Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 September 2011
The relation between sex and crime is an important and significant one. Broadly speaking, recorded criminality varies notably according to sex, being at a much higher level among males than females. It is men who are largely responsible for the planning and execution of large-scale crimes such as robberies. Serious recidivism, which presents such a problem in terms of penal care and treatment, is almost exclusively a masculine phenomenon—in a recent survey of crime in the UK, the incidence of serious recidivism amongst women is not even calculated (McClintock & Avison, 1968). The study of sex differences in criminality should, then, illuminate our knowledge of crime and its aetiology; it should also tell us something about sex differences in society in general.