Gender and Perceived Chances of Arrest

This paper examines gender differences in perceived chances of arrest for six familiar types of lawbreaking. Most crime theories predict that women should give higher arrest estimates than men, and we note five common explanations for this prediction. These include differential stakes in conformity, differential cognitive dissonance between gender role expectations and objective risks, differential perceived visibility, differential conventionality, and differential knowledge of crime and sanction. Survey data from a sample of U.S. adults show that women perceive systematically higher chances of arrest than do men, and that differential visibility and differential stakes in conformity seem to be the most promising accounts for these differences. At the same time, these variables are only modest predictors of overall individual patterns in perceived arrest risks. This suggests that much additional work on the patterns and determinants of risk perception is necessary before an adequate picture of more general variation in risk perceptions can be drawn.