Last Updated on September 18, 2026 by Karl Thompson
This article provides a clear breakdown of gender and crime statistics, focusing specifically on how male vs female crime statistics coThis article provides a clear breakdown of gender and crime statistics for England and Wales, focusing specifically on how male vs female crime statistics compare across various types of offences, punishments and patterns of victimisation.
Gender and Crime Statistics a Summary
- Men are more likely to commit more serious crimes than women.
- Men are more likely to be arrested and sent to jail than women.
- Men are more likely to be victims of more serious crimes such as murder and violence against the person.
- Women commit less serious offences and are less likely to go to jail.
- Only 4% of the prison population is female.
- Women are more likely to be victims of sexual offences than men.
- There are more males throughout the Criminal Justice System, although in recent years women are catching up to men, especially as 43% of all judges are now women.
The latest available figures are from Women and the Criminal Justice System 2023, published by the Ministry of Justice on 30 January 2025. Unless stated otherwise, all the figures below come from that publication and cover England and Wales. The Ministry of Justice publishes this compendium every two years.
This is an important update for the gender and crime topic which makes up part of the A-level sociology crime and deviance module.
Men are more likely to be arrested, prosecuted and sent to jail
There are approximately equal numbers of men and women in the population as a whole (51% of the population is female), but
- 84% of people arrested are male (year ending March 2024)
- 78% of those prosecuted are male (2023)
- 93% of those sentenced to immediate custody are male (2023)
- 96% of the prison population is male (June 2024),
- women only make up 4% of the total prison population.
graph showing male and female arrest and prosecution rates
The number of people dealt with by the criminal justice system has fallen over the last five years of statistics, for both men and women. Prosecutions fell by 20% between 2019 and 2023, from 1.2 million to 962,000, although the number of arrests rose by 8% in the latest year. Bear in mind these are figures for people processed by the system, not crime rates as such.
The proportion of female offenders compared to male offenders has shrunk in the last five years. Between 2017 and 2019 around a quarter (26%) of people formally dealt with by the criminal justice system were female. In 2023 only 22% were. The Ministry of Justice suggests this is likely to be a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, when the courts prioritised the more serious cases which are less likely to involve women.
bar chart showing male and females dealt with by criminal justice system 2018 to 2023
Men commit more serious crimes than women
Men commit more crime than women in almost all categories of crime. As a general rule men commit a higher proportion of more serious crimes. In 2023:
- men accounted for 98% of prosecutions for sexual offences.
- men accounted for 84% of prosecutions for violence against the person.
- men accounted for 92% of prosecutions for drug offences.
- men accounted for 91% of prosecutions for robbery.
The most equal in terms of gender were summary non-motoring offences and fraud offences. Men accounted for 65% of prosecutions for summary non-motoring offences and 75% of prosecutions for fraud offences.
male vs female crime statistics
Men are more likely to commit indictable offences
‘Indictable offences’ are those more serious offences dealt with by the Crown Court. You are much more likely to go to jail for an indictable offence. Men are nearly twice as likely to be on trial for an indictable offence compared to women: in 2023, 26% of male defendants were prosecuted for indictable offences, compared to 14% of female defendants.
Put the other way round, in 2023 74% of male defendants were in court for summary (less serious) offences, compared to 86% of female defendants. Men were more likely to be on trial for motoring offences, which made up 55% of male prosecutions compared to 50% of female prosecutions. Women were more likely to be on trial for summary non-motoring offences (36% of female prosecutions compared to 19% of male prosecutions).
male versus female crime statistics
Differences in male and female offending, less serious crimes
The biggest differences in the Penalty Notices for Disorder (PNDs) handed out in 2023 were as follows:
- Men are much more likely to be given penalty notices for possession of cannabis: 38% of the PNDs given to men, compared to 9% of those given to women.
- Women are much more likely to be given penalty notices for theft, basically shoplifting goods worth less than £100: 16% of PNDs given to women, compared to 4% of those given to men.
- Women are three times as likely to be given a notice for wasting police time compared to men (7% compared to 2%), although the figures are small.
- A higher proportion of women are also given notices for being drunk and disorderly (54% compared to 43%), although this is a very large category for both men and women.
Also, and this isn’t shown above, 74% of prosecutions for television licence evasion are against women, and TV licence evasion accounts for 12% of all prosecutions of women. The Ministry of Justice suggests one contributing factor is that women are more likely to be at home when an enforcement officer calls.
Theft from shops is the most common indictable offence women are prosecuted for. It accounted for 27% of female prosecutions for indictable offences in 2023, compared to 12% for men.
Women are much less likely to go to jail compared to men
In 2023 men were twice as likely as women to be sent straight to jail for an indictable offence. 36% of men sentenced for indictable offences received immediate custody, compared to only 18% of women.
Women are more likely to receive a community sentence as a type of punishment than men. In 2023 30% of women sentenced for indictable (more serious) offences received a community sentence compared to only 21% of men.
These gender differences in offending relate to the fact that women commit less serious crimes than men, rather than the courts treating women more leniently.
That is one interpretation, but it is contested. The Ministry of Justice calculates that women were 28% less likely than men to be sentenced to immediate custody for indictable offences in 2023. It also warns that its figures don’t control for the exact offence, previous convictions or other circumstances, so they can’t show whether the courts treat men and women differently. For the argument that they do, see the chivalry thesis.
