ETHNICITY & CRIME

Question 1

Ethnicity

Answer 1

• An identity based on belonging to a group defined by common cultural or national traditions.
• Sociologists are interested in the apparent differences in the incidence of criminality and victimhood amongst different ethnicities.

Question 2

Victim surveys

Answer 2

Data given by individuals who detail the crimes they were victims to

Question 3

Self-report studies

Answer 3

• Surveys in which respondents are asked to report about criminal offenses they have committed.

Question 4

Graham and Bowling, 1995

Answer 4

• Based on a sample of 2500 people, they found that blacks and whites had very similar rates of offending, while Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis had much lower rates.
• The findings of self-report studies such as these challenge the stereotype of black people as being mire likely to offend, but support the widely held view that Asians are less likely to offend.

Question 5

Philips and Browning
Policing

Answer 5

• Note that there has been many allegations of oppressive policing of minority ethnic since the 1970s, including : ‘mass stop and search operations, armed raids and a failure to respond effectively to racist violence.’
• They believe that this has meant that ethnic minorities are more likely to think that they are ‘over-policed and under-protected’ and have limited faith in the police.

Question 6

Stop and search

Answer 6

• Members of minorities ethnic groups are more likely to be stopped and searched by the police.
• Compared with white people, black people are 7x more likely to be stopped and searched and Asian people over twice as likely. It should be noted that only a small proportion of stop and searches result in arrest.
• Statistics from 2006/7 shows that Asians were over three times 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.

Question 7

Low discretion stops

Answer 7

Where the police act on relevant information about a specific offence e.g. a victim’s description of the offender.

Question 8

High discretion stops

Answer 8

Where police act without specific intelligence. This is where officers use their stereotypes, that disproportionality and discrimination are most likely.

Question 9

Explanations for patterns in stop and search

Answer 9

• Police racism
• Ethnic differences in offending
• Demographic factors

Question 10

Phillips and Bowling
Police Racism

Answer 10

• Point out that many officers hold negative stereotypes about ethnic minority 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.

Question 11

The Macpherson report, 1999
Police Racism

Answer 11

This report on the murder of black teen Stephen Lawrence, concluded that there was an institutionalised racism within the metropolitan police. Other have found deeply ingrained racism in officers.

Question 12

Ethnic differences in offending

Answer 12

An alternative explanation is that disproportionality in stop and searches simply reflect ethnic differences in levels of offending.

Question 13

Demographic factors

Answer 13

• Ethnic minorities are over-represented in the population groups who are more likely to be stopped, such as the young, the unemployed and the manual workers.
• 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 more minorities get stopped more.

Question 14

Arrests and cautions

Answer 14

• Figures for England and Wales in 2006/7 show that the arrest rate for blacks was 3.6 times the rate for whites.
• By contrast, once arrested ,black and Asians are less likely than white people to receive a caution.
• One reason for this may be that members of ethnic minorities groups are more likely to deny the offence and to exercise their right to legal advice (possibly out of mistrust for the police).
• However, not admitting the offence means they cannot be let off with a caution and are more likely to be charged instead.

Question 15

Prosecution

Answer 15

• The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is the body responsible for deciding whether a case brought by the police should be prosecuted in court.
• Studies suggest that the CPS is more likely to drop cases against ethnic minorities.
• Phillips and Bowling argue that this may be because the evidence presented to the CPS by the police is often weaker and based on stereotyping of ethnic minorities as criminals.

Question 16

Trial

Answer 16

• 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.

Question 17

Convictions

Answer 17

• It is therefore interesting to note that black and Asian defendants are less likely to be found guilty; in 2006/7, 60% of white defendants were found guilty as against only 52% of blacks and 44% of Asians.
• This suggests discrimination, in that the police and CPS may be bringing weaker or less serious cases against ethnic minorities due to racism and stereotyping identifiable by the courts who throw out these cases.

Question 18

Sentencing

Answer 18

• In 2006/7, custodial sentences were given to a greater proportion of black offenders (68%) than white (55%) or Asian offenders (59%), whereas whites and Asians were more likely than blacks to receive community sentences.
• This may be due to differences in the seriousness of the offences, or in defendants’ previous convictions.

Question 19

Hood, 1992
Sentencing

Answer 19

However, a study of 5 Crown Courts found that, even when such factors were taken into account, black men were 5% more likely to receive a custodial sentences on average three months longer than white males.

Question 20

Pre-sentence reports

Answer 20

• One possible reason for harsher sentences is the pre-sentence reports (PSRs) written by probation officers.
• A PSR is intended as a risk assessment to assist magistrates in deciding on the appropriate sentence for a given offender

Question 21

Hudson and Bramhall, 2005

Answer 21

• Pre-sentence reports
• However, they argue that PSRs 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.

