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.
sociologist for convictions and sentencing
hood
Convictions and sentencing
It is therefore interesting to note that Black and Asian defendants are less likely to be found guilty.
This suggests discrimination, in that the police and CPS may be bringing weaker or less serious cases against members of minority groups that are thrown out by the courts.
Black offenders have imprisonment rates one percentage point higher, and Asian offenders 3.4 points higher, than White offenders. This may be due to differences in the seriousness of the offences, or in defendants’ previous convictions.
However, a study of five Crown Courts by Roger Hood (1992) found that, even when such factors were taken into account, Black men were 5% more likely to receive a custodial sentence, and were given sentences on average three months (and Asian men nine months) longer than White men.
sociologist for pre-sentence reports
Hudson and Bramhall (2005
Presentence reports
One possible reason for harsher sentences is the pre-sentence reports (PSRs) written by probation officers. A PS is intended as a risk assessment to assist magistrates in deciding on the appropriate sentence for a given offender.
However, Hudson and Bramhall (2005) argue that PSs allow for unwitting discrimination. They found that reports on Asian offenders were less comprehensive and suggested that they were less remorseful than White offenders. They place this bias in the context of the ‘demonising’ of Muslims in the wake of the events of 11 September 2001.
Prison stats
In 2021, just over a quarter of the prison population were from minority ethnic groups. Among British nationals, 5.5 per 1,000 Black people were in jail compared with 1.6 per 1,000 Asian people and 1.4 per 1,000 White people.
Black people were almost four times more likely to be in prison than White people. Black and Asian offenders are more likely than White offenders to be serving longer sentences (of four years or more).
Prison
Within the total prison population, all minority groups have a higher than average proportion of prisoners on remand (awaiting trial rather than actually convicted and serving a sentence). This is because defendants from minority ethnic groups are less likely to be granted bail while awaiting tria!
Finally, we can note the existence of similar patterns in other countries. For example, in the United States, two out of five prisoners held in local jails (both convicted and those awaiting trial) are Black, while one in five is Hispanic.
Explaining differences in offending overview
Large-scale migration from the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent began in the 1950s. Until the 1970s, there was general agreement that the minority ethnic communities had a lower rate of offending than the White population.
However, from the mid-1970s, increased conflict between the police and the African Caribbean community and higher arrest rates for street crime meant that ‘Black criminality’ increasingly came to be seen as a problem.
Asian people and differences in offending
By contrast, it was not until the 1990s that crime by Asian people began to be viewed as a problem, with media concerns about the growth of ‘Asian gangs’. The events of 2001 - widespread clashes between police and Asian youths in towns in northern England and 9/11 (the Islamist terrorist attacks in the USA) - helped to crystallise the idea that Asian people, and especially Muslims, were an ‘enemy within’ that threatened public order and safety.
Perspectives explaining diff in offending
As we have seen, official statistics on the criminal justice process show differences between ethnic groups. The question is therefore how we explain these patterns. There are two main explanations for ethnic differences in the statistics:
• Left realism: the statistics represent real differences in rates of offending.
• Neo-Marxism: the statistics are a social construct resulting from racist labelling and discrimination in the criminal justice system.
Left realist sociologist
Lea and young
Left realism
Left realists such as Lea and Young (1993) argue that ethnic differences in the statistics reflect real differences in the levels of offending by different ethnic groups. , left realists see crime as the product of relative deprivation, subculture and marginalisation. They argue that racism has led to the marginalisation and economic exclusion of minority ethnic groups, who face higher levels of unemployment, poverty and poor housing. At the same time, the media’s emphasis on consumerism promotes a sense of relative deprivation by setting materialistic goals that many members of minority groups are unable to reach by legitimate means.
Responses of different ethnic groups - LR
According to Lea and Young, one response is the formation of delinquent subcultures, especially by young unemployed Black males. This produces higher levels of utilitarian crime, such as theft and robbery, as a means of coping with relative deprivation. Furthermore, because these groups are marginalised and have no organisations to represent their interests, their frustration is liable to produce non-utilitarian crime such as violence and rioting.
Policing - Lea and young
Lea and Young acknowledge that the police often act in racist ways and that this results in the unjustified criminalisation of some members of minority groups.
However, they do not believe that discriminatory policing fully explains the differences in the statistics. For example, they note that over 90% of crimes known to the police are reported by members of the public rather than discovered by the police themselves. Under these circumstances, even if the police do act in discriminatory ways, it is unlikely that this can adequately account for the ethnic differences in the statistics.