Women receive shorter prison sentences than men
The average custodial sentence length for men was 21.8 months in 2023, compared to 12.2 months for women.
Almost half (49%) of the women sentenced to custody in 2023 received sentences of three months or less, compared to 29% of men.
It’s worth noting that the length of prison sentences has increased over the last five years: the average custodial sentence rose from 18.7 months in 2019 to 21.1 months in 2023. The gap between men and women has remained relatively stable.
Women only make up 4% of the prison population
The proportion of women compared to men in jail remained stable at 5% for women, 95% for men between 2015 and 2019. [VERIFY: pre-2020 proportions not rechecked.] In 2021 this changed and today men make up 96% of the prison population and women only 4%. As at 30 June 2024 there were 87,700 people in prison in England and Wales, around 3,700 of them women.
Women also get shorter sentences than men. In 2024, 46% of women in prison were serving sentences of less than four years. This is compared to only 27% of male prisoners.
bar chart comparing the sentence lengths of male and female prisoners
Female prisoners are twice as likely to self-harm compared to men
In the year ending March 2024, 341 in every 1,000 female prisoners self-harmed, compared to 146 in every 1,000 male prisoners. Women who self-harmed also did so more often: an average of 16.4 incidents per woman, compared to 4.5 per man.
This suggests that women find the experience of going to jail more stressful than men. In the 2022/23 HM Inspectorate of Prisons survey, 82% of female prisoners reported mental health problems, compared to 59% of male prisoners.
It’s also worth noting that 341 in 1,000 is a HUGE proportion of female prisoners.
Gender and victimisation
Patterns of victimisation also vary by gender. The figures below are from the Crime Survey for England and Wales for the year ending March 2024, as reported by the Ministry of Justice.
- Women were significantly more likely than men to be victims of ‘headline’ crime (which includes fraud and computer misuse): 16.6% of women were victims in 2023/24.
- 10.1% of women and 9.4% of men were victims of personal crime, but this difference is not statistically significant.
- Once fraud and computer misuse are taken out, men were significantly more likely to be victims of personal crime (3.4% of men compared to 2.4% of women).
- 1.8% of men were victims of violent crime compared to only 1.1% of women.
- Men are 3 times more likely to be victims of robbery compared to women. [VERIFY: the ratio is not confirmed. WCJS 2023 confirms men were significantly more likely to be victims of robbery.]
- Women are more likely to be victims of fraud compared to men.
Homicide statistics and gender
Men are more than twice as likely to be murdered compared to women. In 2022/23 there were 590 homicide victims in England and Wales: 71% were male and 29% female.
Women are much more likely to be murdered by a partner or ex-partner compared to men. In 2022/23 32% of female homicide victims were killed by a partner or ex-partner, and a further 13% by a family member. Men were most likely to be killed by a friend or an acquaintance (25% of male victims), followed by a stranger (19%).
78% of female victims were killed in or around a house or dwelling, compared to only 37% of male victims, which shows the link between domestic violence and female murder victims. Men were much more likely to be killed on the street (34% of male victims, compared to 6% of female victims).
Women are more likely to be victims of sexual offences
Again we need to go back to an earlier publication for this. In 2022 women were six times more likely to be referred to victim support for sexual offences compared to men. [VERIFY: figure and source not rechecked; check for a newer ONS release.]
Source: Office for National Statistics.
Criminal Justice Professionals by Gender
Finally, it’s worth taking a quick look at how many judges and police are male and female….
- 35% of police officers are female (2023).
- 38% of court judges are female, and 43% of all judges, including tribunal judges (2024).
- 57% of magistrates are female (2024).
- 68% of Crown Prosecution Service staff are female (2023).
The proportions of both female police officers and judges have increased over the past five years. Female police officers rose from 30% in 2019 to 35% in 2023, and female court judges from 32% in 2020 to 38% in 2024.
What the statistics can’t tell us
All the figures above are official statistics, which means they only tell us about the people the police and courts actually deal with. When you use them in an exam, keep three limitations in mind.
- The dark figure of crime. Most crime is never reported or recorded, so official statistics can’t tell us how much crime men and women really commit. Self-report studies are one way around this. See the chivalry thesis for what they suggest.
- Missing data. In 2023 the defendant’s sex was not recorded for 23% of prosecutions. Most of these were less serious cases in the magistrates’ courts dealt with under the Single Justice Procedure, where the defendant doesn’t have to attend. This may affect the proportions of men and women in the figures for less serious offences.
- No causal links. The Ministry of Justice stresses that its figures don’t control for offence type, previous convictions or other characteristics. Differences between men and women shouldn’t be read as proof that the system treats them unequally, or that it doesn’t.
Signposting
This post summarises the stats on gender and offending. There are competing theories for why these differences exist.
Sex Role Theory suggests that women commit less crime because they are socialised into being more passive than men.
Biological theories explain the gap in terms of natural differences between men and women, such as testosterone levels.
Freda Adler’s Liberation Thesis suggests women have become more frequent offenders as they become more liberated in society.
The Chivalry Thesis argues that the statistics under-record female crime because the police and courts are more lenient towards women.
Feminist criminologists such as Frances Heidensohn and Pat Carlen explain women’s lower offending in terms of patriarchal control.
James Messerschmidt argues that much male crime is a way of ‘accomplishing masculinity’.
This material is part of the crime and deviance module, usually taught in the second year of A-level sociology.