Gender and Crime Motor Vehicle Theft

In the United States it is very clear that when it comes to motor vehicle theft statistically males are way more likely to commit this crime over women. A gender difference is very evident when looking at this topic. This data is important because it shows that there is something very different between men and women when it comes to different types of crime. Usually men are committing more violent crimes then women just because it’s not in a females nature to be as aggressive which makes sense. When it comes to larceny and theft many of times females are the ones who are committing these crimes most often. Assuming the offender is not car jacking the motor vehicle from someone the event in itself is going to be fairly low risk for confrontation with the target. Because of this it really doesn’t explain why females would not be more involved with motor vehicle theft. When analyzing data from 2003, 2006, and 2009 about sex differences in motor vehicle theft the gender gap is extremely visible. When researching the gender gap between male and female arrest statistics for motor vehicle theft the significantly larger number for males over females is a good indicator that there is some factor that makes females less likely to commit motor vehicle theft. In research done in the past it’s been shown that statistically males commit motor vehicle theft more then females. An example of this is research done by O’Brien (1995). He examined the difference in these crime trends along with others crimes and tried to understand what this unknown factor was that caused this significant difference. While doing this experiment at first O’Brien believed that there could be convergence and that if both trends are continuing in the same direction that they would not necessarily cross over, but there could be factors that make this more or less likely to occur. O’Brien looked at a hypothesis that had been made prior to his experiment back by Rita Simon. Her hypothesis was that increased