Why are women less inclined towards deviancy and crime than men?

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Scepticism about the validity and the reliability of criminal statistics is now, more or less universal. And although they do not provide an accurate picture of the amount of crime that occurs, there is one obvious observation that can be made. That is, over long periods of time and in many differing judicial systems, women have a consistently lower rate of officially recorded crime than that of men. (Heidensohn; 1996:2) For example, in 2000 the home office crime statistics showed that of the 1.7 million known offenders in England and Wales, only 316.000 were women. (Home Office Crime Statistics 2001) With this also being the case in other countries, why does this discrepancy occur? (Jones; 2000:87) This assignment will discuss some of the theories offered in an attempt to explain why women are less inclined towards deviancy and criminality than men.

The amount of work carried out on the area of women and crime is extremely limited in comparison with that of men. Smart (1977) suggest that female offenders are seen as less of a problem for society, their crimes are trivial therefore, unworthy of research. Smart (1977) also pointed out that sociology and criminology have tended to be dominated