| Summary: | Gender gap in crime, that is the claim that women tend to commit less crimes than men, has been the subject of criminological research for years. The gender gap is found throughout the world, not excluding Poland. Scholars dealing with the issue mainly focus on two aspects of the problem. First, they try to find out why women commit fewer crimes than men, which means the very gender gap is their key concern. Second, they try to clarify and interpret any potential changes in this disproportion observed over time; in particular this relates to the narrowing of the gap that can be noted in the official statistics (especially in the US) over the last decades. Based on publicly available police statistics for the years 1992 – 2011 on persons suspected of: murder (Article 148 Penal Code), bodily injury or harm to the bodily functions or severe health disturbance (Articles 156 and 157 Penal Code), brawling or assault (Articles 158 and 159 Penal Code) and the so-called aggravated crimes (Articles 280, 281 and 282 Penal Code), the authors decided to identify the size of the gap between offending men and women involved in chosen violent crimes in Poland and to check if the difference changes over time. The main focus was devoted to finding out if the gender gap in selected types of crimes in Poland is changing (narrowing), as it is the case in the western countries. Some results of previous research, conducted mostly in the US, show that the disproportion has been shrinking over the last several decades. Two hypotheses are offered by researches to explain the trend. The first one, referred to as the Behaviour Change Hypothesis emphasises the fact that over the last few decades women have become more socially active and they are becoming more similar to men in their behaviour, which leads to increased readiness to display aggressive behaviours, and this is reflected in criminal records. The hypothesis could illustrate the actual changes in women behaviour and evolution of gender roles. According to the other hypothesis, the Policy Change Hypothesis, the observed change does not stem from the fact that male behaviour patterns are adopted by women, but can rather from the changing percep-tion of violence and greater pressure on law enforcement bodies to prosecute every, even the most minuscule acts of violence, regardless of the age or sex of the perpetrator. The analysis of data on Poland was preceded with a short review of the contemporary criminological concepts concerning gender and offending, with the aim to investigate their potential in explaining the qualitative and quantitative differences in criminal activity of men and women. The authors devoted special attention to: the T. Hirschi's control theory, J. Ha-gan's theory of control-power, the general strain theory by R. Agnew (including the concept of L. Broidy and R.
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