EXPLORING THE INTERSEXUAL NATURE OF VIOLENT CRIMES*

Data on criminal homicides (from the Uniform Crime Reports) and aggravated assaults and simple assaults (from the National Crime Surveys) are analyzed to determine the extent to which violent crimes occur within or between sexes. The routine activities approach is used to develop hypotheses, and those hypotheses are tested using models that estimate the proportion of ingroup and outgroup crimes “expected.” With the exception of homicides, in which women murder men more often than expected, each of these violent crimes occurs within sexes more often than expected. There is a strong relationship between the type of violence (simple assault, aggravated assault, and homicide) and the extent to which the target of female aggression is a male.