Lea and Young - police racism
Similarly, Lea and Young argue that we cannot explain the differences between minorities in terms of police racism.
For example, Black people have a considerably higher rate of criminalisation than Asian people. The police would have to be very selective in their racism - against Black people but not Asian people - for it to cause such differences.
Lea and Young thus conclude that the statistics represent real differences in levels of offending between ethnic groups, and that these are caused by real differences in levels of relative deprivation and marginalisation.
Eval of Lea and Young
However, Lea and Young can be criticised for their views on the role of police racism. For example, arrest rates for Asian people may be lower than for Black people not because they are less likely to offend, but because police stereotype the two groups differently, seeing Black people as dangerous, Asian people as passive. Furthermore, these stereotypes may have changed since 9/11, because police now regard Asian people too as dangerous - thus explaining the rising criminalisation rates for this group.
Neomarxism overview
On the contrary, these differences are the outcome of a process of social construction that stereotypes minority ethnic groups as inherently more criminal than the majority population.
The work of the neo-Marxists Paul Gilroy (1982) and Stuart Hall et al (1979) illustrates this view.
Neomarxist sociologist
Gilroy: the myth of Black criminality
Hall et al: policing the crisis
The myth of black criminality
Gilroy argues that the idea of Black criminality is a myth created by racist stereotypes of African Caribbean and Asian people. In reality, these groups are no more criminal than any other. However, as a result of the police and criminal justice system acting on these racist stereotypes, minority ethnic groups come to be criminalised and therefore to appear in greater numbers in the official statistics.
In Gilroy’s view, minority ethnic group crime can be seen as a form of political resistance against a racist society, and this resistance has its roots in earlier struggles against British imperialism. Gilroy holds a similar view to that of critical criminology, which argues that working-class crime is a political act of resistance to capitalism. Most Black and Asian people in the UK originated in the former British colonies, where their anti-imperialist struggles taught them how to resist oppression, for example through riots and demonstrations. When they found themselves facing racism in Britain, they adopted the same forms of struggle to defend themselves, but their political struggle was criminalised by the British state.
Eval of gilroy
However, Lea and Young criticise Gilroy on several grounds:
• First-generation immigrants in the 1950s and 60s were very law-abiding, so it is unlikely that they passed down a tradition of anti-colonial struggle to their children.
• Most crime is intra-ethnic (criminals and their victims usually have the same ethnic background), so it can’t be seen as an anti-colonial struggle against racism. Lea and Young argue that, like the critical criminologists, Gilroy romanticises street crime as somehow revolutionary, when in their view it is nothing of the sort.
• Asian crime rates are similar to or lower than for Whites.
If Gilroy were right, then the police are only racist towards Black people and not Asians, which seems unlikely.
Stuart hall
They argue that the 1970s saw a moral panic over Black
‘muggers’ that served the interests of capitalism.
Hall et al also argue that the ruling class are normally able to rule the subordinate classes through consent. However, in times of crisis, this becomes more difficult. In the early 1970s, British capitalism, faced a crisis. High inflation and rising unemployment were provoking widespread industrial unrest and strikes, while conflict in Northern Ireland was intensifying and student protests were spreading. At such times, when opposition to capitalism begins to grow, the ruling class may need to use force to maintain control.
However, the use of force needs to be seen as legitimate or it may provoke even more widespread resistance.
Moral panic - hall
The 1970s also saw the emergence of a media-driven moral panic about the supposed growth of a ‘new’ crime - ‘mugging’. In reality, this was just a new name for the old crime of street robbery with violence, and Hall et al note that there was no evidence of a significant increase in this crime at the time. ‘Mugging’ was soon to be associated by the media, police and politicians with Black youth.
Black mugger
Hall et al argue that the emergence of the moral panic about mugging as a specifically Black’ crime at the same time as the crisis of capitalism was no coincidence - in their view, the moral panic and the crisis were linked.
The myth of the ‘Black mugger’ served as a scapegoat to distract attention from the true cause of problems such as unemployment - namely the capitalist crisis.
The ‘Black mugger’ came to symbolise the disintegration of the social order - the feeling that the British way of life was ‘coming apart at the seams’. By presenting Black youth as a threat to the fabric of society, the moral panic served to divide the working class on racial grounds and weaken opposition to capitalism, as well as winning popular consent for more authoritarian forms of rule that could be used to suppress opposition.
