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Arrests of men and women in 2002 are part of the FBI's annual look at serious crime. It found a slight increase, to about 11.9 million homicides, rapes, thefts, robberies, burglaries, aggravated assaults and vehicle thefts.

Men still accounted for the vast majority of adults arrested for these and other crimes – about 77 percent of the total. But women are gaining ground, with the 1.9 million arrested in 2002 representing 23 percent. That is a 14 percent increase from 1993, a period during which arrests of men have fallen almost 6 percent.

An even larger jump occurred between 1986 and 1995, when arrests of women rose by almost 38 percent. During those years, women were arrested more frequently for almost all crimes, including violent offenses such as homicide, robbery and aggravated assaults.

Between 1993 and 2002, arrests of women for homicide, robbery, burglary, theft and arson fell. Increases for women were most dramatic for such crimes as embezzlement (80 percent higher), forgery and counterfeiting (19 percent), drug abuse (50 percent), vagrancy (42 percent) and liquor law violations (49 percent).

Arrests of women for aggravated assault climbed nearly 25 percent over the decade. During that same time, aggravated assault arrests for all offenders fell by 21 percent.

Kenneth Land, a professor of sociology at Duke University, attributed the rise in female arrests to societal changes over the past 30 years in which more women have entered the work force and generally have achieved a status on a par with men.

"You're more likely to have situations where they can be involved as motivated offenders due to the role changes over the past decades, as compared to men," Land said.

The FBI's annual crime statistics are drawn from reports to 17,000 city, county and state law enforcement agencies. A stable picture emerges from the 2002 numbers, with no major upticks in any category but no marked declines, either.

The total number of crimes represents a drop of 4.9 percent since 1998 and 16 percent since 1993, the last big year of a wave of violence traced to the crack cocaine epidemic, experts say.

Overall, the 1.4 million violent crimes reported in 2002 represented a drop of just under 1 percent. Homicides rose by about 1 percent to 16,204, still a third lower than a decade ago.

Burglaries, thefts, larcenies and motor vehicle thefts remained essentially flat from 2001 to 2002.

The FBI's crime reports differ from surveys of victims done by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which earlier this year estimated that violent and property crimes had dropped to their lowest rates in 30 years.

Attorney General John Ashcroft has repeatedly cited the Justice Department report as evidence that tough sentencing policies and a focus on repeat offenders have made the nation safer.