Ethnicity and Crime Flashcards
Lea and Young
- Certain ethnic groups commit more crimes than others and the role of fascism in the criminal justice system, are not mutually exclusive
Anderson
Police assume:
- White people= middle-class, trustworthy
- Black people= lower class, criminal
- Police stop, harass, and abuse young black males on a regular basis on the street, even though most have done nothing to deserve it
Hood
- There was a difference in sentencing based on ethnicities, particularly race
- Black men were 5% more likely to be imprisoned than white men
What was the average custodial sentence length for black and white people?
- 20.8 months for black
- 14.9 months for white
Hall
- Considers the issue of policing and race relations in the two decades between the Scarman report of 1982 and the McPherson report of 1999.
Scarman report 1982
- The official response to racial violence and rioting in some British cities in the early 1980s
McPherson report
Details on the official inquiry into the murder of the black teenager Stephan Lawrence in 1993 and the subsequent police investigation
Hall on the police investigation of Stephan Lawrence
- It was flawed but unsurprising
- Found institutional racism in the Metropolitan police force
Phillip and Bowling
Support Hall
- Ethnic minority neighbourhoods were still overpoliced with military style methods despite the McPherson report
Insitutional racism
- Racism within the social processes and practices of an institution- widely applied to the police
Waddington
- Higher levels of stopping and searching of young black and asian males did not show institutional racism - Ethnic backgrounds just have more ‘availability’ in public places
- The study showed they were not treated disproportionally by the police as their stop and search rate was in line with ‘available population’
Prison population increase between 1993-2003
White- 48%
Black- 138%
Asian- 73%
‘Police culture’/’cop culture’/’police occupational culture
- The shared set of norms, values, attitudes, and practices, which develop amongst the police, and which affect the way in which they carry out their duties
‘Canteen culture’
- The attitudes and values exhibited by the police in their off-duty socialising
Smith and Grey policy studies institute report
- Highlights the explicit and accepted racist language of police officers
Holdaway- police culture research
- ‘Racialisation’ of policing, arguing that routine and mundane police work and relationships may take on a racial ‘framing’, by which people/events are seen in ways that prioritise race when it is irrelevant. And ignores race when it is relevant
Chan
- Inappropriate use of discretion has led to over and under-policing of particular types of offenders and victims
Bhilox
- Most policing is directed at the excluded members of society, who are often poor, young, and black
Glynn
- Racism in the criminal justice system leads some black men to reoffend as a defiant reaction to societal rejection
‘Differential deployment’
- Concentrating policing on areas where the targeted reside
‘Methodological suspicion’
- Routinely suspecting only a limited proportion of the population
Scraton
- Sees the police as an occupying force imposed on the working class/ethnic minority communities
- They impose the law which reflects ruling class interests, and black criminality= culture of resistance
Gilroy
- The history of race relations is a significant factor in explaining criminality amongst some ethnic groups eg British Asia and the African Carribeans are former British colonies, which experienced cultural erosion
Why were crime levels amongst British Asians disproportionately lower than those of white people?
- Due to strong family values and socialisation within the family, and them not fitting with the police stereotype of criminals
Nightingale
- ‘Paradox of inclusion’ in which there’s a desire to be part of mainstream culture being blocked by poverty, and this results in crime
FitzGerald and Sibitt
- Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi groups have very different social class and cultural backgrounds, which have long masked different crime patterns within these groups
Lea and Young challenge…
- Those who dismiss any link between race and crime as ‘merely’ evidence of racism in the criminal justice system
What does racial discrimination lead to?
- An acute awareness of ‘unnecessary injustices’ and unemployment
Lea and Young intersection of race and crime
- The ways in which a minority of the oppressed groups in any industrialised society are ‘brutalised’ into criminality, so race and crime combine to explain patterns in offending
Bowling, Parmar, Phillips
- The ‘pliability’ of Asian stereotypes demonstrates that previous conformist perceptions of Asians, particularly Muslims, have altered
- Stereotypes assumed to explain law-abiding behaviour, relating to strong sense of community, family, and religious values, which promote crime/ deviance
Report from the Home Affairs Select Committee of the House of Commons in 2007 concludes…
- A range of factors contributed to high levels of criminality amongst black youths- including poverty, educational underachievement, school exclusions, family conflict and lack of positive role models (single parent families)
Abbas
- The stereotype of the ‘passive Asian’ has given way to a climate of ‘Islamophobia’ following 9/11 and terrorist scares
Palmer challenges…
- Arguments which see race as a secondary factor to social class, suggesting that they place too little emphasis of racial discrimination
Radicalisation concerns led to…
- Claims about targeting of young Muslims by the police, and harsher punishments being issued by courts
Pitts
- Rise in violent youth gangs and associated gang-related street street culture as young people have found themselves ‘immobilised’ at the bottom of the economic ladder, marginalised from mainstream society
Lea and Young on moral panics
- Criticise moral panics surrounding ‘black crime’, i.e. the way the media have focused on mugging, and linked it to ethnicity
- Challenge the headline= ‘BLACK CRIME SHOCK: blacks carried out twice as many muggings as whites in London last year’
Gunter
- Subcultures and crime amongst young black males in East London
Highlights significance of ‘road culture; and ‘badness’ on young black people’s identities, experiences and life choices
