Throughout our nation's history, female offenders have been largely forgotten by a criminal justice system that was designed to control and rehabilitate men. Some experts argue that gender is the best predictor of criminal behavior. Overall, women have lower arrest rates for nearly all crime classifications except prostitution. Since the 1960s, the amount of female arrests has typically been less than 15% for homicide and aggravated assault and less than 10% for serious property crimes such as burglary and robbery.
The National Crime Victimization Survey, in which victims were asked about the gender of their perpetrator, if he or she was seen, found that women are more likely to commit minor property crimes that include larceny-theft, fraud, forgery, and embezzlement. Female arrests for this crime category have been as high as 40% since the mid-1970s. The thefts and fraud committed by women usually involve shoplifting (larceny-theft), "bad checks" (forgery or fraud), and welfare and credit fraud. Self-report studies also confirm the Uniform Crime Report patterns which show that there is relatively low female involvement in serious offenses and greater involvement in less serious criminal activity.
During my reading this week, I came across some interesting ideas and proposals. According to author Samuel Walker, conservatives believe that many dangerous criminals beat the system and elude punishment simply by pleading guilty to a lesser charge and if these dangerous criminals are ultimately convicted, they are not sent to prison. In order to solve this issue, Walker suggests that we should prosecute career criminals, abolish the insanity defense, get rid of plea bargaining, and put tighter restrictions on appeals.
No matter what method we choose to endorse, with the purpose of revamping the criminal justice system, two questions still remain:
Is the criminal justice system steadily closing the gap with regard to women who commit crimes or are more women are simply being charged with crimes?
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