Crime and Punishment in American History - Lawrence M. Friedman [269]
To be sure, the absolute number of women arrested and tried is quite large. In 1905, the New York City police made 198,356 arrests; women made up one out of five of this group (39,886). There were 2,026 women vagrants (as against 6,307 men); 10,080 women were hauled in for “intoxication” (as compared to 34,005 men); and 13,114 for “disorderly conduct” (almost half of the figure for men, which was 26,858). But only 32 women were arrested for burglary, as against 2,247 men; 16 men were arrested for murder, but not a single woman. Women outnumbered men in only a handful of crimes: “keeping a disorderly house” (958 arrests of women to 511 of men), “soliciting” (for prostitution), and, interestingly, for violations of the Tenement House Law.17 In Omaha, Nebraska, 9,277 women were arrested in the years 1930 through 1934; almost 20 percent were charged with “vagrancy and prostitution”; there were substantial numbers charged with drunkenness, disturbing the peace, liquor offenses, and similar offenses—but only 1.24 percent for “assault and battery”; no other crime of violence amounted to even 1 percent of arrests.18
In 1966, women represented only 12 percent of the total arrests reported in the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports; they accounted for only 5 percent of the arrests for robbery, 4 percent for burglary, and 9 percent for violent crimes in general. However, some 16 percent of the arrests for homicides were laid at the doorstep of women. A decade later, in 1976, the women’s figure had crept up to 16 percent of total arrests, and 10 percent of the violent crimes; they were dominant only in arrests for “prostitution and commercialized vice” (71 percent).19 By 1987, women were making a game showing in crimes against property and white-collar crimes: they accounted for 31 percent of the larceny arrests, 44 percent of the fraud arrests, 34 percent of the forgery arrests, and 38 percent of the arrests for embezzlement. Women had entered the work force in droves, which put them in a position to commit these property and white-collar crimes—housewives, after all, have nothing to embezzle. 20 There were also definite but small increases in robbery and burglary figures—the woman’s share had crept up to 8 percent of the total. But in 1987, women still accounted for only 11.1 percent of violent crime.21 There are, as is obvious, oddities and quirks in the figures, as well as some bewildering variations. But the overall picture remains basically the same.
The drug wars that have swelled the jail populations have swept many women into their nets. In recent years, women (like men) have been arrested, convicted, and sent to prison in the thousands for drug offenses. A study published in 1977 showed that over 20 percent of the women in prison had been sent there for this reason; and for some population groups the percentage was even higher. More than 40 percent of the Hispanic women in prison had been convicted of drug offenses.22
Criminologists, on the whole, do not pay much attention to women’s crimes; theories of criminality are mostly or entirely theories about men.23 Yet, at the very least, what women do (and do not do) provides a magnificent control group for testing assumptions about men and their crimes. There are those, of course, who think genetics, plain and simple, explains the differences. Women, in other words, are not born criminals at all, but born non-criminals. Some sort of gene for aggression is missing; or, to put it the other way around, men have too much of one. Other theories are more social or psychological; they turn on gender roles, on the way women are raised, and so on. It remains to be seen what the halting steps toward gender equality will bring. Will women change the world,