Ethnicity, Crime and Justice - Topic 6 : Crime and Deviance

Information is based on the second AQA a-level sociology book

What is the population of Black people compared to its prison population?

Black people make up 3% of the population and they make up 13% of prison population

What is the population of Asian people compared to its prison population?

Asian people make 6.9% of the population and they make up 8% of prison population

What did the Ministry of Justice say in 2008?

Members of our Black communities are seven times more likely that their White counterparts to be stopped and searched, three and a half times more likely to be arrested and five times more likely to be in prison.

What is a criticism of what the Ministry of Justice said in 2008?

Statistics do not tell us whether members of one ethnic group are more likely than members of another group to commit an offence in the first place

What is a limitation(s) of victim surveys (4)?

* They rely on the victims’ memory of events.
* They only cover personal crimes, which only make up about a fifth of all crimes
* They exclude the under 10s: minority ethnic groups contain a higher proportion of young people
* They exclude crimes by and against organisations ,like businesses, so they tells us nothing about the ethnicity of white collar and corporate criminals

What did Coretta Phillips and Ben Bowling (2012) say about White victims?

Phillips and Bowling (2012) evidence suggests that White victims may ‘over-identity’ Black suspects saying the offender was Black even though they were not sure.

A limitation of victim surveys

They can only tell us about the ethnicity of a small proportion of offenders which may not be representative of offenders in general

What are the percentages based on a sample of 2,500 people that Graham and Bowling (1995) found?

White and Black rates of offending were similar 44% and 43%

Indian 30%, Pakistani 28% and Bangladeshi 13%

What did Sharp and Budd (2005) find from the 2003 Offending, Crime and justice survey of 12,000 people?

They found that around 40% of White people and those of ‘Mixed’ ethnic origins said they had committed an offence, followed by Black people 28% and Asian people 21%

When the Home office conducted nine self report studies on drug use since the early 1990s what did Sharp and Budd (2005) find?

27% of males of ‘Mixed’ ethnicity said that they had used drugs in the last year compared to 16% of both Black and White males and 5% Asian males

What did Phillips and Bowling (2012) said about the allegations of oppressive policing of minority ethic communities?

Mass stop and search operations, paramilitary tactics, excessive surveillance, armed raids, police violence and deaths in custody and a failure to respond effectively to racist violence

What did Philips and Bowling (2007) say about ethnic minorities and their feelings towards the police?

Members of these communities are more likely to think they are over-policed and under-protected and have a small amount of faith in the police

Use of force (Grierson 2020)

Black people were four times more likely to have force used against them by the Met police than White people

The Macpherson Report - police racism (1999)

The police investigation of the racist murder of a black teenager concluded their was institutional racism within the Met police

What did Phillips and Bowling (2012) say about officers attitudes towards ethnic minorities?

Many officers hold negative stereotypes about minority ethnic groups as criminals, leading to deliberate targeting to stop and searches

What is the difference between low discretion stops and high discretion stops?

* **Low discretion stops** police act on relevant information about a specific offence like a victim’s description on the offender
* **High discretion stops** police act on without specific knowledge. This is where officers can use their stereotypes

What are some demographic factors that explain stop and search patterns?

Minority ethnic groups are **over-represented** in the population groups who are most likely to be stopped. People who are young, unemployed, manual workers and urban dwellers are more likely to be stopped regardless their ethnicity however, these groups have a higher proportion of ethnic minorities

What did the figure in England and Wales (2018/19) tell us about arrest and cautions?

The arrest rate for Black people were over three times the rate for White people and Black and Asian people were less likely than White arrestees to receive a caution

What are the two main explanations for ethnic differences in statistics?

* Left Realism: the stats represent real differences in rates of offending
* Neo-Marxism: the stats are a social construct resulting from racist labelling and discrimination in the CJS

What do left realists see crime is a product from?