Question 22

Prison

Answer 22

• In 2014, just over 1/4 of the prison population were from minority ethnic groups, including 15% Black and 7% Asian. Among British nationals, blacks were five times more likely to be in prison than whites.
• Black and Asian offenders are also more likely than whites to be serving longer sentences.
• Within the total prison population, all minority groups have a higher than average proportion of prisoners on remand (awaiting trial). This is because ethnic minorities are less likely to be granted bail while awaiting trial.
• Similar patterns can be seen in the US where 2/5 prisoners held in local jails are black, while 1/5 are Hispanic.

Question 23

Functionalists explanations for the relationship between ethnicity and crime statistics

Answer 23

• Strain theory: Merton’s theory can apply to some minority ethnic groups who statistically perform less well at school and therefore may be denied social mobility by legitimate means.
• Bonds of attachment: New and first-generation migrants often live in transient communities in inner cities where there are few tight-knit or established communities than in other localities.
• Using Hirschi’s control theory some might argue that with such a lack of strong societal bonds, crime is more likely to occur.
• Similarly, using Shaw and McKay’s ‘Social Disorganization Theory’ sociologists could link disadvantaged urban neighbourhoods to the development of criminal values that replace normal society values.
• Subcultural theories suggest that lower-class boys are more likely to form deviant subcultures and these boys in question are often from minority-ethnic groups.

Question 24

Marxist explanations for the relationship between ethnicity and crime statistics

Answer 24

• Some minority-ethnic groups are much more likely to be working-class than not, therefore the same arguments exist in relation to ethnicity as exist for social class.

Question 25

Left realist explanations for the relationship between ethnicity and crime statistics

Answer 25

• Left-realists argue that the statistics represent real differences in rates of offending.
• However, crime is a product of relative deprivation and marginalisation.

Question 26

Lea and Young, 1993

Answer 26

• Racism has led to the marginalisation and economic exclusion of ethnic minorities, who face 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.
• Marginalisation produces frustration which can be diffused through violence and other non-utilitarian crimes and can also lead to the formation of subcultures which produces high levels of utilitarian crime
• Though they acknowledge that discriminatory policing results in the unjustified criminalisation of some members of minority groups, they do not believe that it fully explains the differences in statistics.
• For example, they note that over 90% of crimes known to the police are reported by members of the public themselves. Hence, even

Question 27

Lea and Young, 1993
EV.

Answer 27

• Arrest rates for Asians may be lower than for blacks not because they are less likely to offend, but because police stereotype the two groups differently, seeing blacks as dangerous and Asians as passive.
• These stereotypes also change with historical and political context.
• E.G. since 9/11 or, more recently, the scares of ISIS, police now regard Asians too as dangerous - thus explaining the rising criminalisation rates for this group

Question 28

Neo-Marxist explanations for the relationship between ethnicity and crime statistics

Answer 28

• Argue that the statistics are a social construct resulting from racist labelling and discrimination in the criminal justice system.

Question 29

Gilroy

Answer 29

• Black criminality is a myth created by racist stereotypes of African Caribbeans and Asians.
• As a result of police and the criminal justice system acting on these stereotypes, ethnic minorities come to be criminalised and therefore appear in greater numbers in the official statistics.
• Ethinic minority crime can be seen as a form of political resistance against a racist society, rooted in earlier struggles against British imperialism (similar to critical criminology which posits that wc crime is a political act of resistance to capitalism)
• This resistance is founded in the anti-imperialist struggles in the former British colonies from which most blacks and Asians in the UK originated from.
• These adopted forms of political struggle and defence were simply criminalised by the British state.term-174

Question 30

Gilroy
EV.

Answer 30

Lea and Young criticise Gilroy on several grounds:
* First-generation immigrants in the 50s 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, with both criminal and victim having the same ethnic background, so it can’t be seen as an anti-colonial against racism - street crime should not be romanticised as revolutionary
* Asian crime rates are similar to or lower than whites.
* Following Gilroy’s assumptions this would mean that the police were racists towards blacks but not Asians, which seems unlikely.

Question 31

Hall et al: policing the crisis (1978)

Answer 31

• Locates the role of moral panics in the context of capitalism and links it to crime and ethnicity.
• In the early 70s, British capitalism suffered under the widespread industrial unrest and strikes caused by high inflation and rising unemployment. At the same time, there was an emergence of a media-driven moral panic about the supposed growth of a ‘new’ crime - mugging. In reality, mugging was just the new name for street robbery with violence and there was no significant increase in this crime at the time.
• Hall et al argue that the myth of the black mugger served as a scapegoat to distract attention from the true cases of problems such as unemployment and the wider capitalist crisis.
• By presenting black youth as the threat to the fabric of society, the moral panic served to divide the wc 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.
• They do, however, recognise that black crime was not solely a product of media and police labelling but also caused by the marginalisation of black youth through unemployment which drove some into a lifestyle of hustling and petty crimes as a means of survival.
• Suggested that black people were forced into the informal economy - and therefore potential criminal activity - by being a reserve army of labour only required to do “white man’s shit work”.
• There is a moral panic that drives a fantasy crime wave where the actions of the police could give the impression of a significant increase in a particular type of crime.

