While the gap exists for all crimes, it is the largest for violent crime, such as homicide, rape, and robberies, and the smallest for property crime. Unlike self-report data, official statistics and victimization reports generally describe the gender-gap as most apparent, as these types of crime reporting suggest large gaps in the number of crimes committed by men and women. Official statistics and victimization reports probably show the largest gender gaps both because they deal more with violent crimes, whose perpetrators tend to be men and because self-report data allows researchers to choose samples that have equal amounts of men and women to study similarities and differences across gender. In other words, self-report data generally has a lower sex-gap because researchers can have a great deal influence in manipulating the data set.
Some do not report crimes because they are embarrassed to be the victim, while others refuse to report because they have a relationship with the victimizer, were participating in a crime when they were victimized, or think that that crime is not serious enough to report. Women would be less likely to report a crime to police simply because they are statistically less likely to be the victim of a crime. This fact is a manifestation of the sex-gap; because more men tend to participate in violent crimes, and crimes are generally committed gender-on-gender, women are less likely to be victims. Also, women are more likely to be crimes or rape and prostitution, two crimes that many would link with embarrassment, which would result in under-reporting to the police.
