also perpetrated predominantly by males. As Boyd asserted, genetically, resemblance is noted between the male human beings and chimpanzees as to predatory violence.
Many factors have been looked into as why more crimes are committed by the male species than their female counterparts. Furthermore, many theories emerged to explain the reason behind the statistics and as time passes by, the criminal thinking of individuals evolved and this also brought changes to the criminal justice policies. Nevertheless, heinous crimes persisted and many died, suffered and were victimized.
Table 2, on the other hand, illustrates the arrests in the US for 2001 and it showed that more males are arrested compared to females because of violent crimes which comprise offenses of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault; and property crimes which include burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson.
TABLE 1
TABLE 2
Many theories try to explain this phenomenon. One theory is the biological theory of crime which dwells on why females commit fewer crimes than males. This theory is applicable to two areas: physical and mental which make women predetermined not to commit crime and the reason why women who commit crime act that way respectively. Many believed that biological reasons have caused women to kill or do offenses as statistics show that about 80% of these women crime occurred around the time of their menstruation. Meanwhile, Lombroso and Ferrero (1895) in their book The Female Offender presented their theories basing on ‘atavism’. According to Smart (1978), the belief that those individuals who display anti- social behavior were biological throwbacks refers to atavism. Thus, the perception of a female criminal is that she has the qualities of a male criminal plus the worst characteristic of a woman. This is indicative that criminal women were considered genetically and this is abnormal in the biological sense.
On the other hand, aggression in males is often associated with the hormone testosterone as noted by some many studies. According to Rosalind Miles (1992) in her book, The Rites of Man, that explaining violence is tantamount to explaining the male species and according to Jill Tweedie, a journalist that “Most violence, most crime … is not committed by human beings in general. It is committed by men” (quoted in Archer & Lloyd, 1985, p. 124). Thus assumption arises as to the social connection between “male” and “violence” and it may be hormone- related or a condition in the chromosome. Meanwhile, Boyd stressed that aside from biological influences, the environment likely also to influence the accession of men. To point out, it has been noted that more crimes are committed by single men than married ones since men’s aggressive nature are usually moderated by a female presence due to compromises and cooperation.
Another relevant theory is the Chivalry which explains that the reason for this is that police and judicial systems are usually composed of males and because of this, there is a more lenient treatment of women. Pollack (1961) believed, ‘it is the learned behaviour from a very young age that leads girls into a ‘masked’ character of female criminality’, that is, females are able to conceal their criminality and there has been low detection of crimes committed by females since there also has been under reporting of these crimes. Moreover, it is very difficult to give equal credit to both sexes since ‘femininity’ has been used by females to gain advantage (Lloyd, 1995). Thus, there is a need to address this inequality brought about by social oppression and economic dependency on men and the state.
On the other hand, the Socialisation theory views the approach that women are socialised into being passive and well behaved and this resulted to lesser crimes being committed by females. Moreover, this theory may be well related to opportunity theory wherein it is explained that the low crime figures is due to the fact that the lifestyle and responsibilities of women are focused on home and nurturing of the children and elder members of the family. With this, women have the lesser opportunity to commit crimes compared to men.
Furthermore, the liberation thesis of Freda Adler in 1975 emphasized that the only time there is increase of women crime rate resulted from feminist movement and women’s liberation. Women’s criminal activity increased dramatically in the 1970s during the arrival of Second wave of Feminism. Moreover, women have insisted that there should be equality in different endeavours and with this also increased the crime rates. According to Brown (1986), women penetrated the world of crime and violence which were then dominated by males.
Time passed but still these theories are very much applicable in the current criminal justice system although there are already many changes in the society. Both men and women nowadays are faced with many choices and their behaviour towards crime cannot be explained only by a single distinct theory. As time evolved, patterns of crime and its quality also changed but still male crimes are still higher compared to the crimes committed by females. Further, it is a conventional and non-arguable fact that males and females have differences biologically and sociologically including hormonal issues as well as environmental influences. Nonetheless, it’s a matter of proportion not difference. According to Edwards (1984), ‘the enemy is within every woman, but is not her reproductive biology; rather it is the habit regarding it into which she has been led by centuries of male domination’.
In totality, the apparent supremacy of the social construction and epithet of “violence as male” has resulted in biological empiricism’s being challenged to determinism by those wishing to make an essentialist argument linking an all-comprehensive vision of the male with violence under a schema of patriarchal dominance. However, the triad of “testosterone, men, and violence” which is prevalent in popular cultures can be further elaborated as there is a more significant way to determine the susceptibility to violence where the psychological, social and biological factors are used in the context and interdependence is acknowledged. The social, psychological and biomedical factors in different levels characterize the male violence’s individual pathway and with this, the social overview and individual social psychobiology would be addressed with the aid of effective and efficient interventions to the problem of male violence. Meanwhile, the lack of reflection has cemented a picture that masculinity is related to crime and this limited vision has created a notion that such tragic picture promote and produce destabilization for more men to become violent instead of asserting to reduce male violence.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
“America: Women Behind Bars,” 1 May 1999 <http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m1321/1999_May_1/54488366/p1/article.jhtm>
J. Archer, & Lloyd, B. B. Sex and gender. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)
“Bureau of Justice Statistics Violent Crime Trends by Gender of Victim,” 9 September 2002 <http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/vsx2.htm>
Neil Boyd. The Beast Within: Why Men are Violent. (Vancouver: Greystone Books. 2000)
“California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP)” 22 November 2002 <http://womenprisoners.org/index.htm/>
“Correctional Populations in the United States, 1996,” 1999 <http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/cpius961.pdf/>
“Federal Bureau of Prisons,” January 2003 <http://www.bop.gov/fact0598.html./>
Thomas Gabor. The Beast Within: Why Men Are Violent. (Canadian Journal of Criminology. Volume: 43. Issue: 2. 20010
Cesare Lombroso and William Ferrero, The Female Offender (New York: Appleton, 1899).
R. Miles. Rites of man. Love, death and sex in the making of man. (London: Grafton Books, 1992)
Russell Smart. Adolescents: Development and relationships. Macmillan (New York, 1978)
D. Thomas. Not guilty. The case in defence of men. (New York: Morrow, 1993)
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