Understanding Crime Trends Workshop Report (2008) / Chapter Skim
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3 Gender and Violence in the United States: Trends in Offending and Victimization--Karen Heimer and Janet L. Lauritsen
3 Gender and Violence in the United States: Trends in Offending and Victimization--Karen Heimer and Janet L. Lauritsen
Pages 45-80
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From page 45... ...
. While it is true that female offending accounts for a relatively small percentage of very serious violent offending, such as homicide and robbery, women accounted for roughly 25 percent of arrests for simple assaults and 21 percent of arrests for aggravated assaults in 2004, according to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports (UCR)
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From page 46... ...
female and male violent offending, (2) female and male violent victimization, and (3)
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From page 47... ...
Yet some may ask whether decreasing gender gaps in violent offending and victimization are important in the current context of declining crime trends. In other words, would it be practically significant if female rates of offending and victimization remained stable while male rates declined, or if female rates decreased more slowly than male rates?
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From page 48... ...
Yet there has been a narrowing in the gender gap over time in the United States and other nations because female rates have not been dropping as quickly as male rates (Lawlor, Ebrahim, and Smith, 2001)
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From page 49... ...
If shifts in police discretion in arrests for violence operate similarly for both female and male offenders, then the changes in gender gap or gender rate ratios of arrests for violence would not be biased. However, if police use their discretion in substantially different ways in arresting women and men, then the observed narrowing of the gender gap in arrests may be an artifact of changing police practices (Steffensmeier et al., 2005, 2006)
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From page 50... ...
Given that female rates of intimate partner homicide were consistently higher than male rates over the past 30 years, the greater decline among men resulted in a widening of the gender gap in intimate partner homicide (Lauritsen and Heimer, 2008)
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From page 51... ...
Similarly, we derive estimates of gender-specific aggravated assault, simple assault, and robbery victimization rates. We do not compare rates of rape in our analysis because preliminary analyses showed that almost all perpetrators of rape are male and almost all victims are female, and that there were no detectable changes in the gender gap in the rape offenders or victims over time. The NCS/NCVS has been used to gather self-report survey data about people's experiences with violence and other forms of victimization continuously since 1973.
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From page 52... ...
Rape reporting increased most, followed by aggravated assault and simple assault. Robbery victimization rates were not significantly higher in the NCVS compared with the NCS.
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From page 53... ...
Over the 1980-2004 period, approximately 54 percent of robberies, 72 percent of aggravated assaults, and 80 percent of simple assaults involved a single offender. Incidents in which the victim did not report the sex of the offender(s)
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From page 54... ...
. Thus, for the 1980-1991 period, the crimes pecific offending rates were multiplied by wc, where wc = 1.00 for robbery, wc = 1.23 for aggravated assault, and wc = 1.75 for simple assault.
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From page 55... ...
Generating Gender-Specific Rates of Violent Victimization We use similar procedures to create gender-specific estimates of aggravated assault, simple assault, and robbery victimization for the period 1980 to 2004.12 We also assessed how the NCS data should be weighted for the purpose of comparing crime- and gender-specific victimization rates. As with the offending data, small gender differences were associated with the new design for some types of victimization; however, these differences were not statistically significant.13 Therefore, the final weights for the victimization estimates in the NCS period consist of the crime-specific ratios used in our earlier analyses of the gender gap in offending.
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From page 56... ...
Trends in the Gender RATE Ratios of Violent Offending and Victimization Offending Figures 3-1 through 3-3 show the female and male trends in aggravated assault, simple assault, and robbery, as well as the trends in the gender rate ratios for each offense. Following the literature on trends in the gender gap in offending, we compute the gender rate ratio as the female populationadjusted rate over the male population-adjusted rate of offending for each violent crime type (e.g., Heimer, 2000; O'Brien, 1999)
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From page 57... ...
This did not change our general conclusions about the patterning of female rates, male rates, or gender rate ratios. Figure 3-1 and Table 3-1 show that, from 1984 to 1994, the rate of male aggravated assault offending reported in the NCVS increased by about 11 percent and then plummeted by about 67 percent between 1994 and 2004.
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From page 58... ...
58 25 0.30 Male Gender rate ratio 0.25 20 0.20 15 0.15 Rate per 1,000 10 0.10 5 Female 0.05 0 0.00 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 FIGURE 3-1 NCVS aggravated assault offending by gender, 1980-2004. Figure 3-1, landscape
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From page 59... ...
. Figure 3-2 and Table 3-1 show that, unlike in the case of aggravated assault, female rates of simple assault increased by a much larger percentage than did male rates between 1984 and 1994, by 51 percent among women and 8 percent among men.
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From page 60... ...
60 60 0.35 Male Gender rate ratio 0.30 50 0.25 40 0.20 30 0.15 Rate per 1,000 20 0.10 Female 10 0.05 0 0.00 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 FIGURE 3-2 NCVS simple assault offending by gender, 1980-2004. Figure 3-2, landscape
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From page 61... ...
16 0.25 14 0.20 12 Male Gender rate ratio 10 0.15 8 Rate per 1,000 0.10 6 4 0.05 2 Female 0 0.00 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 FIGURE 3-3 NCVS robbery offending by gender, 1980-2004. Figure 3-3, landscape 61
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From page 62... ...
