Crime and Deviance - Social Distribution of crime; Ethnicity Flashcards
Key words
- Criminalisation
- Disproportionate
- Institutional racism - organisational issue on policies and procedures that are racist
- Stop and search
- Macpherson Report - released after the death of Stephen Lawrence, revealed systemic racism in the police
- Canteen culture - people of like minded views are able to discuss views unchallenged, and it becomes the dominant view leading to extremist comments and creating an echo chamber
Statistics
- Black groups are the most disproportionately affected by police contact, with disproportionality and overrepresentation from the point of stop and search all the way through to sentencing
- 2013 - White; 87.1% of the population; 67% stop and search, 80% of arrests, 73% of convictions and sentencing to immediate custody 70.6%
- Black; 3.1% of the population; 14.2% of stop and search; 8.3% of arrests; 7.5% of convictions; 8.9% of sentencing to immediate custody
- Asian; 6.4% of the population; 10.3% of stops and searches; 5.9% of arrests
- Black people are twice as likely to be arrested and convicted
- Black people are almost three times as likely to be sent to prison
Asian groups are more likely to be stopped and searched - Those of ‘mixed’ ethnicity are significantly more likely to be arrested than whites
Causes of the social distribution of crime via ethnicity
Causes of real differences in social distribution of crime for ethnicity:
- Cultures of resistance
- Subcultures
- Marginalisation
- Transient inner-city communities
Causes of statistical differences between ethnicities in crime:
- Moral panic
- Fantasy crime wave
- Institutional racism in the police
- Labelling and stereotyping (could also be a real cause of crime)
The police and ethnic minorities
- There is a growing dissatisfaction with police employment in regards to racial discrimination - disparity between the makeup of communities and the police force that represent them
- London Metropolitan police - 40% of ethnic minority compared to less than 10% of the police; this leads to populations feeling unrepresented, misunderstood and not dealt with sensitively
- Equally, the lack of minorities in the police force leads to people facing barriers of racism etc at work - glass ceiling
- Training in the police - teach about unconscious bias throughout due to the Macpherson Report
- Need to build community relations, areas, races and styles feeling targeted by police; slowest progress on Macpherson Report has been seen in the areas of recruitment and promotion of ethnic minority police officers
The Macpherson Report
Stephen Lawrence case -
- His friend, who witnessed the incident, stated the police were trying to remove the racism from the incident, and white neighbours also made claims such as ‘the area isn’t racist’, ‘there are some areas white girls can’t go’ etc and the neighbourhood rejected the claims of a racist attack
- Lawrence’s parents felt ignored by police with procedures being ignored - at the time, black youths felt like the police only investigated them and they had poor community relations
- 1981 Brixton Riots - Race Relations Act fallout; institutional racism is the failure of a system to provide a full service to their people on the basis of their race
Inquiry highlighted how police did not even try to help Lawrence - they did not believe that Lawrence and his friend were innocent victims and assumed it was a drug related incident, and despite overwhelming evidence none of his murderers were arrested
The Macpherson Report:
- Stephen Lawrence Enquiry
- In July 1997, 4 years after Stephen Lawrence was murdered by a group f white youths, home secretary at the time Jack Straw announced the establishment of an inquiry into his death; William Macpherson, a retired high court judge and former soldier, was the chair
- The 350 page report concluded that the investigation into the killing had been marred by a combination of professional incompetence, institutional racism and a failure of leadership - specific officers in the Met Police were named and the entire force was criticised
- The report’s authors stated that the debate about policing and racism has been transformed by the inquiry, “and that the debate thus ignited must be carried forward”. A total of 70 recommendations designed to show “zero tolerance” for racism in society were made
- They included measures not just to transform the attitude of the police towards race relations and improve accountability but also to get the civil service, NHS, judiciary and other public bodies to respond and change
- This can be seen in canteen culture - this refers to the way in which people working in a particular workplace can develop a shared set of values and prejudices (ie what people chat about in the canteen becomes the shared understanding and perspective).
- In the context of Crime and Deviance, the workforce in question is the police force. A conservative canteen culture is sometimes suggested as an explanation for police discrimination.
Reasons why ethnic minorities may commit more crime
There are four main reason why W/C ethnic minorities commit more crime than other groups.
- Poverty and unemployment - w/c and BAME are more likely to live in relative deprivation (left realism) and live in areas where unemployment is high.
- Police targeting - think back to labelling, negotiations of justice
- Discrimination - institutional racism / canteen culture; marginalisation (left realism)
- Different norms and values - the police service don’t fully represent the populations they serve; lack of understanding can lead to conflict; subcultures (left realism).
