Asses the value of chivalry thesis is understanding gender differences in crime

Official statistics in the UK state that women on average commit fewer crimes then men. It indicates that only 1 in 5 convicted offenders in England and Wales are females. However, contrary to this it was found that females were had a higher conviction rate of property offences.

It is argued that its the chivalry thesis is a cause for these differences. The basis of the of the chivalry thesis is that most criminal agencies such as police officers and other forms of the judicary are men, and men are socialised to act in a “chivalrous” way towards women.

Pollak argues that men are protective towards women and that the criminal justice system is more lenient towards them.Because of this their crimes are less likely to end up in the official crime statistics, which would mean that the crime statistics give an unrepresentative image of offences. Flood-Page et al ’s research supports this theory, as they found that out of females who were self-reported criminals only one in eleven had been cautioned or prosecuted. Whereas for men in was over one in seven. Furthermore women were also more likely to be cautioned rather than prosecuted. According to the Ministry of Justice in 2007 49% of females recorded as offending were cautioned. However for males the figure was significantly less at 30%.

However there is evidence that disputes the chivalry thesis. An example of this is Farrinton and Morris study. When studying 408 offences of theft in the magistrates court they found women weren't sentenced more leniently for similar offences. In addition to this Buckle and Farrington’s observations witnessed twice as many male shoplifters than females, despite the fact that official statistics would suggest that there is an equal number of male and females shoplifters. This suggests that