HRS: "But no mention of carrying out a study to find out why nearly all the top industrialists, scientists, artists, musicians, writers and even educators are male."

Erm... I think that with just a little research you'll find that there have been many, many studies conducted by 'feminist' researchers into that very topic. Indeed, the preponderance of men relative to women in social elites is fundamental to what I understand 'feminism' to be about.

However, this article is about the overwhelming statistical over-representation of males in Australian prisons, relative to females. Doesn't it interest you that the huge majority of serious crime is apparently committed by men rather than women?

As the father of a son on the cusp of manhood, I'm interested.

I would probably be guided by people like Dr Don Weatherburn who has been the Director of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research in Sydney for twenty years or so and is a Professor with the School of Social Science and Policy at the University of New South Wales.

To quote Dr Weatherburn, "One of the major long-term causes of crime is inadequate or abusive parenting. We know what sorts of programs improve the quality of parenting and reduce juvenile crime. We've got a long way to go, though, in integrating these programs into mainstream child protection services." As well as child neglect and abuse, Dr Weatherburn cites long-term unemployment and the growth in portable consumer goods as contributing significantly to Australia's crime. Linked to unemployment is school drop-out.

Child abuse and neglect pops up as the well known elephant in crime in other countries too. Rather than entertain an unlikely long shot that boys are genetically prone to do something wrong, maybe we should be concentrating on what we already know to be facts.

We could also review our societal attitudes to boys as demonstrated by the silly, artificial and damaging type of masculinity we impose on them. But others like Steve Biddulph (Manhood) are better placed to comment on that.

With our children we should behave the way we want them to act.

I tend to agree with Cornflower that environmental factors such as child abuse, neglect, poverty etc are more likely to be causal factors in criminal behaviour than is some kind of genetic predisposition.

However, this still begs the question why it is that males seem to be so much more susceptible to these explanatory variables than are females. Are boys more affected by child abuse, neglect and poverty than girls, and if so, why?

C.J Morgan
There have been very few creditable studies ever conducted into the male gender inside this country, and in most other countries.

I would totally discount any research every conducted by a feminist in any subject matter, as feminists have their own type of research which they call “feminist research”. Every part of that research is totally outside of the scientific method, and there is nothing reliable in feminist research.

If you yourself want to known why there are more males in jail than females, research how many of those males are aboriginal, research how many are there on drug related charges, and research how many have a mental illness and the jails are used as mental hospitals.

Also do some research on how often a male gets a sentence far greater than a female for exactly the same offence.

In the wild if a young male begins to feel his oats he is free to take a crack at the system, take his lumps, and rejoin the herd with no rancor the next day. In our world if a youngster kicks at the social fence posts he's jailed and branded a criminal, and having taken his lumps, carries that brand for the rest of his life. It isn't that there are a lot of males in prison. It is that there are a lot of the same men returning to prison. Job, school, church, family, police, there is always someone willing to remind the 'ex-convict' that they are less worthy than the public. The relevant question isn't why men are the majority of the imprisoned but, why are the same men consistently returning to prison. It might also be relevant to ask why men are held to a different standard of social accountability than women. The fellow born in 1940 or 1976 can hardly be held accountable for feminist angst going back to Adam and Eve.

HRS, "how many of those males are aboriginal, research how many are there on drug related charges, and research how many have a mental illness and the jails are used as mental hospitals."

At a guess male aboriginals are born in similar numbers to female aboriginals and I think indiginous people have quite a bit of interest in indiginous overrepresentation amongst the incarcerated. Some might want to keep it quiet, others want tho know why it occurs and do something about it. The issue of male overrepresentation still exists.

I don't know the breakup of drug dependency between men and women but either men get drug addicted more regularly and or we get convicted of more crime in relation to drug addiction.

Same deal for mental illness.

We could look into the conviction rates for men and women, and as you suggest relative sentencing for similar crimes. We could also have research into the rates of charges being laid and the relationship to the gender of principle suspects. We could research the family circumstances they grew up in and do our utmost to minimise conditions which increase the likelyhood of turning to crime.

None of that invalidates the authors point, if anything it supports it.

What we need to be fighting against is advocoacy research (and feminists don't hold copyright on that one). We should not be fighting research, rather ensuring that it actually seeks answers rather than arriving at a predetermined answer.

By the way where did the author suggest that men have a genetic predisposition to crime? I've been back over the article and can't see that. Genetics is mentioned but not in that context.

Did you have a read of Yvonne's post?

R0bert