Uncovering the gender participation gap in crime

Abstract

There is little research on the gender variation in the crime market. We document a gender gap in criminal activities, based on property crimes, using data from the U.S. National Incident Based Reporting System from 1995 to 2015. We show that there is a gender participation gap, with only 30 percent of the crimes being committed by females. We try to explain the gender participation gap by focusing on incentives to commit crime, such as criminal earnings and probability of arrest. We show that on average females earn 13 percent less than males while they face a 9 percent lower likelihood of arrest. We find that males respond more to changes in illegal earnings, with an elasticity of 0.36, while females are less responsive with an elasticity of 0.23. Both genders respond equally to changes in the probability of arrest, with an elasticity around -0.14. Using a Blinder-Oaxaca type decomposition technique, we find that differences in incentives explain about 8 percent of the gender participation gap, while differences in responsiveness to changes in incentives, especially illegal earnings, explain about 56 percent of the gap. The fact that females behave differently than males has implications for the heterogeneity in response to crime control policies.1 Henceforth, we will refer to these crime rates as participation rates. 2 In the standard economic model of crime both higher earnings and a lower arrest probability can persuade a criminal to commit a crime. Therefore, we will refer to these two variables as criminal incentives. The probability of arrest deters criminals, generating a negative incentive rather than a positive one. In our model, we allow males and females to respond differently to these incentives.

Gender Disparities in Sentencing

“…Two recent articles investigate the gender differences in crime participation rates. Campaniello and Gavrilova () study property crimes in the USA between 1995 and 2015, and document a large gender gap in criminal activities. They find that women are less responsive to changes in illegal earnings, and that this lower responsivity explains up to 56% of the observed gender gap.…”

“…Although women are less likely than men to commit a crime (Beatton et al . ; Campaniello and Gavrilova ), their participation in criminal activities is slowly converging with that of men (Beatton et al . ).…”

Women in crime

“…A recent study focusing on property crimes investigates whether there is a gender difference in the probability of arrest (one of the costs of engaging in crime) and in illegal earnings (one of the benefits of engaging in crime) that might explain the difference in crime propensity [3]. Using a large administrative data set for the US (the National Incident-Based Reporting System Resource) with data on individuals from 1995 to 2015, the study finds that there is a gender difference in incentives to participate in criminal activities: on average, men earn 13% more than women and face a 9% higher probability of arrest.…”

“…A related issue is the gender gap in incarceration. Women commit around 30% of property crimes in the US but represent less than 10% of the prison population [3]. One potential reason for the gap is that, all else being equal, women accused of a crime are treated more leniently by the justice system than men who are accused of a crime.…”

Job Displacement, Unemployment, and Crime: Evidence from Danish Microdata and Reforms

“…Appendix Section A compares this paper's sample to the job displacement literature.Finally, this paper follows the crime literature by focusing on males. Indeed, the majority of crimes are committed by males in the U.S (Freeman 1999, Campaniello & Gavrilova 2018. and in Denmark 87.2% of those convicted in 1989 were male.…”