Ethinicity, Crime And Justice Flashcards
Factors
Ethnicity and criminalisation
Explaining differences in offending
Ethnicity and Victimisation
Official stats
According to official statistics, there are some significant ethnic differences in the likelihood of being involved in the criminal justice system. Black people, and to a lesser extent Asian people, are over-represented. For example:
• Black people make up just 3% of the population, but 13% of the prison population.
• Asian people make up 6.9% of the population, but 8% of the prison population.
By contrast, White people are under-represented at all stages of the criminal justice process.
Critic of OS
However, such statistics do not tell us whether members of one ethnic group are more likely than members of another group to commit an offence in the first place - they simply tell us about involvement with the criminal justice system.
For example, differences in stop and search or arrest rates may simply be due to policing strategies or to discrimination by individual officers, while differences in rates of imprisonment may be the result of courts handing down harsher sentences to minorities.
Alternative sources of stats
Victims Surveys
Self report studies
Victims surveys
Victim surveys such as the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) ask individuals to say what crimes they have been victims of (usually during the past 12 months). We can gain information about ethnicity and offending from such surveys when they ask victims to identify the ethnicity of the person who committed the crime against them.
For example, in the case of ‘mugging’ (a term that has no legal definition but is used to cover robberies and some thefts from the person), Black people are significantly over-represented among those identified by victims as offenders.
Critic of victims surveys
However, while victim surveys are useful in helping us to identify ethnic patterns of offending, they have several limitations:
• They rely on victims’ memory of events. According to Coretta Phillips and Ben Bowling (2012), evidence suggests that White victims may ‘over-identify’ Black suspects, saying the offender was Black even when they are not sure.
• They only cover personal crimes, which make up only about a fifth of all crimes.
• They exclude the under 10s: minority ethnic groups contain a higher proportion of young people.
• They exclude crimes by and against organisations (such as businesses), so they tell us nothing about the ethnicity of white collar and corporate criminals.
As a result, victim surveys can only tell us about the ethnicity of a small proportion of offenders, which may not be representative of offenders in general.
Self report studies
Self-report studies ask individuals to disclose their own dishonest and violent behaviour. Based on a sample of 2,500 people, Graham and Bowling (1995) found that White and Black rates of offending were very similar (44% and 43%), but Indian (30%), Pakistani (28%) and Bangladeshi (13%) rates were much lower. Similarly, Sharp and Budd (2005) note that the 2003
Offending, Crime and Justice survey of 12,000 people found that around 40% of White people and those of ‘Mixed’ ethnic origins said they had committed an offence, followed by Black people (28%) and Asian people (21%).
The Home Office has conducted nine self-report studies on drug use since the early 1990s, all with remarkably similar findings. For example, Sharp and Budd (2005) found that 27% of males of ‘Mixed’ ethnicity said they had used drugs (mostly cannabis) in the last year, compared with 16% of both Black and White males and 5% of Asian males. Use of Class A drugs such as heroin and cocaine was much higher among White people than among Black or Asian people.
The findings of self-report studies challenge the stereotype of Black people as more likely than White people to offend, though they support the widely held view that Asian people are less likely to offend.
Limitations of self report surveys
However, self-report studies have their limitations in relation to ethnicity and offending.
Overall, the evidence on ethnicity and offending is somewhat inconsistent. For example, while official statistics and victim surveys point to the likelihood of higher rates of offending by Black people, this is generally not borne out by the results of self-report studies.
Ethnicity racism and the CJS
There are ethnic differences at each stage of the criminal justice process. How can we explain them? How far are they the result of racism within the criminal justice system?
We need to look at the main stages of the process that an individual may go through, possibly culminating in a custodial sentence.
