Office for National Statistics report - focus on gender

The Office for National Statistics has published its latest Focus on Gender report. The report provides an overview of the lives of men and women in contemporary UK society.

It includes information on their characteristics, experiences and lifestyles, placing particular emphasis on the differences between males and females.

On the issue of crime, the report finds that:

• Men commit more crimes than women. In 2004, male offenders in England and Wales outnumbered female offenders by more than four to one.
• In 2004, the peak age of offending was 17 for males and 15 for females.
• Men outnumber women across all major crime categories. Between 83 per cent and 94 per cent of offenders found guilty of burglary, robbery, drug offences, criminal damage or violence against the person were male.
• The risk of being involved in a violent incident caused by a stranger remains substantially greater for men than for women, with men being three times more likely than women to suffer this form of attack.
• Despite being more likely to be the victim of violent crime (four per cent of men compared with three per cent of women), a greater proportion of women had a high level of worry about violent crime (24 per cent of women compared with nine per cent of men).
• Roughly equal proportions of men and women had a high level of worry about car crime, whereas women were more likely to be very worried about burglary than men (15 per cent and ten per cent respectively).

The report can be found in full at http://www.statistics.gov.uk/StatBase/Product.asp?vlnk=10923&Pos=1&ColRank=1&Rank=128