Highlights
Females have higher rates of serious violent victimization than males.
Females have higher totals for most violent crimes.
Author
Leonard Adam Sipes, Jr.
Retired federal senior spokesperson. Thirty-five years of directing award-winning public relations (and explaining crime data) for national and state criminal justice agencies. Interviewed multiple times by every national news outlet. Former Senior Specialist for Crime Prevention for the Department of Justice’s clearinghouse. Former Director of Information Services, National Crime Prevention Council. Former Adjunct Associate Professor of Criminology and Public affairs-University of Maryland, University College. Former advisor to presidential and gubernatorial campaigns. Former advisor to the “McGruff-Take a Bite Out of Crime” national media campaign. Certificate of Advanced Study-Johns Hopkins University. Former police officer. Aspiring drummer.
Author of ”Success With The Media: Everything You Need To Survive Reporters and Your Organization” available at Amazon and additional booksellers.
Quotes
All quotes are edited for brevity.
Note
I’m the former senior specialist for crime prevention for the Department of Justice’s clearinghouse. I’m the former director of information services for the National Crime Prevention Council. I offer commentary from that experience and my six years in law enforcement. I have 35 years of explaining crime data while representing national and state justice agencies.
Article
This is the fifth in a series offering data from the FBI’s latest crime reports based on crimes reported to law enforcement. The first was Locations Of Violent Crime-Where Crime Happens. The second was The Time Of Day For Violent And Property Crimes. The third was Violent Crime Totals By State. The fourth was Violent Crime Victims By Race And Ethnicity-Who’s Victimized Most?
The FBI is a US Department of Justice agency. I supplement FBI figures (crimes reported to law enforcement) with data offered by the National Crime Victimization Survey.
Note: Per the National Crime Victimization Survey from the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the US Department of Justice, only 42 percent of violent crimes are reported to law enforcement. Thirty-two percent of property crimes are reported. The USDOJ uses a national survey (National Crime Victimization Survey) as a gauge of all crimes.
In addition, there are major law enforcement agencies not reporting their crime data to the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System for its latest report.
So what you read below from the FBI is a subset of total crime.
Nevertheless, the FBI numbers below are some of the best indicators we have as to the total number of “reported” crimes and the characteristics of crime.
See the chart below.
Females Are Victimized More By Violent Crime Based On FBI Total Numbers
After studying criminal victimization for decades, a basic tenant of crime data was that females had a lower rate of violent criminal victimization.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics of the US Department of Justice’s National Criminal Victimization Survey (below) made a point of discussing this several years ago when female victimization rose to exceed that of males.
Getting back to FBI data, beyond homicides, assaults (the largest category of violent crimes), overall violence, human trafficking, kidnapping, and sex offenses all had higher totals for females.
Under the property category, females had higher totals for vandalism and fraud.
See the FBI chart below for 2022 (latest data).
Data From The National Crime Victimization Survey-Females Have Higher Rates Of Serious Violence
In 2004, women accounted for 44% of simple assaults, 34% of aggravated assaults, 33% of robbery victimizations, and the vast majority of rapes and sexual assaults (Bureau of Justice Statistics 2006). If the rates below are either equal to or exceed that of males, it indicates increasing violence towards females.
The table below is from the National Crime Victimization Survey for 2022 (latest data) stating that the rate of violent victimization for males and females was essentially equal.
The same chart indicates huge growth in the rate of female victimization from 2021 to 2022.
For what the Bureau of Justice Statistics calls “serious violent crime” (excluding simple assaults) females had higher rates than males for 2021 and 2022.
Conclusions-Known Offenders-Interpersonal Violence
How much of this is connected to offenders females know? The rate of interpersonal violence directed at females by “known” offenders is high (six times higher) than that of males.
I once interviewed female ex-offenders for a podcast and all told stories regarding sexual violence directed towards them as children by people they knew.
Those of us in the crime prevention community have said for decades that most sexual violence happens in residences and who you let into your home or whose home you choose to enter becomes a key element in sexual assault prevention.
The bottom line? Contrary to prior years per the National Crime Victimization Survey, females have higher rates of “serious” violent victimization. Per the FBI, females have higher totals for violent crime.
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