Why do YOU think men commit more crime than women?

Cuz women don’t have the balls to commit crime.

This is a joke.

In most cases, I believe it's a mix of hormones and traditionalism. Men have generally been more likely to seek grandeur by participating in violent activities, or, violent activities are demanded by their particular social group. Sometimes a mix of both.

I think it also it boils down to how gender roles are taught by different cultures. If men are taught to be the risk takers, it only makes sense that boundaries and laws will get pushed more by men. After all, intentionally breaking a law may simply be viewed as a calculated risk and not as something that should never be done.

Honestly speaking, it seems too easy of an answer to just blame male physiology. The social aspects of this can't be ignore either.

I think it's social conditioning and lack of mental health resources. Girls are strongly socially conditioned to "play nice" and get along at all costs, which tends to lead to more rules following. Boys are often socialized to suppress their emotions while at the same time are allowed to act out and encouraged to be tough and macho. The bad boy act is romanticized and violence is at best tolerated and at worst idolized.

So you have men who never learned how to deal with their feelings who also are used to having a physical, often violent outlet because that's the only acceptable thing they know.

From least to most relevant:

• There are more crimes that can only be done by men than by women.
• There are crimes that are taken more seriously by law enforcement when done by men.
• Male crime bosses are still bosses and unlikely to hire and promote women.
• Housework may be real but unpaid work, but does not lend itself to workplace crime.
• Males are more likely to be convicted, skewing statistics.
• We are teaching kids that being angry or horny are typically male emotions.
• Seeking help from family or institutions is discouraged for men, while being self reliant is idolized.
• We stopped prosecuting the crime of witchcraft /s

To somewhat play Devil's Advocate, I would highlight that the stats don't show who commits more crime, but who gets caught more. If no-one arrests you, (or if a court finds you not guilty), you won't be in the stats.

In my country, for instance, police can stop and search you if they have "reasonable suspicion" that you're carrying something illegal (stolen good, drugs, weapons etc.). If police are operating under the assumption that men commit more crime than women, they're far more likely to be suspicious of a man committing the same crime as a woman.

I haven't read anything that's about gender bias specifically at this level of policing, but I do know there's a lot of research (especially in the US) on how racial bias causes black neighbourhoods to be more heavily policed than neighbourhoods with comparable crime levels, leading to a self-reinforcing cycle where heavier policing leads to increased belief that black people commit more crime, which leads to heavier policing^[1][2]

I do know that after an arrest has been made, women tend to fare better than men; they are less likely to be sentenced, and when they are, they tend to receive less severe sentences than men, even for equivalent crimes^[3][4] . This is speculative, but I imagine this has a cascading effect — if there is a crime where the punishment could range from community service to a prison sentence, then the person who gets community service is statistically less likely to reoffend than the person who goes to prison^[5]

All that in mind, I'm pretty confident that the gender ratio in crime statistics gives a skewed impression of who actually commits more crime, and that women are effectively undercounted if we're talking about who commits more crime — though I can't guess on to what degree this is the case. However, it's entirely possible that women commit crimes at a similar rate to men, or even at a higher rate. We can't really know.

And to finish off this comment with a slightly more shitposty answer that still links into my broader point, it's possible that women commit as much crime as men, but the statistics are skewed towards men because women are more effective criminals.

I include this last possibility because I am uncomfortable with how you framed things in your question, with phrases like "crime being disproportionately committed by men is a universal constant". Statistics are never Truth, and are, at best, only ever an approximation. Stats can give us a sense of clarity in an overwhelming world by reducing down complexity into much more easily parsed, quantitative data, often presented in an easy to visualise manner. It feels objective. However, statistics only serve to mask the underlying bias in what data we choose to collect, who collects it, and how — which means that treating statistics as objective can be dangerous due to making us less aware of biases and inequality, and thus even less objective.

I like the way that the feminist philosopher Donna Haraway puts it; she describes data visualisations as "the god trick of seeing everything from nowhere"^[4][5]. I'mma quote a long passage from an excellent book here, because I don't think I can explain it any better than this:

"The view from nowhere—from a distance, from up above, like a god—may be data visualization’s most signature feature. It’s also the most ethically complicated to navigate for the ways in which it masks the people, the methods, the questions, and the messiness that lies behind clean lines and geometric shapes. Haraway calls it a trick because it makes the viewer believe that they can see everything, all at once, from an imaginary and impossible standpoint. But it’s also a trick because what appears to be everything, and what appears to be neutral, is always what she terms a partial perspective. And in most cases of seemingly “neutral” visualizations, this perspective is the one of the dominant, default group." ^[5]

To bring things back to our question, I strongly believe that we don't know if men commit more crime than women. I think it's plausible that it could be true, but due to inherent bias in how the data behind these statistics are gathered (i.e. documented inequalities in policing and sentencing), we simply don't know. Statistics always carries this problem of bias being hidden in the data, but it's especially tricky when dealing with complex socioeconomic matters such as crime. To me, this is a standout example of an area where we need to be especially cautious that we don't mistake the stats for truth.

