This Article Free Full Text (Free PDF) Free References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Steffensmeier, D. Articles by Agha, S. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?

Gender Gap Trends for Violent Crimes, 1980 to 2003

A UCR-NCVS Comparison

Pennsylvania State University

Hua Zhong

Chinese University of Hong Kong

Jeff Ackerman

Texas A&M University

Jennifer Schwartz

Washington State University

Suzanne Agha

George Mason University

The authors examine 1980 to 2003 trends in female-to-male interpersonal violence reported in Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) arrest statistics and National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) victimization data. Augmented Dickey-Fuller time-series techniques and intuitive plot displays show much overlap yet differences in each source’s portrayal of trends in female violence levels and the gender gap. Both sources show little or no change in the gender gap for homicide and rape/sexual assault, whereas UCR police counts show a sharp rise in female-to-male arrests for criminal assault during the past one to two decades—but that rise is not borne out in NCVS counts. Net-widening policy shifts have apparently escalated the arrest proneness of females for "criminal assault" (e.g., policing physical attacks/threats of marginal seriousness that women in relative terms are more likely to commit); rather than women having become any more violent, official data increasingly mask differences in violent offending by men and women.

Key Words: women’s violence • violence trends • female crime • crime policy • crime statistics

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?