Crime Data and the Fear Factor
December 15, 2005
He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it. - Plato
Fear
The U. S. Bureau of Justice Statistics document that it is boys and men who suffer most from criminal victimization. Regardless of this fact, studies document and in fact most laypersons observe that the fear of crime is higher in girls and women.
The journal, Women’s Health and Urban Life, documents that one of the most consistent variables in criminal justice texts is the fact that women fear crime more than men. The fear of crime is similar for women regardless of their age, socioeconomics or educational status.
The fear of rape permeates the minds of many women while it is something men rarely think about. However, given the statistics below it should be a valid concern for women and men and girls and boys.
Abuse
In a two year observational study of married couples approximately half of the female participants initiated and engaged in physical aggression that would place the females in a batterers program. The females proved to be as belligerent, contemptuous, and angry as their husbands.
However, while the physical aggression between the couples did not cause the husbands to be fearful of their wives it did cause the wives to be fearful of their husbands.
Criminologists, scholars, social scientists and laypersons agree that in American society parents continue to acculturate boys to be tough, ignore pain and minimize the abuse they receive. It is still a sign of weakness for boys to cry, ask for help or to be emotional. It is a demonstration of empathy and emotion when girls cry and seek sympathy.
The Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) on pages 39-40, documents 8.8% of girls and 8.9% of boys report that they were hit, slapped or physically hurt on purpose by a boyfriend or girlfriend. The same page of the YRBS also documents that 11.9% of girls and 6.1% of boys were physically forced to have sexual intercourse.
Dating violence studies document that the most common response to the victimization of assaultive behavior by girls was fear followed closely by being emotionally hurt. Boys were more likely to respond that they thought it was funny or that it made them angry. Both girls and boys noted that the most common cause of the assaultive behavior was jealousy.
The agreement in the cause for the assaultive behavior and the differences in the above responses after the assaultive behavior should not surprise anyone. Boys are taught to “be a man” and to “tough it out,” by society, sports, their peers and their mother and father. After society teaches boys not to be “wimps or sissies” the same society seems surprised that men are not as “empathic and sensitive” as women.
Crime Data
The Federal Bureau of Investigation collects data from law enforcement using the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program. The UCR describes rape as the carnal knowledge of a female, forcibly and against her will. Assaults or attempts to commit rape by force or threat of force are also included.
Hence the number of female rape victims using UCR crime data for 2002 is 95,136 and for men the crime data number of male rape victimization is “zero.” Perhaps this is because male rape victimization, similar to male domestic violence victimization, is assumed by the criminal justice system to be so rare that the data of male victimization need not be collected.
The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) documents that women account for 96.3% of all reported rapes. Some, if so inclined, could use this crime data to document that the chance of a male being raped is extremely rare.
However, the National Violence Against Women Survey (NVAWS), a self reporting survey, estimates that 302,091 women and 92,748 men are forcibly raped each year in the United States. Thus crime data documents that the rape of males ranges from 0% to 4.7%. In dramatic contrast to that crime data the NVAWS documents that approximately one of every four rape victims are males.
What Colleges Teach
The college text, Criminal Justice Today 8th edition, by Frank Schmalleger is one of the most popular and widely used texts for criminal justice students. In this text on page 67 domestic violence is presented not primarily as a problem for women, it is presented exclusively as a “Crime Against Women.”
Documentation of male domestic violence victimization in this college text is ignored. The author notes that the National Violence Against Women Survey (NVAWS), published in 2000 reveal the following:
The NVAWS document that women are approximately twice (26.4%) as likely as men (13.4%) to report to law enforcement that they were victimized by an intimate partner. The authors of the NVAWS both ignore or minimize this significant differential.
The NVAWS documents that law enforcement is, approximately three times more likely to arrest or detain (36.4% for men and 12.3% for women) an intimate partner offender when the victim is female.
The authors of the NVAWS survey speculate that this dramatic arrest disparity is because women are injured far more than men. To make that argument the authors must ignore the very NVAWS data they helped to collect, document and publish.
The NVAWS, as the authors clearly understand, documents that 39.0% of women and 24.8% of men report being injured during their most recent physical assault. To lend further credence to that percentage differential the NCVS documents that 50% of women and 32% of men who are assaulted by an intimate partner report suffering an injury. There is less than a 4% differential in the two surveys.
Hence, it appears the difference in injuries do not account for that large differential in arrests. It may very well be that many arrests are the result of the implicit bias in law enforcement domestic violence training and education that instructs officers to expect, even before they arrive at the incident, that men are the abusers and women their victims. In domestic violence law enforcement training the abusers are always referred to as “he” and the victims as “she.”
Further Fear Factors
The NVAWS also documents that women (51.9) are more likely than men (36.2%) to report being stalked by an intimate partner. Again it is logical to conclude that men may report being stalked less often than women because they do not fear the women stalking them.
This, empirical and observational, fear factor, may also account for the fact that far more women than men will seek restraining/orders of protection. To receive a restraining order in the majority of states the plaintiff need not have suffered any physical assault. All that is needed is needed to receive an order it that someone fears that they may be assaulted.
Reporting
The gender differential of higher reporting of crime data by females also holds true for same sex victimization. Between 1993 and 1999 13,740 men reported being victimized by their male intimate partner as compared to 16,900 women who were victimized by their female intimate partner.
The General Social Survey (GSS) of Canada also documents that women are twice as likely as men to report their intimate partner victimization to the police and twice as likely to seek a restraining order.
The GSS reports women are more fearful of crime than men by almost two-thirds (64%). About 24% of women compared to 12% of men report being fearful about being home alone in the evening. The GSS documents that approximately 18% of women as compared with 6% of men report being afraid to walk alone in their neighborhood after dark.
The GSS reports that women are more than twice as likely, and of course it can not be denied that the difference in physical size and strength between men and women may play an important role here, to be injured. Women are three times more likely to fear for their life and are 6 times more likely to seek medical attention.
Conclusion
None of the data in the National Violence Against Women Survey can be used to dispute the fact that many women can be just as jealous as many men. The data does not dispute that many women initiate assaultive domestic violence incidents and that many women can be just as belligerent, contemptuous, and angry as many men. Crime data after all, only documents the results not the increased risk of the crime occurring.
The above is often seen by many domestic violence advocates as “blaming the victims.” I would not blame any one of my daughters or sons if they had their car stolen after they left their car unlocked and running. The blame rests squarely on the shoulders of the thief. However, I would expect that my daughters and sons would clearly understand that this type of behavior greatly increases the risk of their car being stolen.
If we can provide programs and interventions that assist women in controlling their assertive and assaultive behavior, perhaps there will be far less women reporting their victimization to law enforcement. After all, the ultimate goal of domestic violence intervention is to reduce the numbers of victimizations.
