Читать книгу The Invisible Woman - Joanne Belknap - Страница 76

Regardless of how crime data are collected (e.g., police, victimization surveys, self-report), most offenses are male-gender-related, and the more serious and violent the offense is, the more male-dominated it is (e.g., Hsieh & Schwartz, 2018; Roth & King, 2019; J. Schwartz et al., 2015). According to the most recent (2018) Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) data, all but 4 of the 24 individual offenses are male-gender-related: Larceny-theft is approaching male-gender-related for combined ages (but male-gender-related among youths), embezzlement for combined ages is the only gender-neutral offense (it approached male-gender-related among youth), liquor law violations are approaching male-gender-related among youths (and was male-gender-related for combined ages), and prostitution/commercialized vice is the only female-gender-related offense, but this is only for combined ages and surprisingly found to be approaching male-gendered-related among youths.

This chapter addressed the complexities of determining whether offenses are gender-related and whether gender convergence is occurring, and if so, whether it is consistent with or antithetical to the women’s liberation/emancipation hypothesis (WLEH). Three steps were provided to help unpack analyses of gender–crime patterns, particularly gender convergence, emphasizing the significance of the type of data (e.g., police arrest, self-report victim, self-report offending) and accounting for economic and social changes as well as policy changes, particularly net-widening policies and practices. The most recent UCR data indicate a convergence in offending for almost every offense, yet they also indicate that almost every offense is still male-gender-related. As one longitudinal study concludes, in terms of offending, “crime—especially in its more serious and lucrative forms—largely remains a man’s world” (Steffensmeier & Schwartz, 2004, p. 106).

We will revisit net widening in the next chapter, on the processing of crimes in the criminal legal system (CLS). This chapter also took some specific offenses that are particularly useful to examine through a gendered lens. It was beyond the scope to cover all offenses, but ideally patterns are clear on how things such as intimate partner abuse impact many individuals in terms of both victimization and offending. The next chapter addresses the CLS responses to women and girl offenders. Recent research overwhelmingly confirms that where we see gender convergence, it is at least in part due to harsher responses to girls and women, and most profoundly, to victimized girls and women who are often further marginalized by their race, class, age, sexuality, nationality, and other factors.