Gender and Perceived Chances of Arrest

Abstract

This paper examines gender differences in perceived chances of arrest for six familiar types of lawbreaking. Most crime theories predict that women should give higher arrest estimates than men, and we note five common explanations for this prediction. These include differential stakes in conformity, differential cognitive dissonance between gender role expectations and objective risks, differential perceived visibility, differential conventionality, and differential knowledge of crime and sanction. Survey data from a sample of U.S. adults show that women perceive systematically higher chances of arrest than do men, and that differential visibility and differential stakes in conformity seem to be the most promising accounts for these differences. At the same time, these variables are only modest predictors of overall individual patterns in perceived arrest risks. This suggests that much additional work on the patterns and determinants of risk perception is necessary before an adequate picture of more general variation in risk perceptions can be drawn. During the past decade social scientists have become especially interested in gender differences in the type and frequency of criminal behavior as well as in the differences in the ways males and females are processed by social control agencies (for example; Adler; Adler and Simon; Anderson; Armstrong; Bernstein et al.; Cernovich and Giordano; Chesney-Lind, a,b,c; Hindelang; Jensen and Eve; Klein; Norland and Shover; Simon; Simons et al.; Smart; Smith; Smith and Visher; Steffensmeier, a,b). But one of the most intriguing potential differences between males and females is that of deterrability (Anderson et al.; Burkett and Jensen; Jensen et al.; Sigelman and Sigelman; Silberman; Tittle; Tittle and Rowe). This is especially true because the deterrent argument involves an apparent anomaly concerning sex differences. The deterrence doctrine assumes that there is an inverse relationship between objective sanction risk and criminal activity (see Gibbs; Tittle, for bibliographies of recent research). These two variables are generally thought to be linked by individual perceptions of sanction risk; objective 01981 The University of North Carolina Press. 0037-7732/81/041182-99$01.80