Women generally commit crimes at lower rates than men. However, the extent of female criminality is difficult to determine due to underreporting and a tendency to view women as less threatening than men. Traditional criminology has also focused more on male criminality due to a view of women's crimes as less problematic. Certain crimes committed by women, such as shoplifting and domestic abuse, often go unrecorded. Sociologists believe law enforcement officials, who are mostly male, also tend to be more lenient towards female offenders.

1. Overview of Women and Crime
1. Women tend to have consistently lower rates of officially recorded crimes than men.
2. The low-criminal participation rate has not been sufficiently studied. Feminists have
viewed this as another example of the characterisitc invisibility of women in social
science or social policy).
3. The only certain data on the sex offenders comes either from police statistics or from
judicial figures of those tried in courts.
4. The tendency to report female crime may differ from the tendency to report male criminal
activity.
5. Females tend to be more conformist than males to social mores.
Carol Smart asserted the following:
1. Women tend to commit fewer crimes than men, therefore female offenders are viewed as
less of a threat to society, than male offenders.
2. Most crimes committed by women seem to be of a comparitively trival nature and may
therefore be considered unworthy of research.
3. Sociology and criminology are both dominated by males.
4. Traditional criminology have been originally motivated by the objective to control
behaviour that is viewed as problematic. Since women's criminality has been viewed as
less problematic than men's, it has recieved correspondingly less attention.
Otto Pollak noted that certain crimes committed by women tend to go unrecorded by the
authorities.
1. Shop-lifitng
2. Abortions
3. Assalts against female domestic servants by female employers
4. Prostituion
5. Poisioning relatives
6. Sexually abusing children
Further, sociologists tend to agree that magistrates and other law enforcement officalis tend to be
men, brought up by women and therefore tend to be more lienient towards women than men.
Finally women are more adept at hiding their crimes and usually are good at decieiving men,
therefore stand a better chance of getting away with minimal or no penalties