---

[1]: Open Access Academic Paper:
"Smartphone Data Reveal Neighborhood-Level Racial Disparities in Police Presence", (2023), Chen et al.
https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_01370

[2]: More accessible summary of [1]
https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/smartphone-records-reveal-racial-disparities-in-neighborhood-policing/

[3]: Paywalled Academic Paper:
"Gender Disparities in Sentencing", (2020), Arnaud Philippe
https://doi.org/10.1111/ecca.12333
Unpaywalled SciDB mirror via Anna's Archive

[4]: More accessible summary of [3], by Michelle Kilfoyle and Arnaud Philippe
https://ceps.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/2021/11/17/gender-stereotypes-see-female-criminals-fare-better-in-court/

[5]: Old Academic Paper:
“Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective,” Feminist Studies 14, no. 3 (1988): 575–599
Quote and reference retrieved via [6]

[6]: Open Access Book "Data Feminism", (2020), Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren Klein
Fairly academic, but also quite accessible to anyone interested in how socioeconomic inequality shapes how we use data, and how data feeds inequality. I highly recommend this book, it is excellent
Quoted section found here

And on the off chance one of you delightful nerds would like to read more, here is a link to the main book page, for your convenience:
https://data-feminism.mitpress.mit.edu/

---

^(It's funny that now I'm no longer in academia, I seem to have fun writing cited essays. Though to be fair, I studied biochemistry, so this is outside of my main wheelhouse — which is probably why I'm so diligent with citing my claims)

I think a mix of factors, the ones I think about are:

There is often no fallback. After a certain point there is no one to take care of you so if you fail your options quickly run thin. This leads to feeling increased pressure to do high risk activities.

I also think men value their lives less. There is a certain line of thought that is in every mans head where they are pissed off and they look at their life and they look at what they're pissed off at and they think "What if I just threw it all away to destroy that thing" at least I could say my life was useful. For most men this check fails because their lives are decent but for people on the bink I can see them thinking its worth to trade their life to take someone elses. If I were in the US i'd probably trade my life for Trump's if I thought i could do it.

Biology, higher propensity for taking extreme risks, tolerance for violence, physically stronger on average, mentally mature slower, wider distribution across the iq bellcurve. We grow up fighting each other for fun, we see and learn about millions of us dying in wars, we see how failures are treated in society, we see a lot of media showing 'failures' lashing out at society.

Women are better are covering it up. I think men are more prone to acts of passion or random bouts of rage, which is difficult to plan for and cover up. It's often public, loud and messy. Women internalize from an early age that this is not acceptable behaviour if you're not male, so we reign it in more. But that doesn't mean the crimes aren't committed, we're just always cognizant of the social fallout if we're discovered.

Anyone who has worked in a retirement home can tell you there are some very sweet ladies who will, on or near their deathbed, tell you how they killed their abusive husband decades ago. Or they share the story like words of wisdom to the younger generation.

I think a lot of women have been put in a corner by society, so they don't feel a pressing need to play by the rules all the time.

Can anyone even measure the amount of crime committed?

Or is it only the crimes caught, and charged in a court of law.

Because they are not the same thing.

Men are more likely to face real poverty and get no help from anybody. Suicide, crime rates are just derivatives of it

Since the stats are only by who gets caught, I can't be sure that men actually commit more crime as opposed to simply more men get caught. Maybe women are simply better at crime. 🤷‍♂️

/s

Criminals tend to be on the extreme end of the bell curve for violence, and men's bell curve for violence is slightly shifted up compared to women. In the end, that means the extreme outliers for all the most disagreeable and violent individuals are men (like 99%) and the same is true on the opposite end but for women.

Men also have a slightly broader bell curve for intelligence, so the same applies for the extreme end of intelligence. All of the dumbest people alive are primarily men. The Venn diagram of low intelligence and agreeableness, along with impulsiveness means most criminals are men.

It's not possible to measure committed crimes. If anyone parrots some crime statistics without limiting themselves to violent crimes it's 100% bullshit. Crime statistics just measure convictions. Violent crime rates often times include unsolved murders and assaults.