It is a product from relative deprivation, subculture and marginalisation

How does the media add to relative deprivation?

The media emphasises consumerism which promotes the sense of relative deprivation by setting materialistic goals that many members of minority ethnic groups are unable to reach by legitimate means

Why do Lea and Young do not fully believe that discriminatory policing fully explains the differences in statistics?

Over 90% of crimes known to the police are reported by members of the public

What is a criticism of Lea and Young for their view of the role of police racism?

Arrest rates for Asian people may be lower than for Black people not because they are less likely to offend but because police stereotype the two groups differently, seeing black people as dangerous and Asian as passive. However, they might see Asians as dangerous now because of 9/11

What is the myth of Black criminality and how does it link with the police and the CJS?

Black criminality is a myth created by racist streotypes of African Craibbean and Asian people. As a result of these stereotypes the police and CJS act on these racist stereotypes minority ethnic groups crime to be criminalised

What is Gilroy’s view on political resistance with minority ethnic group crime?

Minority ethnic group crime can be seen as a form of political resistance against racist society and the roots of this can be found in the struggles against British imperialism. This was taught by the first gen immigrants

Give a criticism of Gilroy made by Lea and Young (3)

* First gen immigrants in the 50s and 60s were very law-abiding, meaning it’s unlikely for them to pass down a anti-colonial struggle to their children
* Most crime is intra-ethnic (criminals and their victims usually have the same ethnic background) so it can’t be seen as anti-colonial struggle against racism
* Asian crime rates are similar to or lower than for Whites, meaning if Gilroy was right then the police is only racist towards Black people not Asians which is unlikely.

What happened to British capitalism in the early 1970s?

It was in a crisis. High inflation and rising unemployment were provoking widespread industrial unrest and strikes. At this time the opposition to capitalism began to grow

How did moral panic link with the new crime ‘mugging’?

The media

Why does Hall et al say that the emergence of the moral panic about mugging came at the same time as the crisis of capitalism was no coicedence?

The myth of the Black mugger served as a scapegoat to distract attention from the true cause of problems such as unemployment namely the capitalist crisis

How did presenting Black youth as a threat to society help with capitalism?

The moral panic helped to divide the working class on racial grounds and weaken opposition to capitalism

Black youth crime was not solely a product of media and police labelling. What else contributed to this…

The capitalism crisis was increasingly marginalising Black youth through unemployment and this drive some into a lifestyle of hustling and petty crime as a means of survival

What are some criticisms of Hall et al

* Downes and Rock (2011) see the inconsistency in Hall et al theory as they claim 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 was indeed panicking
* Left realists argue that inner-city residents fears about mugging are not panicky but realistic

What did FitzGerald et al (2003) say about neighbourhood factors explaining the greater involvement of Black youths in street robbery?

They found that rates were highest in very poor areas and also where very deprived young people came into contact with more affluent groups. young Black youths were more likely to live in these areas and to be poor

Why isn’t ethnicity a cause to differences in crime when looking at neighbourhoods?

White people affected by factors like being poor were also more likely to commit street crime. same with Black youths. However, Black people many be more likely to live in poor areas because of racial discrimination in the housing and job markets

What did Sharp and Budd(2005) say about getting caught?

Some groups are more likely to get caught than others. Black offenders were more likely than White offenders to have been arrested. They were more likely to commit robbery where the victims can identify them and to associate with known criminals which are all factors hat raised their visibility to the authorities

What does information on racist victimisation generally cover?

* **Racists incidents:** any incident that is perceived be racist by the victim or another person


* **Racially or religiously aggravated offences:** like assault, wounding, criminal damage and harassment where the offender is motivated by hostility towards member of a racial or religious group

How many race hate crimes and religious hate crimes were there in 2019/20 in England and Wales?

76,000 and 6,800. However, most incidents go unreported

Two problems with using self-report studies

* Participants may not be truthful when reporting this decreases validity
* Question may be misunderstood