In NYC, arrests are overwhelmingly male—82% over 6 months [OC]

Posted by datanerdke

32 Comments

  1. Finding:

    Arrests in NYC are not just male-dominated; they are overwhelmingly concentrated among men aged 25–44. This pattern held steady for six consecutive months.

    Evidence:

    · 82% of all arrests were men (>8 in 10).
    · Within that, men aged 25–44 accounted for 58% of all arrests (nearly 3 in 5).

    · Monthly trends showed no significant fluctuation—both the gender and age-group proportions remained stable from January through June 2025.

    Implication:

    This isn’t a monthly anomaly—it’s a persistent demographic reality. Any discussion of arrest patterns in NYC must start with this concentration.

  2. Cheshire_Khajiit on

    Would be interesting to see a breakdown of charges too. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a clear difference in the charges that led to these arrests between the genders.

  3. I remember Dr Drew saying something along the lines of ‘If you want to eliminate crime, just lock up every male under 40’.

  4. In Poland conviction stats are similar. ~90% of all convicts are men.

    Edit: added percent sign

  5. This is because the police target men with arrests right? No other reason surely. I’m sure other correlations haven’t been found

  6. Viz feedback:

    * I’d be curious what something like a 7-day rolling average would look like. Would smooth out the weekend vs. weekday spikes.
    * The teal and cyan colors are very similar, especially in the legend. Recommend thickening the lines in the legend and/or choosing more distinct colors. Similar situation with <18 and 65+ (and why are just the oldest and youngest groups orange? Could use a more continuous color scale since we’re dealing with a range of numbers.)
    * Remove the July axis label if the data only goes through the end of June.
    * Purely opinion, but avoid using AI to generate short summaries like the one in your comment. When something reads like chatGPT as this does, I question if the code behind the viz is handling the data accurately.
    * Your age brackets vary significantly. “Men aged 25-44 were the most arrested group every single month” is a bit of a wonky thing to claim when the bracket lower than it is 18-24 (7 year range vs. 20). If you looked at *per capita* rates, the 18-24 bracket would be much closer to the 25-44 one.

  7. I know it’s not the lead story, but the gap between women 25-44 and all other women is pretty shocking too.

  8. Affectionate-Panic-1 on

    The 25-44 age bracket has 20 years inside and the 18-24 has only 7.

    Makes no sense to put it together unless you make it a per capita rate, using totals distorts this into thinking that 40 year olds get arrested more than 20 year olds.

  9. Honestly, I’m pretty surprised that the percentage is *only 82%.* I would have guessed something close to 90%.

  10. ImSomeRandomHuman on

    I am not sure where this is not the case, as this is largely derivative of inherent biology. Women are not inherently better or more moral people than men, rather, men have biological advantages that greatly facilitate and foment the ability to commit crime as outwardly and often as they do, whereas women often do not, which fosters a culture and society where many women will not often even attempt to or feel discouraged do so; instead often internalizing their urges, or acting upon them more implicitly and less violently or physically, in fact, this is a key reason poison has historically been somewhat connotated with women; and thus men are predisposed to commit more crime than women, as they have greater ability.

    There is also a biological component in that we tend to psychologically view women in more favorable perceptions and biases than with men, due to biology, which often leads to relatively reduced sentenced or amnesty of women who do commit the same crimes, but this is not the most significant factor.

  11. Watch a few hundred hours of body cam police footage, and you will see why. Young men are actively targeted by police. Women have to be acting out 10x more than men to even risk being handcuffed, much less arrested. I’d love to see stats that go to trial or are convicted, and I bet they would be much closer to the same. Most of the time the male side of the interaction is harassed until they get upset, and then they are arrested for some BS charge like public disturbance, and then they go looking for a real charge by searching them, their car, etc. If they don’t find anything, the charge will almost certainly be dropped. They will most certainly arrest anyone fairly if they are actively breaking the law, but consensual engagements are 99% men, and they are just looking for an arrest.

  12. MakeHerSquirtIe on

    Quick, add racial demographics, and you’ll see it’s even more concentrated within a smaller group of men. But be careful, we’re not supposed to talk about all statistics, just the statistics that don’t make people uncomfortable.