Topic 4b The role of the police and courts in the social construction of crime Flashcards
Intro
It is often assumed, particularly by the mass media, that the official criminal statistics (OCS) are collected in a reliable way and that they are valid in the picture of crime and criminality that they present. However interpretivist sociologists argue that the OCS are of limited usefulness and that they are in fact a social construction - they tell us more about the social groups involved in their collection –the general public, victims, the mass media, the police and the courts - than they tell us about crime and criminals.
Police stereotypes intro
Interpretivists argue that the official criminal statistics tell us more about the nature of policing in the UK than they tell us about crime and criminality.
Police stereotypes
Holdaway found that older and more experienced officers use racist language as a matter of course in the presence of younger officers. Bowling and phillips noted that some police officers in London based their decision to stop young Black males in cars on a stereotype known as ‘driving whilst Black’. Police officers assumed that Black youth were driving upmarket cars because they were either drug dealers or they had stolen them.
Police stereotypes 2
Studies of police officers on patrol conducted by Smith and Grey and Cicourel indicate that they operate using stereotypical assumptions or labels about what constitutes ‘suspicious’ or ‘criminal’, i.e. the decision to stop or arrest someone may be based on whether they correspond to a stereotype.
Police stereotypes - Heidensohn
Feminist criminologists argue that male officers tend to adopt paternalistic attitudes towards female offenders who are less likely to be stopped, arrested and charged, Heidensohn calls this the ‘chivalry’ factor. According to Ministry of Justice statistics, 49 per cent of females recorded as offending received a caution in 2007, whereas only 30 per cent of male offenders received the same.
police stereotypes eval
It is important that not all police officers are dismissed as racist. Most sociologists accept that only a minority of police officers are prejudiced against ethnic minorities. The McPherson report suggested that ‘institutional racism’ was a greater problem than individual police officers acting in racist ways. This type of racism is not deliberate but it is ingrained in organisational policies and ways of dealing with people that are out-of-date.
However, the police are working hard on changing some of the outdated attitudes described above. Nevertheless it is not surprising that the police also share some of the widely help stereotypes in society.
Reiner (police discretion)
there are so many laws which could be applied in so many different circumstances that any police officer needs to use their discretion in deciding exactly what laws to apply.
Reiner has identified four explanatory categories of police discretion.
1. Individualistic
a particular police officer has specific concerns and interests and thus interprets and applies the law according to them. e.g racist police officers who would apply the law more harshly on certain ethnic minorities.
2. Occupational Culture
Police officers are overwhelmingly white and male. They work long hours in each other’s company and are largely isolated from the public. The result of this is the development of a very specific occupational culture - sometimes referred to as a canteen culture.
They also have to taught to discriminate between ‘decent people’ and ‘potential trouble-makers’, which stereotypes play a part in and also rely upon each other in terms in times of accusations from the public - Internal solidarity and social isolation
4. Suspiciousness
Tarling - police discretion (structural approach)
Marxists stress that the very definition of law is biased in favour of the powerful groups in society and against the working class. Therefore any upholding of the law, involves upholding the values of capitalist society. Evidence for this view can be found in Tarling’s study which showed that over 65% of police resources are devoted to the uniformed patrolling of public space - particularly poorer neighbourhoods and central city areas. The result is that about 55% of prisoners in police custody were unemployed and of the rest, 30% were manual, working class jobs.
police discretion eval
out of date. Police training today aims to make new officers much more aware of some of the issues described above. There have also been efforts to encourage a wider range of people to join the police force e.g. those from minority ethnic backgrounds.
Left Realists argue that the police do need to spend more time in poorer areas as these often have the highest levels of victimisation although they also argue that the police need to show sensitivity in dealing with minority groups and to see themselves as part of the community – not as an ‘occupying force’.
The courts - against females
Walklate believes that it is the female victim rather than the male suspect who ends up on trial in rape cases. Women have to establish their respectability if their evidence is to be believed.
Dobash and Dobash found that police officers were very unlikely to make an arrest in cases of domestic violence.
Hood
The courts - for females
Heidensohn found that women are more likely to receive shorter sentences than men. This has been described as a process of ‘chivalry’, by which we mean that the male-dominated legal system treats women differently, seeking to explain away their offending, as males find it difficult to believe that women can be ‘bad’ – they are merely ‘led astray’.
The courts eval
There have been attempts to get a wider representation of different groups into the legal system and to become magistrates. However, the legal profession does remain largely white and middle class. Juries do, however, reflect wider society but receive no training in awareness of prejudice and discrimination issues.
Pressure from feminists has made judges more aware of gender issues in cases of domestic violence and sexual assault although there remain few successful rape prosecutions.
Conclusion
institutional racism - After the racist murder of a black youth, Stephen Lawrence in 1993, and after very considerable pressure from his parents, the Macpherson Inquiry was set up to look at the circumstances of his death and the handling of the situation by the police. Lord Macpherson concluded that the police were characterised by institutional racism. By this he meant that the police have ‘procedures, practices and a culture that tend to exclude or to disadvantage non-white people’.