Even in more progressive areas boys are socialized differently. I’ve been in a field where I see early childhood until middle school for years now. And girls, from the beginning, and raised more strictly. They have more care in their clothes, their meals, and the skills they are taught. They rarely fight, and if they do, it’s not on impulse. My theory on why people often say “boys are easier” is because they absolutely neglect them. So the onus is on 3rd parties to often teach them basic skills and rule following, to control their impulses, etc. Even in K-5, boys are the ones who are telling their teachers to fuck off, leaving the buildings without permission, fighting, etc. Parents blame the teacher/staff, if they are present at all, and antisocial behavior gets rewarded again and again.

For violent crimes it's probably just that men are on average stronger and more aggressive (at least they were a few decades ago).
For white collar crimes, higher positions with more criminal opportunity still are usually held by men. More opportunity means more abuse of opportunity.
On the low economic end, poor men are less likely to be able to benefit from help for internal and external reasons than poor women. So survival crimes are more likely to be done by men, too.
Men on average seem to also feel more the need for speed and are more risk affine. So they likely get more speeding tickets.

Different reasons for different types of crimes. There probably are also crimes that are more often committed by women or where the gender gap is insignificant. But nobody talks about crimes committed by women. So no idea whether women are even capable of committing crimes at all.

Because ~85% of males could physically overpower ~85% of females.

Young men too polite and well behaved to physically engage with women may underestimate the difference , and they may be taken by common movie tropes where a little girl is a secret martial arts master and beats the shit out of fifteen guys. But in real life the physical difference is enormously biased towards men and boys.

Men and boys know this and so they are more likely to try crimes. Women and girls know this and so they are less likely to try. This knowledge comes into play both when considering the crime, and when considering the law enforcement response to those crimes. (“I could overpower/slip away from / outrun that cop!”)

This explains the disparity in violent crime, but also leads to an overall mindset that explains nonviolent crime.

It's because of several factors. In no particular order, crime statistics are skewed, they only account for crimes that have been discovered and considered solved, if a certain demographics were better at hiding or getting away with crimes it would be underrepresented. Even if we could trust the statistics, some crimes are less severe than others, and it's hard to judge all crimes in the same bag, even all murders are not equal so statistics can get skewed by a demographic committing more of the crimes you're analyzing even if they commit less if you were to look at specifics. Even if we could trust that, and have crimes organized neatly into completely independent and equally severe categories there's the social factors. Most societies around the world tend to educate men more violently than women. Finally, even if you were to have a society with humans educated equally, and have a 100% crime rate solved with 100% accuracy and analyze crimes in a completely unbiased way, there's still the biological differences, and men have more testosterone than women, and testosterone is responsible for aggressive behavior, so even in such a society there would still be some tendency for men to commit more crimes, although I imagine it would be a lot less skewed than today.

Women are not as reckless, less confrontational and more socially conscious (if not due to morals, at least because of the fear of being ostracized). Also, they're generally incapable of engaging in violent crime competently, for obvious biological reasons, so I guess they also have less motivation to try if it ever crosses their minds.

Societal expectations for one thing. We're also conditioned into suppressing our emotions. Many men don't have healthy outlets.

How about the surviving non-patriarchal/-capitalist tribes? Is it an objective fact there as well

There's certainly a social competent, crimes, violence is seen as a manly trait.

Testosterone is also a hell of a drug, it makes you do stupid shit.

There might be underreporting of the women circumstantially as well. I mention this because the only people that have committed violence against me is my mother and my ex. I feel like if they were men the possibility of criminal charges might have happened instead of being ignored, but that's a unknown.

They’re more capable of doing so.

Men are generally more aggressive

Women have generally chosen said more aggressive men to reproduce with

I guess the more aggressive men are more likely to rape and get women pregnant which increases the chance of their aggressive nature to survive. This is why abortion rights are crucial among other reasons - getting rid of the plague of moronic sexual behaviors that genetically promote violence

And now we're here

Uhhh... Because it's easy?

Violent crime?

Younger people do too. Brain chemistry, social conditioning, men are more likely to commit violent crime, and the effect is magnified because they are physically stronger overall.

Crime in general? Like shoplifting, embezzlement, fraud? Do men commit more? I don't know if that is true.

AnarchistArtificer has a point, but I think we do have good evidence that men commit more of the crimes of violence. Murder and rape are more commonly committed by men. It could be that they are just more successful at it, for lack of a better word - if I got in a fight with a man my size, I am the one more likely to be harmed, right? But I don't think so. It does seem evident, from the evidence we have, that men do commit more violent crime.

