[7] Burton et al. (1998) assessed Gottfredson and Hirschi's (1990) work on the subject, which stated that individuals with lower levels of self-control are more likely to be involved in criminal behavior, in a gender-sensitive context.
By using a self-reporting questionnaire, Burton et al. (1998) retrieved data from 555 people aged eighteen and older in the Cincinnati, Ohio, area.
Early results from the study indicated that low self-control was highly positively correlated to criminal behavior in both genders, but was especially significant for males.
With self-control being significant for males but not for females, the conclusions of this study pointed toward the notion that men and women commit crimes for different reasons.
The notion that self-control was only significant for women when combined with opportunity helps account for the gender gap seen in crime rates.
Based on research, girls are less likely than boys to have nervous system dysfunctions, difficult temperament, late maturity in verbal and motor development, learning disabilities, and childhood behavioral problems.
[13] Considerations of gender in regard to crime have been considered to be largely ignored and pushed aside in criminological and sociological study, until recent years, to the extent of female deviance having been marginalized.
[14] In the past fifty years of sociological research into crime and deviance, sex differences were understood and quite often mentioned within works, such as Merton's theory of anomie; however, they were not critically discussed, and often any mention of female delinquency was only as comparative to males, to explain male behaviors, or through defining the girl as taking on the role of a boy, namely, conducting their behavior and appearance as that of a tomboy and by rejecting the female gender role, adopting stereotypical masculine traits.
[17] However, other contentions have been made as explanations for the invisibility of women in regard to theoretical approaches, such as: females have an '...apparently low level of offending'); that they pose less of a social threat than their male counterparts; that their 'delinquencies tend to be of a relatively minor kind', but also due to the fear that including women in research could threaten or undermine theories, as Thrasher and Sutherland feared would happen with their research.
Brezina's research focuses on the "general strain theory," specifically, on why males and females have a gap rate in crime.
Brezina argues that because boys are more exposed to harsh punishment from their parents while growing up, negative experiences at school, no support system, and homelessness, they have more freedom to commit a crime.
The emotional response females receive, are fear, guilt, anxiety, or shame, which decreases their chances of committing a crime.
[19] In addition, girls and women have a great amount of social support, which also leads to lower rate of crime.
Anne Campbell writes that females may thus avoid direct physical aggressiveness and instead use strategies such as "friendship termination, gossiping, ostracism, and stigmatization".
[22] Psychologist and professor Mark van Vugt, from VU University at Amsterdam, Netherlands, has argued that males have evolved more aggressive and group-oriented in order to gain access to resources, territories, mates and higher status.
[25] The first one is the Challenge hypothesis which states that testosterone would increase during puberty thus facilitating reproductive and competitive behaviour which would include aggression as a result of evolution.
By doing so, individuals with masculinized brains as a result of pre-natal and adult life testosterone and androgens enhance their resource acquiring abilities in order to survive, attract and copulate with mates as much as possible.
They argue that this shows that gender-role norms play a large part in the differences in aggressive behavior between men and women.
[36] According to the 2015 International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, sex differences in aggression is one of the most robust and oldest findings in psychology.
[37] This replicated another 2007 meta-analysis of 148 studies in the journal Child Development which found greater male aggression in childhood and adolescence.
[39] A meta-analysis of 122 studies published in the journal of Aggressive Behavior found males are more likely to cyberbully than females, although the difference was small.
[55] One study has noted substantial differences in the treatment and behavior of defendants in the courts on the basis of gender; female criminologist Frances Heidensohn postulates that for judges and juries it is often "impossible to isolate the circumstances that the defendant is a woman from the circumstances that she can also be a widow, a mother, attractive, or may cry on the stand.
[57] According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, males experienced higher victimization rates than females for all types of violent crime except rape or other sexual assault.
[64] The trend results from 2003 to 2012 showed the vast majority of crimes were still committed by men with around 88% of homicides and 75% of all legal felonies.
[64] According to government statistics from the US Department of Justice, male perpetrators constituted 96% of federal prosecution on domestic violence.
The increase in the proportion of female violent crime would thus be explained more by a change in law enforcement policies than by effective behavior of the population itself.
In two, the ratio was 50:50 (Switzerland and British Virgin Islands), and in the remaining 7; Tonga, Iceland, Japan, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Latvia and Hong Kong, females were more likely to be victims of homicides compared to males.