Female Violent Offenders Characteristics

Female Violent Offenders

Women are more apt to be the victims than the perpetrators of crimes. The purpose of a recent quantitative, descriptive study by Coleman, Almond, and McManus (2018) was to determine some of the essential characteristics of female, violent juvenile offenders versus a control sample of nonviolent offenders. Using UK police data of offences committed between April 2001 and April 2011, the researchers determined that 72.3% of the female violent offenders had committed a previous violent offense and had a previous conviction, a significantly higher percentage than the control group (Coleman, Almond, and McManus, 2018). Female offenders were also more likely to have committed a theft previous to their incarceration for a violent offense.

According to the British publication The Independent, rates of violent crime by women in general have increased in the United Kingdom. “The number of girls and women arrested for violence has more than doubled between 1999/2000 and 2007/08,” although women are still far less likely to commit crimes than men (Quarmby, 2016, par.7). Whether this is due to better policing or to actual higher rates of violence is questionable (Quarmby, 2016). The statistic flies in the face of the cultural stereotype of women-as-nurturer.

Even women who commit violent crimes as the result of postpartum depression are profoundly disturbing as a challenge to the cultural ideal of women as kinder and gentler to men. There is evidence, however, that female violent offenders are more likely to have untreated psychological illnesses, versus male offenders, such as schizophrenia (Wang et al. 2018). This suggests that female violent offenders possess certain unique characteristics distinct from male populations that are worthy of study, despite the fact that women and girls make up a smaller percentage of offenders of the overall prison population.

References

Coleman, R., Almond, L., & McManus, M. (2018). Do female offenders differ? Comparing the

criminal histories of serious violent perpetrators with a control sample. Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, 15(1) 3-19. Retrieved from: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jip.1485