Ethnicity and criminalisation

Question 1

Statistics that show how blacks and Asians are over-represented in the CJS?

Answer 1

1. Black people make up just 3% of the population, but 13.1% of the prison population
2. Asians make up 6.5% of the population, but 7.7% of the prison population
3. Blacks are 7x more likely to be stopped and searched, 3.5x more likely to be in prison and 5x more likely to be in prison

Question 2

What are the limitations of using victim surveys to investigate ethnic differences in crime?

Answer 2

1. They rely on victims’ memory of events (Phillips and Bowling: people over-estimate black offenders)
2. They only cover personal crimes, which only make up 1/5 of all crimes
3. They exclude the under 10’s
4. They exclude crimes by and against organisations

Question 3

What did Graham and Bowling’s (1995) self-report study sample of 2,500 people show?

Answer 3

That blacks and whites (43, 44) had very similar rates of offending, and that Indians, Pakistani’s and Bangladeshi’s had much lower rates

Question 4

Policing

Answer 4

• Phillips and Bowling: since the 70’s there[’s been allegations of oppressive policing of minority ethnic communities

Question 5

Stop and Search

Answer 5

• Minority ethnic groups are more likely to be stopped and searched
• Compared with whites, blacks are 7x more likely to be stopped and Asians are over 2x as likely
• Since the Terrorism Act 2000, Asians are more likely to be stopped and searched than others

Question 6

Explaining stop and search patterns

Answer 6

1. Police Racism
   - Macpherson report on the police investigation of Stephen Lawrence
2. Ethnic differences in offending
   - Low discretion stops: police act on relevant information about a specific offence
   - High discretion stops: police act without specific intelligence and go off stereotypes
3. Demographic factors
   - Many of those in ethnic minorities are in groups such as the young, the unemployed, manual workers and urban dwellers

Question 7

Arrests and cautions

Answer 7

• 2014/15: the arrest rate for blacks was 3x the rate for whites
• Once arrested, blacks and Asians were less likely than whites to receive a caution

Question 8

Prosecution and trial

Answer 8

• CPS is more likely to drop cases against ethnic minorities

- Bowling and Phillips: This is because the evidence presented is weaker

Question 9

Convictions and sentencing

Answer 9

• Black and Asian defendants are less likely to be found guilty
• Black offenders have imprisonment rates 3 percentage points, and Asian offenders 5 points higher, than white offenders
• Hood (1992): 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 3 months (for Asians, 9 months) longer than white men

Question 10

Pre-sentence reports

Answer 10

• Hudson and Bramhall (2005): PSR’s allow for discrimination. Reports on Asian offenders suggested that they were less remorseful than white offenders

Question 11

Prison

Answer 11

• 2014: just over 1/4 of the prison population were from minority ethnic groups
• Among British nationals, 5.5 per thousand black people were in jail compared with 1.6 per 1000 Asians and 1.4 white people
• Blacks were 4x more likely to be in prison than whites
• Black and Asian offenders are more likely than whites to be serving longer sentences