A New Look at the Gender Gap in Offending

Abstract

A consistent research finding is that males commit more crime than females—a phenomenon known as the gender gap in offending. Recently it has been reported that this gap in violent offending has narrowed. What is unclear is whether the reported convergence in offending is an accurate reflection of changes in violent offending or an artifact of the data used: official records and self-report offending data. An additional lack of clarity is whether the reported convergence remains once the race and age of offenders are accounted for. This study used an alternative source of data—victimization data—to address 2 fundamental questions: Has the gender gap in violent crime offending changed over time? And has the gender gap changed once the offender's race and age are accounted for? Examining 18 disaggregated offender groups from the 1992 to 2001 National Crime Victimization Survey, this study demonstrates virtually no change in the violent crime gender gap over time. Results clearly point to gender stability regardless of the age or race of the offender. In those rare instances where change was measured, it was in the form of gender convergence resulting from a decline in male violent offending rates that exceeded the decline in female offending rates. The findings highlight the importance of accounting for offenders' race and age to avoid overgeneralized and possibly misleading conclusions.