[25] Principles of Economics, p. 81.

CHAPTER VI.

CRIME IN RELATION TO SEX AND AGE.

In the present chapter we shall proceed to discuss the effect exercised by two characteristics of a distinctly personal nature in the production of crime, namely, age and sex.

As sex is the most fundamental of all human distinctions we shall begin by considering the part it plays among criminal phenomena.  According to the judicial statistics of all civilised peoples, women are less addicted to crime than men, and boys are more addicted to crime than girls.  Among most European peoples between five and six males are tried for offences against the law to every one female.  In the southern countries of Europe, females form a smaller proportion of the criminal population than in the northern.  This circumstance may be accounted for in several ways.  In the first place, it may be the case that women in the south of Europe are better morally than in the north; it may be that the social conditions of their existence shield them from crime; or it may be that the crimes men are most prone to commit in the south are of such a nature that women are more or less incapable of perpetrating them.  It is perfectly well known that in the south of Europe women lead more secluded lives than is the case in the north; they are much less immersed in the whirl and movement of life; it is not surprising, therefore, to find that they are less addicted to crime.  Nor is this all.  The crimes committed in the South consist to a large extent of offences against the person; physical weakness in a multitude of cases prevents women from committing such crimes.  In the North, on the other hand, a large proportion of crimes are in the nature of thefts and offences against property.  Most of these crimes women can commit with comparative ease; the result is that they form a larger proportion of the criminal population.  Assaults are offences women are less capable of committing than men; hence, if we find that the crime of a country consists largely of personal violence, we shall also find that the percentage of female criminals will be relatively small.  In Italy, where offences against the person are so prevalent, females only form about nine per cent. of the criminal population; in England, where personal violence is seldom resorted to, females form between 17 and 18 per cent. of the persons proceeded against, and about 15 per cent. of the numbers convicted.

A consideration of these circumstances tends to show that although southern women commit fewer crimes in proportion to men than northern women, this fact is partly owing to the character of the crime.  But it is also owing to more secluded habits of life, and to the freedom from moral contamination of a criminal nature which these habits secure.