Perhaps we should be looking at the types of crimes being committed by males and females. Trawling through a few websites, I found these three gave some interesting breakdowns on crime and gender:

http://ofw.facsia.gov.au/publications/wia/chapter8.html
http://www.aic.gov.au/stats/crime/homicide.html
http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/rpp/18/exec.pdf

Here are a few trends I found:

• Robbery. Male and female statistics on unlawful entry and robbery are about even (with men only slightly ahead).

• Drugs. More women than men commit illicit drug offences (15% female, 10% male).

• Deception. Women seem to be good con-artists! They excel in a category of crime labelled ‘Deception and related offences’ (13% female, 3% male).

• (Non-sexual) assault. It was hard to find statistics on assault perpetrators. However, assault victms are much more likely to be male (about two-thirds).

• Homicide. 85% of offenders and 67% of victims are male, and male murder victims are much more likely to be killed by another male – usually a friend or acquaintance (not an intimate partner). On femicide (the murder of women), 94% of offenders are male, and 3 out of 5 femicides are committed by intimate partners.

• Sexual assault. Male perpetrators outnumber females ten to one. (I’m inclined to think that the victims of female sexual offenders are mostly minors, although I couldn’t find any statistics on this.)

It would seem from this that women and men are pretty much even on non-violent crimes, but men are way ahead of women on crimes of a violent or sexual nature. However, I don’t subscribe to the belief that men are predisposed to violence or that testosterone drives men to act anti-socially.

As a feminist, I’m inclined to believe that the behaviour of the tiny criminal population (1-2 per cent) is a reflection of the dominator power relationships of the wider society – rich men over poor men, men over women, and adults over children. If so, then perhaps men have something to gain by a more even power distribution between the classes and genders, and between adults and children.

CJ Morgan
I would consider your remarks (such as “intransigent prattling”) as being at your normal level.

But I have something you might find enjoyable to read.

It was written at a lower level, and was written by a famous Australian feminist who has been well praised and given many accolades by fellow feminists. It is her latest book, and in the book she describes how to commit the crime of murdering the husband, (so you may find it enjoyable).

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Husband-Other-Handy-Household-Hints/dp/0743248066

MLK
It appears that crime rates can vary depending on many factors. See
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/or010996.htm

The amount of violent crime is only a small proportion of total crime. But I tend to think that males are also given longer sentences than females, which is why more males are in jail, and also an estimated 30-40% are believed to have a mental illness and the jails are used as mental hospitals.

The prison term makes the mental illness worse, they re-offend on release and go back to jail. Or they can't get a job or look after themselves properly, and they have the option of becoming homeless or going back to jail.

Have you read the article on the rates of schizophrenia amongst males in jail
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6142

HRS,

The incidence of schizophrenia in the male prison population is worthwhile as a general analysis of criminal offenders, but doesn’t sufficiently isolate male-female differences to be of value as a gender debate. It is likely that just as many female as male offenders are in prison due to schizophrenic behaviours.

Also, regarding your other comments … violent crimes comprise about a quarter of all crimes. However, because they threaten people’s personal safety – indeed their lives – they have far more psychological influence on the wider population than non-violent offences. Violent crimes create a short-term sense of power in the offender and a climate of fear in the general population. Also, there is a strong gender component in the incidence of violent crime. The overwhelming majority of femocides, and virtually all sexual assaults, are committed by males upon females.

There was a survey conducted back in the eighties, in which a large sample of US college students were asked what they feared most from the opposite sex. The most frequent answer among the males was the fear of being laughed at; the most frequent answer among the females was the fear of being killed

MLK

In the West, public resources are being redirected from pursuing crime into handling fear of crime which it has become a problem in itself.

Taking your example of the girl students in the US, the problem is their irrational fear which I would think would be totally unsupported by crime statistics. It is amazing but everyone in modern society is part of a so-called 'vulnerable' group for one reason or another.

One of my objections to the OLO article is its persuasive rhetoric (in lieu of facts) and sensationalism, which encourage unrealistic fear of 'men' as anti-social and criminals. It is easy to imagine women scanning the article and taking on board the fear that any man they meet in the street - well excluding those who look like George Clooney - is likely to batter them to death (following the usual sexual molestation of course).

This is why campaigns like 'Australia Says No' can be counter-productive through institutionalising fear (of men) in our culture and encouraging and affirming a fear response. White Ribbon Day (WRD) is another good example. WRD celebrates the one-off act of a lunatic in Canada and one really should question its relevance to men and OZ.

Having been jogging around dusk or later most days of the year and having frequented many social venues without an armed escort, I would be the first to say we shouldn't get any knickers in a twist about boys or 'men' lurking in the shadows, driven by the power conferred on them by their gender.

We shouldn't let those with their own secondary gain in mind make worry worts out of the rest of us.

Cornflower,

‘Taking your example of the girl students in the US, the problem is their irrational fear which I would think would be totally unsupported by crime statistics.’

Ah … no. The problem is that too many women and girls get attacked by men (which is entirely supported by crime statistics), and that we now live in a political climate in which this is one of the many gender issues that we are not allowed to admit to anymore.

This stifling of public debate on gender issues was the author’s REAL point – that a combination of political correctness, culture wars rhetoric and anti-feminism has been poisoning the information well for some time now.

However, if it makes you feel better to keep on insisting that all she wanted to do was to portray all men as a bunch of thugs, then by all means do so.

MLK: "This stifling of public debate on gender issues was the author’s REAL point – that a combination of political correctness, culture wars rhetoric and anti-feminism has been poisoning the information well for some time now."

Quite so. However, it seems to me that some of the more prolific contributors to this thread choose to wilfully misinterpret that point. There is little point in arguing with people who deliberately distort the statistical reality that Bilson describes.

The fact, as revealed by the Australian census, is that men are convicted of serious crimes and imprisoned at a much higher rate than women. However, the fact that this 'truth' is inconvenient for the anti-feminists seems to cause otherwise intelligent people to produce some of the most fanciful and distorted reasoning in their tawdry efforts to deflect attention from it.

While I have no doubt that factors like poverty, child abuse and unemployment are strongly implicated in generaing criminal behaviour, nobody in this thread has demonstrated why it is that these causes impact far more significantly on men than women.

There is none so blind as s/he who will not see...