General crime statistics and Ethnicity Flashcards
Per how many people is crime drawn from official police statistics?
Since the year 2015 what has happened to the crime rate?
How are official crime statistics processed?
What is the Crime Survey of England and Wales? What does it not include?
What is the dark figure of crime?
-Crime rate is collected by the number of crime per 1,000 individuals.
- Since the year 2015 the crime has increased. (particularly homicides)
-Official crime statistics are gathered by what is recorded by the police then what is processed by the CJS.
-The Crime survery of England & Wales is a large Home Office survey. Where people report crimes they have been victim of. But doesn’t include ‘victimless crimes’.
-The dark figure of crime: Many most crimes are not included in either measurement.
(2014) What of the prison population is black?
What population of the prison is white?
-13.2% of the prison population is black(they make up approx 3% of the population so overrepresented).
-73.8% of the prison population is white.(they make up 88.3% of the population so underrepresented).
Do the statistics present a clear picture? While minorities are likely to be stopped and searched who is more likely to be convicted?
What is the reason?
-NO.
-Whilst ethnic minorities are likley to be stopped and searched white people are more likely to be found guilty.
-Ethnic minorities are more likely to be wrongly arrested.
What should sociologists consider when reviewing statistics?
-Statistical patterns may be broadly accurate; therefore what factors could lead to that pattern?
-Statistical patterns may be inaccurate; therefore, what factors could cause this?
What theories can be used to explain high crime rates among ethnic minorities?
-Strain theory(link to education).
-Bonds of attachment and right realism(transient inner-communities)
-Marxist(overlap between ethnicity and social class)
-Labelling(negative labelling could cause self fulfilling prophecy).
-Left realist(social exclusion and relative deprivation).
1993 following Stephen Lawerence’s murder what did the Mcpherson report conclude about the Mertropolitan police?
What did the BBC documentary ‘the secret policeman’ conclude?
-1993 the Mcpherson report conclude the police is ‘institutionally racist’.
-The secret policeman bbc documentary concluded that there was institutional racism within manchester policing.
2014 how many blacks were stopped and searched compared to whites in the population? What can this explain?
What did Waddington et al argue about stop and search?
-2014, 65 blacks were stopped and searched(per 1000) compared to 15 whites.
-Some suggest this reflects institutional racism and could help explain patterns in police statistics.
-Waddington et al argued that stop and search was in proption with the ‘available population’ (those in urban places ‘after dark’.)
What did Graham and Bowling find about rates of offending(1955) in self reported studies?
What is the limitations of victim surveys?
-Graham and Bowling found that blacks and whites had almost identical rates of offending, while Asians had much lower rates.
-Self reported studies rely on victims’ memory. White victime tend to ‘over identify’ blacks as offenders. They exclude under 16s, crimes by businesses, so tell us nothing about the ethnicity of corporate crimes.
What do left realists Lea and Young argue ethnic differences in statistics reflect?
What do they argue media empahsis on consumerism promotes?
What do they argue police racism does not explain?
-Left realists argue that ethnic differences in statistics reflect real differences in the levels of offending.
-They argue that media emphasis on consumerism promotes relative deprivation setting material goals minorities cannot reach.
-They also point that police racism cannot explain the much higher conviction rates of blacks than of Asians: they would have to be selectively racist against blacks not Asians to cause these differences.
What neo-marxist created the theory called ‘the myth of black criminality’? What is it?
What does the CJS act on according to Gilroy?
-Gilroy.
-Gilroy argues that the idea of black criminality is a myth created by white stereotypes of African Caribbeans and Asians.
-The CJS act on racist stereotypes, minorities are criminalised and therefore appear in greater numbers in the official statistics.
According to Gilroy why do most minorities commit crime?
Where do most blacks and Asians orginate from?
How is their political struggle dealt with in the UK?
Why do Lea and Young criticise Gilroy’s theory?
-Crime is used a political resistance against a racist society, this has roots in struggles against imperialism.
-Most minorities originate from former colonies and anti-colonial struggles taught them how to resist oppression.
-Their political struggle was criminalised by the British state.
-Lea and Young argue first generation immigrants were law abiding; so unlikely to pass on an anti-colonial tradition. Also most crime is intra-ethnic so Gilroy wrongly romantices street crime.
According to Hall et al what was there in the 1970s?
Was the rise in ‘black crime’ during the crisis of capitalism a coincidence?
Does Hall et al argue black crime was only a product of media labelling?
-According to Hall et al there was a moral panic in the 1970s over black ‘muggers’.
-The crisis of capitalism was of no coincidence to Hall et al and blacks were scapegoated to distract attention from the true causes of society’s problems.
-NO. blacks were also marginalised through the crisis of capitalism in employment discrimination, and this drove some to petty crime in order to survive.
What is Hall et al criticised for? How?
What do they not show?
-Being incosistent.
-They claim black street crime was not rising, but also that it was rising because of unemployment.
-They do not show how the crisis led to a moral panic, or that the public were actually blaming it on blacks.
