5 - Institutional Racism Flashcards
Sir William Macpherson drew a distinction between overt individual racism and pernicious and persistent ‘institutional racism’ which was found to consist of…
“the collective failure of an organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their skin color, culture, or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes, and behavior which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people”.
(Sir William Macpherson, The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, 1999: 6.34)
Section 1 PACE 1984
Can only S&S if reasonable grounds for suspecting that they will find stolen goods or prohibited articles.
PACE enacted strict procedural safeguards to ensure that powers were not used in an arbitrary manner, stops were used more sparingly and any that did take place would be on stronger grounds leading to more arrests.
However, the term ‘reasonable suspicion’ was not defined by the Act leading to officers having a huge amount of discretion.
Officers devised techniques to avoid formal safeguards.
PACE Codes of Practice A 2015 2.2
Reasonable grounds for suspicion is the legal test which a police officer must satisfy before they can stop and detain individuals or vehicles to search them under powers such as section 1 of PACE (to find stolen or prohibited articles) and section 23 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (to find controlled drugs).
This test must be applied to the particular circumstances in each case and is in two parts:
Firstly, the officer must have formed a genuine suspicion in their own mind that they will find the object for which the search power being exercised allows them to search (see Annex A, second column, for examples); and
Secondly, the suspicion that the object will be found must be reasonable. This means that there must be an objective basis for that suspicion based on facts, information and/or intelligence which are relevant to the likelihood that the object in question will be found, so that a reasonable person would be entitled to reach the same conclusion based on the same facts and information and/or intelligence.
Officers must, therefore, be able to explain the basis for their suspicion by reference to intelligence or information about, or some specific behavior by, the person concerned
Stop and Search Statistics
In 2013/2014 Black people were four and a half times more likely to be stopped and searched compared to White people and Mixed (twice as likely) and Asian (one and a half as likely)
Holdaway (1996) argues that we must ensure adequate weight is given to any characteristic causing a group to be stopped more frequently.
Clancy et al (2001) argue one such factor may be the age range of the black population in Britain, which is skewed towards the younger end.
Males aged 15-24 commit more crime, therefore reasonable to expect men who come within this age range, to be stopped more frequently than those outside it.
Other factors may also play a role. Jefferson (1988) and Walker (1987) believe there is a difference in
policing practices between types of areas e.g. higher stop rates in disadvantaged urban settings, where
concentrations of African Caribbean’s
tend to be high.
Jefferson - the style of policing is more a response to the social and housing composition of the area than to the ethnic group of potential suspects.
MVA and Joel Miller (2000) and Waddington et al (2004) - in areas where stop and search activities were high, young men and people from minority ethnic backgrounds tended to be over-represented in the available population.
However, stops and searches tend to be targeted at areas that have higher than average proportions of residents from minority ethnic groups.
When MVA and Miller compared the geographical pattern of stops and searches with recorded crime they found it was fairly consistent but that there were some places where the levels of stops and searches were either higher or lower than would be expected from local crime levels
In 2010 the EHRC published Stop and Think critiquing the explanations that that have been put forward to justify disproportionality…
Black people are generally more often involved in crime - not supported by robust evidence. In any case, s&s’s should be carried out on the basis of ‘reasonable suspicion’. It is unlawful for the police to base their suspicions on generalised beliefs about particular groups.
The impact of s&s is small. It is estimated that searches only reduced
the number of disruptable crimes by 0.2 percent.
Strong differences between similar and/or neighboring police areas indicate that the way a particular police force uses its stop and search powers may be more significant than the nature of the communities it serves.
The evidence points to racial discrimination being a significant reason why black and Asian people are more likely to be stopped and searched than white people. It implies that stop and search powers are being used in a discriminatory and unlawful way
Is S&S effective?
In 2012/13, 10% of s1 Stop and Searches resulted in an arrest
Little difference between the proportions across the ethnic groupings. The proportion was 9% for those self-defining as Asian or not defining their ethnicity, 10% for those self-defining as White and 13% for those defining themselves as Black, Chinese or Other, or Mixed.
The vast majority of stops, therefore, do not produce an arrest or prosecution, bringing into question the effectiveness of this style of policing.
Cautions
Once arrested, Black suspects are also less likely to be cautioned than both White suspects and Asian suspects.
Variations in these figures may simply reflect other ethnic differences in for example whether it was a first offence,
the seriousness of the offence, whether the ethnic minority suspects admitted guilt
and also whether or not the police officer perceives the offender as showing remorse.
Crown Prosecution Service
Phillips and Brown (1998) - 12 percent of cases against white defendants were terminated compared with 20 per cent of cases against African Caribbean’s and 27 percent against Asians.
Ethnic origin predicted an increased chance of case termination by the CPS.
Mhlanga (1999) - comprehensive research which found higher termination rates for ethnic minorities compared with their white counterparts
HM Inspector of CPS (2002) speculated that the police may be making a less critical assessment of the reliability of complainants and witnesses in cases involving minority ethnic defendants.
This research suggests that there is limited discrimination at the prosecution stage and that cases are actively reviewed.
This may be explained by the fact that case review is a point when discretion and subjectivity are at a minimum as Crown prosecutors are guided by the stringent Code for Prosecutors (1994), the reasons for decisions are recorded, and in most cases, the ethnic origin of the defendant is not known.
A second explanation notes the greater diversity of the CPS compared with other criminal justice agencies such as the police.
We would expect there to have been a decrease in the number of defendants who are given minor punishments, but research by Crisp and Moxon (1994) found that this does not appear to have happened.