Gilroy - ethnic minority crime
Gilroy: Anti-racist perspective (empire strikes back)
- Role of racism and ethnic inequality in creating injustice - myth of black criminality
- Black criminality is a myth - self-report surveys show similar levels of criminality in black and white communities, and action is a form of political resistance to oppression and police retaliation is the states way of affirming control - Gilroy claims that Black youths are also no more prone to committing crime than anybody else.
- During the ‘mugging scare’ in the 1970s – black youths faced harassment from the police (selective policing/bias). There were racist ‘sus laws’. We see this in the disproportionate stop and search figures even in 2020.
- Symbolic resistance - it is resistance to colonisation that has trickled down about cultural histories and family members, and so crime is a frustration against the country that oppressed them
- Crime by young West Indians is a political response to a racist society and oppression.
- Therefore, crime by ‘black youths’ is not due to poor socialisation or criminal subculture as the media would have us believe
- When black immigrants were brought to Britain they came with the ‘legacies of political, ideological and ethnic struggles in Africa,the Caribbean and India’. Gilroy notes the history of white oppression in the colonies and how ‘ex-colonials still bear the scars of imperialist violence’.
- Therefore Black youth are in conflict with their white oppressors in modern Britain; it is part of their legacy - Black youth need to ‘win space’ and to overcome the pains of racism in life. Rebellion and deviance are forms of symbolic resistance – fighting back
Evaluation of Gilroy
Evaluation of Gilroy:
- Gilroy over emphasizes that crime is a political struggle according to Hall (victims would be white and rich, not the case)
- Lea and Young - idea of black youth committing crime as a continuation of an anti-colonial struggle is unrealistic - they are too far removed for thi to be a motivator
Hall - ethnic minority crime
Neo-Marxist: Hall:
- Examined the unequal structure of British society and the perceptions of the black community in the UK
- Aggressive policing tactics, such as stop and search mobilised bystanders to react to discrimination
- Media legitimates police actions by portraying the black community as criminal - more stops and searches to ‘police the crisis’ - people believe that the police are then needed and ignore economic issues - scapegoating; police are seen as effective = government is unscathed but ethnic groups suffer
- Capitalism was failing and so a moral panic was created to distract society from this. In the 1970s a rise in street robbery/muggings occurred. The media focused on this and it became the focus of the police. The fear of the ‘black mugger’ became more important that the failings of capitalism.
- When you create fear, you create (as Stan Cohen said!) a ‘folk devil’ and it creates deviancy amplification. Hall suggests this demonising of the black mugger was designed to reassert hegemony. It was used to justify more aggressive policing which under the guise of ‘protecting society from the black mugger’ actually enabled police to stamp out anti-capitalist protests and industrial strikes
Evaluation of Hall
Evaluation of Hall:
- Majority of crimes are intraracial, accused of romanticising crime and ignoring the real harm done to victims
- One sided and little evidence
- Little relevance today
- Black minorities may be intent on resisting racism
Left realist explanations of the social distribution by ethnicity
- Left Realist: Lea & Young:
Racist practice in the police; statistics create a higher crime rate for street robberies and associated ‘personal crimes’ by black youths - Black groups are disadvantaged, such as having high unemployment rates
- Marginalisation of ethnic minorities in society that are economically and socially excluded
- Failures of education result in the formation of subcultures as a response to blocked opportunities
- Media representations of ethnic minority criminality lead to further marginalisation and exclusion
Relative Deprivation & Marginalisation:
- Black youths are less successful in the labour market, leading to relative deprivation, and young ethnic minority males are also marginalised economically and socially with little representation, in political parties, trade unions and other organisations with power and influence.
- This leads to the formation of subcultures that may react to this situation by turning to crime and protest It would be surprising that there were not higher levels of crime in groups that are relatively deprived and marginalised - furthermore, they claim that statistics on certain types of crime show such a difference in offending rates between ethnic groups unlikely to be produced entirely by racist practice.
- Recorded crime rates can be subject to racism; patterns of recorded crime do not fit the theory that they are based entirely on police racism and it is likely that there are real and significant differences between ethnic groups
Evaluating Lea and Young
Evaluation of Lea & Young:
- Their arguments lack relevance - changes in crime statistics and improved evidence does suggest that overall, Blacks are not more criminal than Whites.
- Gilroy rejects L&Y - it is wrong to argue that crime rates are higher for ethnic minority groups.