Hall - black youth
However, Hall et al do not argue that Black youth crime was solely a product of media and police labelling. The crisis of capitalism was increasingly marginalising Black youth through unemployment, and this drove some into a lifestyle of hustling and petty crime as a means of survival.
Eval of hall
Hall et al have been criticised on several grounds:
• Downes and Rock (2011) argue that Hall et al are inconsistent in claiming that Black street crime was not rising, but also that it was rising because of unemployment.
• They do not show how the capitalist crisis led to a moral panic, nor do they provide evidence that the public were in fact panicking or blaming crime on Black youth.
• Left realists argue that inner-city residents’ fears about mugging are not panicky, but realistic
Other explanations for ethnic differences in crime rates
Neighbourhood
Getting caught
Sociologist behind neighbourhood
Fitzgerald
Neighbourhood
FitzGerald et al (2003) examine the role of neighbourhood factors in explaining the apparently greater involvement of Black youths in street robbery. They found that rates were highest in very poor areas, and also where very deprived young people came into contact with more affluent groups. Young Black people were more likely to live in these areas and to be poor. However, White people affected by these factors were also more likely to commit street crime. Thus, ethnicity as such was not a cause. However, Black people may be more likely to live in poor areas because of racial discrimination in the housing and job markets.
Getting caught sociologist
Sharp and Budd
Getting caught
Some groups run a greater risk of being caught. Sharp and Budd (2005) found that Black offenders were more likely than White offenders to have been arrested. Reasons included that they were more likely to commit crimes such as robbery, where victims can identify them, and to have been excluded from school or to associate with known criminals - factors that raised their
‘visibility’ to the authorities.
When does racist victimisation occur
Racist victimisation occurs when an individual is selected as a target because of their race, ethnicity or religion. Racist victimisation is nothing new, but was brought into greater public focus with the racist murder of the Black teenager Stephen Lawrence in 1993 and the subsequent inquiry into the handling of the police investigation (Macpherson 1999).
Sources of racist victimisation
Information on racist victimisation comes from two main sources: victim surveys such as the CSEW, and police-recorded statistics.
What do sources on racist victimisation cover
• Racist incidents Any incident that is perceived to be racist by the victim or another person.
• Racially or religiously aggravated offences (such as assault, wounding, criminal damage and harassment) where the offender is motivated by hostility towards members of a racial or religious group.
Extent and risk of victimisation stats
• There were 76,000 race hate crimes and 6,800 religious hate crimes in England and Wales in 2019/20.
• However, most incidents go unreported. The CSEW estimates there were around 104,000 racially motivated incidents and 42,000 religiously motivated incidents in 2019/20.
• On average, there are around 60,000 racially aggravated offences per year.
Risk of being a victim of crime
The risk of being a victim of any sort of crime - not just racist crime - varies by ethnic group. The 2019/2020 SEW shows that people from Mixed ethnic backgrounds had a higher risk (20%) of becoming a victim of crime than did Black. (14%), White (13%) or Asian (13%) people.
Differences in risk of being a victim of crime
The differences may be partly the result of factors other than ethnicity. For example for violent crime, factors such as being young, male and unemployed are strongly linked with victimisation. Ethnic groups with a high proportion of young males are thus likely to have higher rates of victimisation.
However, some of these factors (such as unemployment) are themselves partly the result of discrimination.
Limitations of stats
While the statistics record the instances of victimisation, they do not necessarily capture the victims’ experience of it. As Sampson and Phillips (1992) note, racist victimisation tends to be ongoing over time, with repeated ‘minor’ instances of abuse and harassment interwoven with periodic incidents of physical violence.
The resulting long-term psychological impact needs to be added to the physical injury and damage to property caused by the offenders.
Responses to victimisation
Members of minority ethnic communities have often been active in responding to victimisation. Responses have ranged from situational crime prevention measures such as fireproof doors and letterboxes, to organised self-defence campaigns aimed at physically defending neighbourhoods from racist attacks.
Such responses need to be understood in the context of under-protection by the police, who have often ignored the racist dimensions of victimisation and failed to record or investigate reported incidents properly.
For example, the Macpherson Enquiry (1999) concluded that the police investigation into the death of the Black teenager Stephen Lawrence was ‘marred by a combination of professional incompetence, institutional racism and a failure of leadership by senior officers’. Others have found deeply ingrained racist attitudes and beliefs among individual officers.
