Number of female offences doubles

Press, 15 July 1978, Page 7

Number of female offences doubles

The number of charges against females in the 10 years to 1976 more than doubled from 22,736 to 51,464 according to the annual report of the Justice Department. The report, tabled in Parliament, said that in 1967 the number of charges per 1000 of female population was 17. but 1 within 10 years this figure had risen to 33 per 1000. The number of charges against males over the same period increased 32 per cent, although the rate for males per 1000 of population was still very , much higher than for females. In 1976, females were responsible for 13 per cent of the criminal workload o' the Magistrates’ Courts, the report said. Most offences comi mitted by men and women i were traffic offences but > the rate of more serious

female offending had increased since 1968. “Moreover, vagrancy and ‘victimless’ offences traditionally associated with women's offending now play a much less prominent part in the total picture,” the report said. “We now find an emerging parttern of female offending involving more serious crimes such as aggravated robbery, assaults, burglary and false pretences. “Theft, which includes shoplifting, still figures prominently in the total number of offences bywomen, but has not increased proportionately to over-all offending.” The report said the involvement of females in drug offending had also become apparent. In 1976, 190 women were convicted for drug offences compared with only two in 1967. “What the figures creat-

ing this portrayal of remale offending do not disclose, is whether the increase is real in the sense that women are actually committing more offences, nerhaps because of their changing role in society. "A writer in commenting on the criminality of women contended that the tendency to crime between the sexes was not significantly different, but that the ‘masked’ criminality of women hides many offences committed by women, from detection,” the Justice Department report said. “Perhaps the ‘mask’ has been removed and society in general now has less reluctance to report offences and prosecute offences where women are involved.” it said. There was no doubt the actual reasons were many and complex but whatever the reasons “this development poses problems that cannot be ignored.”