RECENT TRENDS IN OFFICIAL MALE AND FEMALE CRIME RATES - THE CONVERGENCE CONTROVERSY

There is widespread agreement with claims based on official arrest statistics that male and female crime rates have not converged in recent years. Therefore, Adler's (1975) contrary claim is rejected and so by implication are earlier proposals linking gender differences in crime rates and unusually high black female crime rates to social roles and social status. The present study evaluated earlier studies reporting little or no male-female convergence in arrest rates. Also, it used UCR statistics, as have the studies often cited as contradicting Adler, and trend analysis to show that for 1965-1975 and for 1975-1986 the evidence for both juveniles and adults supports Adler. Even national self-report data previously said to contradict the convergence hypothesis have shown substantial convergence upon reanalysis.