Factors in the CJS
Policing
Stop and search
- use of force
Arrests and cautious
Prosecution and trial
Convictions and sentencing
Pre sentence reports
Prison
Policing sociologist
Phillips and Bowling 2012
Policing
As Phillips and Bowling (2012) note, since the 1970s there have been many allegations of oppressive policing of minority ethnic communities, including:
‘mass stop and search operations, paramilitary tactics, excessive surveillance, armed raids, police violence and deaths in custody, and a failure to respond effectively to racist violence.”
Stop and Search
Members of minority ethnic groups are more likely to be stopped and searched by the police. Police can use this power if they have ‘reasonable suspicion’ of wrongdoing.
Compared with White people, in 2020 Black people were nine times more likely to be stopped and searched and Asian people over twice as likely. Data from the British Crime Survey and the SEW indicate similar patterns.
What act helped stop and search
Terrorism Act 2000
Terrorism act
under the Terrorism Act 2000, police can stop and search persons or vehicles whether or not they have reasonable suspicion. Statistics show that Asian people are more likely to be stopped and searched than other people under the Terrorism Act.
It is therefore unsurprising that members of minority ethnic communities are less likely to think the police acted politely when stopping them, or to think they were stopped fairly.
As Phillips and Bowling (2007) note, members of these communities are more likely to think they are ‘over-policed and under-protected’ and to have limited faith in the police.
Use of force - stop and search
Use of force In 2019/20, Black people were four times more likely to have force used against them by Metropolitan police officers than White people, and five times more likely to have Taser-like devices used against them by the force (Grierson 2020).
Explaining stop and search patterns factors
Police racism
Ethnic differences in offending
Demographic Factors
police racism sociologist
Phillips and bowling
Police racism
The Macpherson Report (1999) on the police investigation of the racist murder of the Black teenager Stephen Lawrence concluded that there was institutional racism within the Metropolitan Police. Others have found deeply ingrained racist attitudes among individual officers.
For example, Phillips and Bowling (2012) point out that many officers hold negative stereotypes about minority ethnic groups as criminals, leading to deliberate targeting for stop and search. Such stereotypes are endorsed and upheld by the ‘canteen culture’ of rank and file officers.
Ethnic differences in offending
An alternative explanation is that disproportionality in stop and searches simply reflects ethnic differences in levels of offending.
However, it is useful to distinguish between low discretion and high discretion stops.
• In low discretion stops, police act on relevant information about a specific offence, for example a victim’s description of the offender.
• In high discretion stops, police act without specific intelligence. It is in these stops, where officers can use their stereotypes, that disproportionality and discrimination are most likely.
Demographic factors
Minority ethnic groups are over-represented in the population groups who are most likely to be stopped, such as the young, the unemployed, manual workers and urban dwellers. These groups are all more likely to be stopped, regardless of their ethnicity, but they are also groups who have a higher proportion of ethnic minorities in them, and so minorities get stopped more.
Arrest and cautions
Figures for England and Wales show that in 2018/19 the arrest rate for Black people was over three times the rate for White people. By contrast, Black and Asian arrestees were less likely than White arrestees to receive a caution.
One reason for this may be that members of minority ethnic groups are more likely to deny the offence and to exercise their right to legal advice (possibly out of mistrust of the police. However, not admitting the offence means they cannot be let off with a caution and are more likely to be charged instead.
prosecution and trial sociologist
bowling and phillips
Prosecution and trial
The Crown Prosecution Service (PS) is the body responsible for deciding whether a case brought by the police should be prosecuted in court. In doing so, the PS must decide whether there is a realistic prospect of conviction and whether prosecution is in the public interest.
Studies suggest that the CPS is more likely to drop cases against minority ethnic groups. Bowling and Phillips (2002) argue that this may be because the evidence presented to the CPS by the police is often weaker and based on stereotyping of minority ethnic groups as criminals.
When cases do go ahead, members of minority ethnic groups are more likely to elect for trial before a jury in the Crown Court, rather than in a magistrates’ court, perhaps due to mistrust of magistrates’ impartiality. However, Crown Courts can impose more severe sentences if convicted.