The Institutional Determinants of International Female Crime

In this article the author estimates the relative influences of the four broad social institutions of education, politics, family, and economy, plus the process of modernization upon proportionate female crime by using international data for 1974 derived from Interpol statistics. Each of the institutions is operationalized into three empirical indices, as is modernization, using data from the Handbook of International Data on Women. Then these 15 independent variables are intercorrelated with 7 specific categories of female offenses plus total female crime, each rendered in proportionate form as a ratio of female crime to all crime detected by the police in each category. The correlational analysis is constructed so as to constitute a test of three competing theories of female crime: the violence-prone “new female criminal,” the theory of economic need, and economc opportunity theory. The data provide only weak support for the theory of the “new female criminal,” but considerably stronger support for both the economic need and economic opportunity theories. It is not possible to choose unambiguously between the need and opportunity theories with the evidence at hand.