ABSTRACT
Female and male offending One of the most regularly observed features of the criminological landscape is that the bulk of crime appears to be undertaken by boys and men (Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990). Indeed, ‘sex differences in criminality are so sustained and so marked as to be, perhaps, the most signifi cant feature of recorded crime’ (Heidensohn, 1996: 11). Relatively speaking, however it is measured, women tend to be much less involved in most sorts of offending. The proportion of women with a conviction is lower at all ages than that of males. Using data from a cohort of people born in 1953, the Home Offi ce estimated that by the age of 46, 33 per cent of males had received at least one conviction compared with 9 per cent of women. The difference is similar for younger age groups. Of females born in 1958, 9 per cent had received a conviction by the age of 40, compared with 32 per cent of males. By their mid-forties, approximately 1 per cent of all women will have received a prison sentence compared with 7 per cent of men (Barclay and Tavares, 1999).