As with offending, gender rate ratios are computed as female rates divided by male rates of victimization for each violent crime type. Figures 3-4 through 3-6 show gender-specific victimization rates for aggravated assault, simple assault, and robbery, as well as the gender rate ratios of these victimization rates.
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From page 63... ...
. 20 0.7 Gender rate ratio 18 0.6 Male 16 14 0.5 12 0.4 10 0.3 Rate per 1,000 8 6 0.2 Female 4 0.1 2 0 0.0 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 FIGURE 3-4 NCVS aggravated assault victimization by gender, 1980-2004.
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From page 64... ...
In terms of trends over time, there are some similarities to the patterns of aggravated assault victimizations. Specifically, like aggravated assault, male rates of simple assault declined somewhat during the 1980s, whereas female rates did not.
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From page 65... ...
45 1.0 Gender rate ratio 40 0.9 Male 0.8 35 0.7 30 0.6 25 0.5 20 Female Rate per 1,000 0.4 15 0.3 10 0.2 5 0.1 0 0.0 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 FIGURE 3-5 NCVS simple assault victimization by gender, 1980-2004. 65 Figure 3-5, landscape
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From page 66... ...
. 66 12 0.8 0.7 10 Gender rate ratio 0.6 Male 8 0.5 6 0.4 Rate per 1,000 0.3 Female 4 0.2 2 0.1 0 0.0 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 FIGURE 3-6 NCVS robbery victimization by gender, 1980-2004.
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From page 67... ...
recently compared these patterns to those of homicide victimization and found little change in the gender rate ratios of either homicide or robbery. Gender differences in robbery victimization trends are similar to those of lethal violence but different from those of aggravated and simple assaults.
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From page 68... ...
More specifically, the data show either a greater proportionate increase in female than male rates (e.g., simple assault offending and victimization, robbery offending) , or an increase in female rates while male rates show a net decrease decline (aggravated assault offending)
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From page 69... ...
25 20 15 Nonstranger Rate per 1,000 10 Stranger 5 Intimate partner 0 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 FIGURE 3-7a Female violent victimization by victim-offender relationship, 1980-2004. Figure 3-7a, landscape 69
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From page 70... ...
70 50 45 40 35 30 25 Rate per 1,000 20 Stranger 15 Nonstranger 10 5 Intimate partner 0 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 FIGURE 3-7b Male violent victimization by victim-offender relationship, 1980-2004. Figure 3-7b, landscape
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From page 71... ...
10 9 8 7 6 Nonstranger 5 Rate per 1,000 4 3 Stranger 2 1 Intimate partner 0 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 FIGURE 3-8a Female violent offending by victim-offender relationship, 1980-2004. 71 Figure 3-8a, landscape
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From page 72... ...
72 40 35 30 25 20 Nonstranger Rate per 1,000 15 Stranger 10 5 Intimate partner 0 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 FIGURE 3-8b Male violent offending by victim-offender relationship, 1980-2004. Figure 3-8b, landscape
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From page 73... ...
Nonstranger victimization against men decreased only slightly between 1984 and 1994 (see Table 3-3) , when the comparable female rates were increasing.
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From page 74... ...
Since these peak years, male rates of offending against strangers, nonstrangers, and intimate partners have all declined at similar magnitude, which could suggest that there may be some common causes of the declines in these types of offending during this period. We are unaware of any research that has assessed the factors associated with the decline in nonlethal intimate partner violence during the 1990s, but we suggest that future investigations of such trends should consider additional factors beyond changes in domestic violence policies and practices, which, along with women's economic and marriage rates, have been the focus of intimate partner homicide trends (e.g., Dugan, Nagin, and Rosenfeld, 1999, 2003)
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From page 75... ...
First, we present empirical evidence from victims' reports of the gender of their assailants that shows meaningful changes in the gender rate ratios of violent offending over time, with some narrowing in the gender gap in aggravated assault, simple assault, and robbery. Second, we present data on the gender of victims that shows that the gender gap in violent victimization has narrowed for aggravated and simple assault.
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From page 76... ...
These shifts in the gender rate ratios of violence may have been associated with broad social changes due to enhanced social freedoms for women and gender equality that increased before and during the 1980s. For women, these changes may have been accompanied by higher levels of public interactions, in the labor force and elsewhere, thus expanding opportunities for violent victimization and offending.
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From page 77... ...
Moreover, nonstranger violence against men and women had occurred at comparable levels, but female nonstranger victimization rates came to exceed male rates by about 1992. This means that nonstranger violence is now a critical part of violence in the United States, and women are now affected at levels similar to those of men.
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From page 78... ...
However, disaggregating the data to address these patterns involves methodological complexities beyond those described here and therefore is beyond the scope of the present analysis. Our goal here has been to take a first step by focusing on long-term trends in the gender rate ratios of offending and victimization as measured by pooled NCS-NCVS data and to link the study of violence against women to the study of crime trends.
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From page 79... ...
. The gender gap in violent victimization, 1973 2004.
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From page 80... ...
. Gender gap trends for violent crimes, 1980-2003.
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