Question 32

Hall et al: policing the crisis (1978)
EV.

Answer 32

• 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 people
• Left realists argue that inner-city residents’ fears about mugging are not panicky, but realistic.

Question 33

Interactionalist explanations for the relationship between ethnicity and crime statistics

Answer 33

• Deviance amplification and secondary deviance:

Question 34

Right realist explanations for the relationship between ethnicity and crime statistics

Answer 34

• Right Realists reject the ideas put forward by Marxists that deeper structural or economic factors such as poverty are the causes of crime. They mainly believe that the individual is responsible for crime

Question 35

Shaw and Mckay

Answer 35

• Argue that crime is a growing social problem largely committed by lower working class male juveniles, often black, in inner city areas

Question 36

Charles Murray: underclass theory

Answer 36

• Changes to family structure was responsible for much of the increase in the crime rate in the 70s and 80s - he largely attributes the growth of crime to the growing underclass who are defined by their deviant behaviour and fail to socialise their children properly.
• As African and Caribbean families are statistically more likely to have a lone parent structure, the lack of a male role model for children from these families makes crime more likely.

Question 37

Charles Murray: underclass theory

Answer 37

• For Murray, the underclass is not only a source of crime, its very existence threatens society’s cohesion by undermining the values of hard work and personal responsibility
• Blumer (1958) argues that the perceptions of ethnic minorities contribute to an abstract picture of the subordinate group that allows the dominant group to support its view of the subordinate group.
• By this, racial prejudice is formed by the dominant group and ethnic minorities can be falsely held responsible for crime.
• Murray, a white middle-class man, arguably simply perpetuates this prejudice by scapegoating an entire race for the issues of an inequitable society.

Question 38

more recent approaches

Answer 38

*Neighbourhood
*Getting caught

Question 39

FitzGerald et al, 2003
Neighbourhood

Answer 39

• Examine the role of neighbourhood factors in explaining the greater involvement of black youths in street robbery.
• They found that rates were highest in very poor areas and where very deprived young people came into contact with more affluent groups.
• Young blacks were ml to live in these areas and to be poor. However, whites affected by these factors were also ml to commit street crime.
• Thus, ethnicity as such was not a cause. However, black people may be ml to live in poor areas because of racial discrimination is housing and job markets

Question 40

Sharp and Budd, 2005
Getting caught

Answer 40

• Argued that some groups run a greater risk of being caught, finding that black offenders were ml than white offenders to have been arrested.
• This could be because they are ml to commit crimes such as robbery, where victims can identify them. They are also ml to have been excluded from school or to associate with known criminals - factors that raised their ‘visibility’ to the authorities.

Question 41

Racist victimisation

Answer 41

• When an individual is selected as a target because of their race, ethnicity or religion.
• Racist victimisation was brought into greater public focus with the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence and the subsequent inquiry into the handling of the police investigation 6 years late (the Macpherson report)

Question 42

Sources for racist victimisation

Answer 42

• Victim surveys and police-recorded statistics which generally cover racist incidents and racially or religiously aggravated offences where the offender is motivated by hostility towards members of a racial or religious group.

Question 43

Number of racist incidents reported by the police in England and Wales in 2014-15

Answer 43

54000

Question 44

The risk of being a victim of any sort of crime varies by ethnic group

Answer 44

• 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 factors, such as unemployment, are themselves partly the result of discrimination

Question 45

Sampson and Phillips, 1992

Answer 45

• Racist victimisation tends to be ongoing over time, with repeated ‘minor’ instances of abuse and harassment interwoven with periodic incidents of physical violence.
• Correspondingly, statistics do not always capture the victims’ experience of the crime as it can discount long-term psychological impacts.

Question 46

Responses to victimisation

Answer 46

• Situational crime prevention measures including fireproof doors and letters
• Organised self-defence campaigns aimed at physically defending neighbourhoods from racist attacks
• Such responses need to be understood with the context of the victims. Police are often accused of under-protecting victims and ignoring the racist dimensions of racist victimisation.
• The Macpherson Enquiry (1999) saw all these issues along with the lack of organisation and insufficiency in reporting and investigations.
• Thus, minorities are more likely to be victims of crime, while being both over-policed and under-protected.