The trajectories and patterns of gendered criminal careers

Few studies have examined the criminal careers of female offenders. In this paper, we focus on two issues: are female criminal careers different in type and duration from those of males, and are recent generations of female offenders becoming more like males in their criminal behaviour? We use a one in thirteen sample of all female offenders in England and Wales (N=10,638) for six birth cohort years, which provided information on the type and sentence of all court convictions from 1963 to 1999, a 36 year follow-up for the earliest birth cohort. We present evidence that the pattern of female criminal careers is changing over time, with total criminal career length becoming longer for the most recent birth cohorts. While female and male careers are converging in some respects, the frequency and nature of offending assessed through convictions is still distinct.