This doesn't mean that men are in general violent. Just that the small subset of violent people is mostly guys.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3969807/

This is a good write-up of the issue: https://theconversation.com/men-are-more-likely-to-commit-violent-crimes-why-is-this-so-and-how-do-we-change-it-157331

It kind of mirrors what others are saying in this thread. Some key quotes from the article.

men are more likely than women to associate with antisocial peers.

life stresses can produce anger and frustration [...] men are likely to react violently to such strains

men are more likely than women to engage in risk-taking behaviour

there has always been an entrenched belief in the “natural” order of things, which associates masculinity with dominance and status, [...] bravado among peers, the drive for power and control, shamelessness, and a lack of concern for others

it could just be a coincidence, i'm not sure if men are naturally more violent or evil than women.

I might be wrong but there is a uptick in female violent crime. I believe crime has to do with the themes in society and the anti human super structure that is pushing many to their limits. A lot of familicides...and crime in general has gone up. At least certain crimes. We are all edward bernays butt babies and our likes and dislikes are imprinted on us at a young age... some rebel but most do not.. so simply, we are a byproduct of our environment. That environment is now a digital cage that has background processes that can trigger events. Not precise but just good enough. Broad strokes for the epstein folks. Women uphold the patriarchy so men follow and live up to their roles at least in breeder communities. Domestic violence occurs in other unions as well but I personally think the breeders have it the hardest in that arena. Man is taught to be terrible communicators and to be violent. toy guns and shit... we got jizzlane maxwells everywhere. It is just a shitty baby diaper of a world really. A lot of the terrible things that go on in the USA could be prevented by a redistribution of wealth.

LINK

the female jail incarceration rate went up by 12%, while the male rate fell by 10%. As overall incarcerated populations rebounded in 2021 and 2022 after COVID-related reductions, the increase of the female populations outpaced those of men.

• Females report that they make up a larger share of violent crime victims: 51% of all violent victimizations in 2022 compared to 41% of all victimizations in 1993, the start of the data series. (This figure is drawn from the National Crime Victimization Survey; it excludes homicides and includes simple assaults.)
• Growth in arrest rates for women (41% higher in 2019 than in 1980) is due in part to a rise in arrest rates for violent crimes (63% higher in 2019 than 1980) and drug crimes (317% higher in 2019 than 1980).
• The incarceration rate for women in U.S. prisons and jails increased dramatically (+431%) from 1982 through 2007, and then flattened as the number of incarcerated men began to fall. Between 2010 and 2019, the year before the COVID pandemic jolted the criminal justice system, the female jail incarceration rate went up by 12%, while the male rate fell by 10%. As overall incarcerated populations rebounded in 2021 and 2022 after COVID-related reductions, the increase of the female populations outpaced those of men.
• More than half of the women in state and federal prisons are parents to minor children, and an estimated three of four women in local jails are mothers. Prior to incarceration, mothers were more than twice as likely as fathers to be the sole or primary caretaker of their children.
• Most justice-involved women come from backgrounds of poverty and trauma, and they are more likely than justice-involved men to be victims of physical and sexual abuse, suffer severe substance use and mental health issues, and to have experienced homelessness in the year prior to incarceration.

We are all capeable of great evil, just wait til you get drafted

I believe there's societal causes to the disparity. Part I feel is that when men are in danger and need the safety net, they're less likely to receive aid. There's not as vast of a support network for men as there are women. Add in a perception of men being considered expendable throughout history with women and children given priority. Men are more likely to be forgotten by a system that does not value them and their only means of survival may be crime. That's crime based on poverty and such means.

Crime that is white collar I think comes down to thrill seeking and reward. The propensity for men to be in extreme sports, to be stuntmen, and I believe there were instances there were more male skydivers. It's the thrill of it and getting away with it. Which leads into also psyche and are men more proportionate to have anti-social behaviors.

Brain worms.

Bored.

Women can get away with crime easier than men because they are seen as more innocent. Another thing that comes to mind is how mens' IQ is said to have more kurtosis, so you get more dumb men at the beginning of the bell curve committing bad crimes.

I think it could be useful to change the optics a little bit. Instead of seeing it as a purely gender-based issue, it would be interesting to also see it through the intersection of gender and criminality, as well as the associated biases and more.

Some things that come to mind in this respect:

• Men are more likely to become suspects in the first place

This is beautifully illustrated in this answer. In essence, we don't have statistics on crimes committed; we have statistics on cases closed. Using this statistic (which states men are most common offenders), police is more likely to see men as potential offenders, and as a result, sentence men more. This is reflected in the crime statistics and...you get the idea.

