5. Ethnicity, Crime & Justice-Ethnicity & criminalisation Flashcards
Outline offical statistics on ethncity & criminalisation
Official statistics highlight that black people are more likely to be stopped, arrested & imprisoned.
sociologists argue this is because they are more likely to offend, due to poor educational achievement,
dysfunctional family structure
racist stereotypes portrayed in the media. However, some sociologists argue they merely appear more criminal due to discrimination in wider society.
WHY BLACK PEOPLE APPEAR MORE CRIMINAL
Lea & Young
Differences in statistics are the result of black people being discriminated in wider society. Utilitarian crime is a response to material deprivation and non-utilitarian crime is due to their frustration towards society. They believe police racism is not the main cause of this because 90% of crimes are reported by the public.
WHY BLACK PEOPLE APPEAR MORE CRIMINAL
Gilroy
BME do not commit more crime than others. It is the result of racist policing who act on stereotypes. Also, BME often come from former colonies where they resisted oppression. However, when they resisted racism in Britain it was criminalised.
WHY BLACK PEOPLE APPEAR MORE CRIMINAL
Hall et al
In the 1970s, there was a moral panic about black people and mugging. This is because capitalism was in crisis and they used this story to cover it up. Thus, black people were not more criminal but a mere victim of capitalism. However, this made black people more unlikely to get jobs and then turn to crime.
Outline what victim surveys suggest about ethncity and criminalisation
Victim surveys(CSEW) ask individuals to say what crimes they have been victims off
Victim surveys suggest that black people are significantly overrepresented as offenders
Victim surveys show that crime is intra-ethnic (crime takes place within rather than between ethnic groups)
Outline the limitations of victim surveys
- They rely on victims memory of events- Philips & Bowling(2012) suggest white victims ‘over identify’ black suspects saying offenders were black even when unsure
- Only cover personal crimes which makes up only 1/5th of all crimes
- They exclude crimes by and against organisations( such as businesses) so don’t tell us anything about ethnicity of white collar crime & corporate crime
- Thus victim surveys only tell us about ethnicity of a small proportion of offenders , which is not representative of offenders in general
Outline what self report studies suggest about ethnicity & criminalisation
They ask individuals to disclose their own dishonest & violent behaviour
Graham & Bowling found that white & black rates of offending were very similar(44% & 43%)
Indian(30%) Pakistani (28%)
