Ethnicity and Crime Flashcards
What is a statistic for stop and search?
Members of the Black communities are nine times more likely than their white counterparts to be stopped and searched.
What are the ethnic differences at each stage of the criminal justice process and who argues this? (5)
Phillips and Bowling.
Stop and search
Arrest and cautions
Prosecution and trial
Convictions
Prison.
How is stop and search different for EM groups? (2)
Taser incidents often involve black people more.
EM groups are 9 times more likely to be stopped and searched by the police if they have ‘reasonable suspicion’.
How are arrests and cautions different for EM groups? (2)
Blacks and Asians are less likely to receive a caution.
The arrest rate for Blacks was 3 times the rate for whites.
How is prosecution and trial different for EM groups?
Studies suggest that the CPS is more likely to drop cases against EM groups because the evidence presented is often weaker and based on stereotyping EM’s as criminals.
How are convictions different for EM groups? (2)
Asian and Black defendants are more likely to be found guilty.
They are more likel to be served longer sentences of four years or more.
How is prison different for EM groups?
Just over 1/4 of prison population were ethnic minority groups.
Black individuals were 4 times more likely to be in prison than whites.
What are alternative explanations for the over-representation of BAME groups? (3)
Demographic factors - EM are most likely to be young and unemployed so they are more likely to be stopped.
They are more likely to commit crimes that raise their ‘visibility’ to authorities.
EM groups are more likely to elect for trial before jury in the crown court than in a magistrates court.
What are the two main explanations for ethnic differences in the statistics?
Left Realism
Right Realism
What do Left Realists argue the reason for EM to commit crime? (3)
Marginalisation: EM groups are more likely to be marginalised due to discrimination and racism.
Relative deprivation: They may feel poor so they commit crime to make up for it.
Subcultures: They may join a subculture because they lack a male role model so they join to gain alternative status hierarchy.
How can Left Realists be criticised? (3)
Crime statistics are not objective, they are socially constructed.
The police are still institutionally racist.
Boys club-culture: nothing has changed since Stephen Lawrence.
What does Gilroy and Neo-Marxists argue? (2)
Crime by Black people in the 1970s was a form of political resistance agaisnt oppression and inequality.
EM groups are criminalised and therefore sppear in greater numbers in the official statistics.
What contemporary event can be used to show Gilroy’s point about political resistance?
London Riots triggered by the death of Mark Duggan in reaction to police brutality.
How do Left Realists criticise Gilroy? (2)
EM fight against people of the same EM which isn’t political resistance.
Edgework - some people do it for the thrill.
What did Hall argue? (4)
He focused on the moral panic surrounding mugging in Britain.
There was an mergence of the mdia-driven moral panic of mugging which was associated with the black youth.
To avoid any threat to the dominant ruling class ideology, a moral panic about black muggars became the folk devil (a scapegoat) for societies problems.
This helped to justify more aggressive forms of policing in the city.
This divided the working class and led to more aggressive policing against black people.