• Men are more likely to be victims of violent crimes, physical abuse, and bullying with physical elements, prompting them to develop more aggressive defense mechanisms

Such victims can often overreact on perceived dangers, causing trouble and sending them through the loop of stirring and thereby expecting more aggression. As a response to physical dangers, men often develop high physical strength (making their response more dangerous) and higher levels of testosterone (contributing to aggression). This is also projected onto a much larger group of men - many boys are preemptively taught to "stand up to bullies" (not by exposing and reporting them, but through the same aggressive defense), sending even those otherwise unaffected through the same loop.

Outside of this particular scope:

• Men have much less freedom of healthy emotional expression

Pretty much the only socially allowed negative emotion a man can have is aggression. Men expressing sadness, grief, fear are often seen as "weak", "disgusting", their feelings are invalidated, they are said they're not "real men". Eventually, all these emotions turn to anger, which is considered acceptable. Left without proper venting, the person can become danger to others.

• Men have more impulsive sexual behavior

Male sexual drive is more pronounced compared to female one. Lack of sexual satisfaction can be particularly dangerous, clouding healthy judgment in certain individuals. Unlike women, who can channel this into sexual work and other outlets, men are relatively rarely presented such opportunity. This leads to elevated rates of sexual offenses.

They are inherently more violent.

Cos we're fucking winners

which kind of crime, violent crimes yes. even suicides men use more physical methods, rather than things like poisons. also if its baked into many cultures, than yes. another complex issue is: at least in the US, men are expected to move out of the house right after HS, and not expected to come back, even if they have very little job prospects, or directions, or finances which may lead to do crimes,sell drugs,,,etc. while women are expected to stay home way past, like in thier 20s or 30s in some cases and expected to marry into a family and they usually have support system to go to college, and colleges themselves have support system for women in general, expenses paid until you finish or get married so the risk of crimes are low, when you have needs met. this isnt all cases. both men and women can stay home past HS what they should be doing independently. its complex issue, but physical violence(guns, beatings, car running over, knives, weapons) are usually men.

There's a good reason testosterone is a controlled substance and estrogen isn't.

progesterone is one of the hormones that helps sleep, moods(outside of any disorder that may interfere) and general calm.

when this hormone starts to disappear significantly in menopause it is very noticeable.

there is the saving grace that with less sleep there is less energy and ambition to act on the irritabilty to perform illegal acts.

Also relationships around women tend to socialise regarding their issues and more prone to seek medical attention with mental health.

i really hope men start reaching out more for professional help where its needed

I doubt they do. Likely more violent crime given testosterone and all.

Power. Men are more privileged than women. The more power somehow has, the more they are shielded from the consequences of their actions and the worse their behaviour.

I do suspect that overall men are alsi more likely to engage in violence than women, but i haven't checked data to see if i'm wrong.

Mental instability, hormone imbalances, the internet/manosphere 'culture' (inc susceptibility to psychological manipulation) propensity to violence

Pick one.

I don't. They don't. Men just get charged more often and are more willing to plead guilty to get out of jail (the common option is you can plead guilty and they're going to give you time-served and you can leave immediately... Freedom. Yay. whereaa you can plead not guilty and you can sit here and then they're going to have a trial in like a few months and you can just sit in jail and profess your innocence for that long time and probably have no job when you get out, unless you can post bond quickly) Women will plead innocent and there's a decent chance the DA just dismisses charges because they rather target some 'real criminals' (aka men.) They're more likely to be released on a PR bond if they do plead innocent.... More likely to get bonded. Just call up a dude and tell uhm, "I'll do anything if you Bond me out of jail." And lickety split that guy's going to the bank and getting her out of jail and then they're going to do some amazing sodomy.

Also I have a pet theory that they don't they just get away with it more often. So that Skews the data. Also in the US incarnation is just another way to reimplement slavery that's why African American men are targeted more for prosecution than any other demographic. Plus men are geared by society to be providers for their families so crime is sometimes thought of as an option when people are desperate.

This is as meaningless as asking why you think more men die of suicide than women. More women attempt suicide, but men on average use more lethal methods. Think downing a bottle of pills vs a shot to the head.

Statistics in the hands of the uninformed is just noise.

What a dumb bait question. Putting aside dubious biological pitfalls, the lived experience of men and women are drastically different and have diverged exponentially in the age of digital isolation. You are trying to draw a simple comparison between fundamentally different subjects. Even experts have trouble dissecting this, yet you think that randoms on a digital forums will generate valuable discussion with one-off snowflake opinions? Troll better

I don't. Your question is leading. Next question.