Would expect fewer defendants to be acquitted by the courts but Crisp and Moxon’s research shows that this has not occurred.
Wasik et al (1999) found that in the Crown Court, many acquittals appeared to be predictable and that around half of the acquittals did not occur after a full trial, but were the result of the judge telling the jury to acquit the defendant because the prosecution case was not sufficiently strong.
This suggests that there are discrepancies in the way that the CPS is reviewing cases because ‘weak’ cases are meant to be weeded out of the system.
Probation Service
A major function of the Probation Service is to prepare PSRs. Discriminatory practices in this activity could have a bearing on the level of imprisonment for minority ethnic defendants.
A review of PSRs estimated that while 60 percent of those prepared for white defendants were satisfactory, the figure for African/African-Caribbean defendants was only 49 per cent.
It was argued that a higher proportion of PSRs written for these minority groups contained a clear proposal for custody or indicated that custody was a likely option than reports prepared for white defendants (Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation, 2000).
HMIP (2000) also found that the contextual information provided on black and (sometimes Asian) offenders were less comprehensive than for white offenders
However, the impact of this on final sentencing was not measured.
HMIP conducted a follow-up study in 2004 and this reported slight improvements
Hudson and Bramhall (2005) suggest problems persist. They found PSR reports on Asian offenders were:
‘thinner’,
employed more ‘distancing language’ (e.g. ‘he tells me that…’)
alongside less direct reporting of information imparted by the offender (e.g. ‘he has taken steps…’),
and were more likely to include weak, unclear and no or negative recommendations.
Prison Service
Minority ethnic groups are significantly over-represented in the prison population.
But no evidence of differential rates of offending between these two groups.
Race and racism in prisons under-researched Zahid Mubarek - murdered by his violent, racist cell mate in Feltham Young Offenders Institute in 2000.
Common theme - the persistence of sometimes direct although increasingly subtle and often unwitting racism.
Fuelled alienation of BME prisoners resulting in poorer relationships with staff and potentially less stable prisons - this is particularly apparent amongst Muslim prisoners.
Sentencing General
The clearest application of the principle of equality before the law is that no person should be sentenced more severely on account of race or colour.
If sentencing is based strictly on the seriousness of the offence, discrimination on this ground should not occur.
Early studies of sentencing found little evidence of any substantial amounts of discrimination.
However early work had methodological failings.
Sentencing
CRE commissioned Roger Hood (1992) - Race and Sentencing: A study in the Crown Court, London: Clarendon Press.
The objective of the study was to determine whether those of different racial groups who committed similar offences and had other similar relevant characteristics, received the same range of sentences and were committed in equivalent proportions to custody and for similar lengths of time.
Sentencing Statisitcs and Studies
After controlling for all factors Hood found that black defendants stood between 5% and 8% greater chance of being sent to prison than comparable white
defendants.
Asians, on average, were sentenced to nine months longer and black defendants three months longer than white defendants.
The differences in the use of custody between ethnic groups were greatest where the judges’ discretion was greatest, that is for offences at a middling level of seriousness.
A higher proportion of the black male defendants pleaded not guilty (23%) than of the white defendants (11%), and not guilty pleas were associated overall with an increased probability of custody.
When a defendant intends to plead not guilty, it is much less likely that the Probation Service will prepare a social inquiry report (now Pre- Sentence reports {PSRs}) which provide a better understanding of the circumstances giving rise to the offence, and the personal and overall factors influencing its commission.
These reports also contain recommendations as to the ‘appropriate’ sentence.
Hood found that 42% of the black defendants appeared for sentence without a social inquiry report (PSR) being available compared to only 28% of white defendants.
Mhlanga (1997) had similar findings with young black defendants having an increased risk of custody being imposed.
Calverley et al.’s (2004) study of black and Asian offenders subject to probation supervision found lower levels of ‘criminogenic need’ among these offenders than among white offenders – is this the result of discriminatory sentencing?
MoJ Statistics on Race and the Criminal Justice System 2012, shows that black and Asian defendants are almost 20 per cent more likely to be sent to jail than those who are white.
The average prison sentence given to Caucasian criminals is seven months shorter than those given to Afro-Caribbean offenders.
The most common outcome for a white criminal was a community sentence; for Black, Asian and Chinese offenders it was custody.
The statistics are broken down by types of crime, ruling out the possibility that black defendants might be being proportionally found guilty of more serious offences.
In every year studied, a higher proportion of white defendants had previous convictions normally resulting in harsher sentences but this does not appear to be the case.
Stop and Search implications…
The disproportionate use of s60 Stop and Search was implicated as a trigger for the riots in 2011, with young black men still 5 x as likely to be stopped at this time.
Pressure from the Home Secretary, Teresa May, for the police to address this unfair application of the measure, saw a gradual decrease from January 2012 to 3 x as likely in 2014.
However, claims about an increase in knife and gun crime in urban areas called for a more “rigorous” application of the s60 measure and an application to the Supreme Court in December 2015 to back a more randomized approach to the stop and search powers. The Metropolitan Police had argued that there had been an 18% increase in knife crime from July- August 2015- however, what the press statement did not highlight was that the figures for July 2015 had been exceptionally low.
Marian FitzGerald’s (2014) study (Kent University) had already demonstrated that Stop and Search had a limited impact on reducing knife crime
Despite this, the Supreme Court backed the application, seen as many as a U-turn and likely to result in further discriminatory applications of these police powers.
