WOMEN, RACE, AND CRIME *

• Author: ELIZABETH M. CRAWFORD,GARY D. HILL
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-9125.1990.tb01340.x
• Date: 01 November 1990
• Published date: 01 November 1990

WOMEN, RACE,

AND

CRIME*

GARY

D.

HILL

ELIZABETH

M.

CRAWFORD

North

Carolina

State

University

This paper explores the capacity

of

alternative theoretical perspectives to

explain the self-reported criminality

of

black and white young adult

females. When criminal involvement is regressed

on

the theory operation-

alizations separately by race, a key difference emerges: For white women,

signifcant effects are clustered in the social-psychological theory groups

(bonding, attitudes, and maturation), but

for

the black women the social-

psychological variables have only scattered and inconsistent eflects.

Instead, for black women structural indicators emerge as the important

predictors

of

criminal involvement.

Does the explanation of black female criminality involve a causal structure

different from that of their white counterparts? This question

is

addressed

here through a comparison of the extent to which alternative theoretical per-

spectives (social control, liberatiodgender socialization, self-concept, depri-

vation, strain, urbanism, and maturation) account for variation in the self-

reported criminal involvement of black and white young adult women.

Attempts in the past 15 years to formulate sociological explanations of

female crime (or of gender differences in criminal involvement) beg the

empirical question of whether the criminality of black and white females may

be

linked to the same set

of

antecedent variables. In its generic form, this is

the generalizability issue, and it is a familiar one to criminologists studying

gender differences, wherein attempts are made to assess the capacity of theo-

ries developed to explain male criminality to account for female crime as well

(see Daly and Chesney-Lind, 1988:118-121 for a discussion; Smith and

Paternoster, 1987:143-149 for a review of research). The contention in this

paper is that the generalizability issue as posed with regard to race differences

among women is an equally important one; it raises questions not only about

the development of a theory of female crime, but of gender effects more

generally.

The generalizzbility issue is empirically driven by the striking differences in

the criminality of black and white females found by some researchers. In an

important recent paper Chilton and Datesman (1 987: 155-1

56)

ask:

What are the implications

of

similarities in arrest rates for white men

*

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meetings of the

American Society

of

Criminology, Chicago, Illinois, November

1988.

The authors thank

Carolyn Herman for her invaluable technical assistance and three anonymous reviewers for

their helpful suggestions on improving the manuscript.

CRIMINOLOGY

VOLUME

28

NUMBER

4

1990

601

602

HILL

AND

CRAWFQRD

and nonwhite women for theories that ignore race and emphasize physi-

ological differences associated with gender? What are the implications of

differences in arrest rates of white and nonwhite women for theories that

argue that the increases in women’s crime rates are directly related to

increased labor force participation or to masculinization? Since white,

middle-class, married women have had the greatest labor force participa-

tion, what do findings that indicate that most of the increase in women’s

crime rates comes from the increased arrest of black women suggest?

Clearly, unless crime rate data are analyzed simultaneously by gender

and race, the findings on which such theories are based are incomplete,

and the explanations they suggest are consequently misleading.

Using unpublished Uniform Cime Report data on larceny arrests in Balti-

more, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, and Philadelphia, Chilton and Datesman

(1987:158-159) found that (1) larceny arrest rates for nonwhite (97% to

99%

black) women are strikingly similar to those for white men with age con-

trolled;

(2)

arrest rates for nonwhite women are substantially higher than

those for white women; and

(3)

arrests of nonwhite women account for 77%

of the overall increase in female larceny arrests from 1960 to 1980. They

conclude that “explaining the differences in white and nonwhite rates of

arrests to the total increases in arrests is probably as important as explaining

increases in women’s crime rates” (1 987: 163).

For others, such as Lewis (1981) and Simpson (1988, 1989), the issue

is

tied

to general theoretical questions. As these scholars note, the black woman is

uniquely situated as the victim of class, race, and patriarchal power relations

(cf. Lewis, 1981; Simpson, 1988). Does this negative juxtapositioning of the

black female (as compared with the white female) in the nexus of class and

race produce significantly different experiences and/or ways of responding to

shared experiences? Does it do

so

to such an extent that the development of a

theory of female crime (or of gender differences) must necessarily incorporate

an explanation of race differences?

In large measure these questions remain open because very little is known

about the criminality of adult black females. Amid new enthusiasm for stud-

ying the female offender and despite sustained interest in race differences in

crime, the black female has remained virtually invisible. Studies of race dif-

ferences focus on males (or on race effects that are tied to males), and

research on gender differences does not typically include separate analyses by

race (Simpson,

1988).

This is partly due to the fact that the major and most

credible source of official data on crime, the Uniform Crinie Reports, does

not provide for gender-by-race breakdowns at the national level and thus does

not routinely permit an analysis of the black female offender. Consequently,

the researcher interested in the criminality of black females must pursue

other data sources, chiefly unpublished arrest data that provide for gender-

by-race analyses for selected city or state subpopulations (e.g., Chilton and