Gender Gap Paper – Term Paper

Table 1: Percentage of Male to Female Arrests for Criminal Offenses in 3 Countries

Source: https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/statistics/crime.html

Table 2: Factors that might be related to the gender gap in arrests for 3 countries

Source: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/the-world-factbook/

From the two tables above a number of facts can be co-related. In all the countries males make up over 73% of all the arrests and contact with the law. The explanation for this may be the fact that generally men are more aggressive than women and likely to commit offences. Another observation is that formal contact with the police or the justice system increases with the rate of urbanization. For example comparing Kenya and Chile confirms this inference. Kenya has a population of 46 million people while Chile has a population of 17 million yet Chile has more arrests for both genders. Chile has 89.5 % of its population living in its urban centers while Kenya has only 25.6%. Apart from this instance it is expected that the number of arrests be directly proportional to the population. Another point is that with urbanization there are less people living below the poverty line and more organized systems such as the police and the justice systems, which might explain more arrests. More organized law enforcement could explain the high arrests say in Chile which has less than half of Kenya’s population and almost five times the arrests meaning that crime could go unchecked in a country like Kenya.