UK: Record numbers of women held for violent crimes

Article here. Excerpt:

"Record numbers of women are being arrested for violent crimes, it was revealed today.

Annual criminal justice statistics showed 88,139 women were arrested for violent offences in a single year - or nearly 250 every day. That is an increase of nearly 1,000 on a year earlier. At the same time the number of men arrested for violent crimes fell by 10,000.
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The rise in arrests means that for the second consecutive year women were more likely to be held for crimes of violence than for any other offence. It overtook shoplifting for the first time in 2005/6. Today's figures, published by the Ministry of Justice and covering 2007/8, showed arrests of women for theft continued to fall, by nearly 3,000 to 77,425.
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Violence against the person - a category which includes manslaughter, assault and grievous bodily harm - accounted for 35% of all crimes committed by women.

Since 2002, the number of women arrested for violent crimes has more than doubled. At the turn of the century the figure was 37,100.
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More than 250,000 women were arrested for all crimes in 2007/8, compared to more than 1.2 million men.'