Why women commit more crime?

... Men long have been regarded as the usual suspects when it comes to crime and violence. But a growing body of research on crime shows that the gender line is indeed breaking down. The past three decades alone have witnessed a dramatic rise in female-authored crimes and that sharp increase is reflected by the growing number of women on our nation's prison rolls. In 1970 there were about 6,000 women incarcerated in federal and state prisons, says Dr. Andrew Chishom, a criminal justice professor at the University of South Carolina. Fifteen years later, the number had jumped to 22,000, and by the mid '90s it had skyrocketed to 75,000 and is growing steadily at a rate of nearly 11 percent a year, he indicates. New Justice Department statistics place the number of women currently behind bars at almost 90,000! So what has sparked this sudden upswing in crime by women? Sociologists and criminal justice experts

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