Читать книгу The Invisible Woman - Joanne Belknap - Страница 71

Whether an offender commits crimes alone or with others (co-offending) is gendered. Like solo offending, most co-offending, particularly serious offending, is by boys and men (e.g., Becker & McCorkel, 2011; Charette & Papachristos, 2017; Holleran & Vandiver, 2016; J. Schwartz et al., 2015; Steffensmeier, Schwartz, & Roche, 2013). Becker and McCorkel’s (2011) co-offending NIBRS study included the widest range of offenses. They found over 62% of offenses were committed by one man/boy, 20% by one woman/girl, 9% by two or more boys/men, 6% by mixed-gender pairs or groups, and only 2% by two or more girls/women. Moreover, the only crimes for which “all-female groups” did not “account for the smallest proportion of incidents” were shoplifting (mixed-gender groups are the smallest) and prostitution and embezzlement (where all-male groups were the least prevalent) (p. 88). A study of corporate crimes found that 71% of the cases were men acting alone or with other men, while mixed-gender groups constituted the remaining 29% of the corporate crimes (Steffensmeier et al., 2013). Thus, every case of a corporate criminal acting alone was of a man (no women acted alone). Moreover, the few times women corporate criminals were “ringleaders” was in collaboration with men, usually their spouses, and in all corporate crimes, the women offenders profited significantly less, and in some cases not at all, compared to the men with whom they co-offended (Steffensmeier et al., 2013).

When offending without boys/men, women/girls tend to “cluster in a relatively narrow range of offenses” (Becker & McCorkel, 2011, p. 99). When they co-offend with men/boys, however, they commit a broader range of and more serious crimes (Becker & McCorkel, 2011; J. Schwartz et al., 2015). Additionally, regardless of offenders’ gender, they are more likely to co-offend with men/boys (Becker & McCorkel, 2011; J. Schwartz et al., 2015), and girls/women are even more likely to co-offend with men/boys when more force or aggression is required, the crime is more for profit than emotional, the victim is a stranger (thus a less certain outcome), and “skill, knowledge, or access to weapons such as guns is required” (J. Schwartz et al., 2015, p. 69). Women/girls are more likely than men/boys to commit a sexual abuse/assault offense with a male co-offender (Becker & McCorkel, 2011; Comartin, Burgess-Proctor, Kubiak, & Kernsmith, 2018). A study of women convicted of sexual abuse/assault found they were more likely to have a co-offender when they had been threatened with a weapon by an intimate partner, had experienced childhood disruptions in parental attachment, and the victim was female (Comartin et al., 2018). Seventy percent of co-offending women/girl sexual abuse offenders reported being coerced by their co-offenders, and they were more likely to have experienced childhood abuse victimization (Comartin et al., 2018).