Topic 6: Ethnicity and crime

What are the 3 explanations behind stop and search patterns?

• Police racism (Macpherson report 1999 concluded institutional racism)

• Ethnic differences in offending (invalid for high discretionary crime - police use their discretion act without prior information, as no prior information involved so must be based on stereotyping)

• Demographic factors (BAME over represented in groups more likely to be stopped regardless of ethnicity eg manual workers, so links class and ethnicity)

How many times more likely are black people to be stopped and searched compared to white people?

In 2020, it was found that Black people were 9 times more likely to be stopped and searched

What percentage are the black population in wider society vs the prision population

Black people are over-represented in the criminal justice system, making up 3% of the population but 13% of the prison population.

What statistics show that many arrests of BAME are based on racist steriotyping?

The CPS are more likey to drop cases against BAME people. Bowling and Philips (2002) argue this is because evidence brought by the Police to the CPS is often weaker, as it is based on stereotyping against minorities.

How do Left Realists explain the disproportionate number of BAME people in the criminal justice system?

Lea and Young (1993)

1) Racism has led to marginalization, thus economically exluding, and therefore materially straining minority groups

2) This is compiled by media emphasis on consumerism, promoting a sense of relative deprivation by setting materialist goals that members of minorities are unable to reach legitimately (due to their marginalization)

3) Therefore, some turn to delinquent subcultures, carrying out both utilitarian (due to material strain) and non-utilitarian (due to relative deprivation) crimes

4) They do take Police racism into account, but argue it is inadequate in explaining the differences in statistics (eg 90% of known crimes reported by the public, therefore Police discrimination cant account for all crime)

5) Therefore they see it as a combination of marginalization, relative deprivation as well as Police and societal racism

How does Gilroy (1982) explain the disproportionate number of BAME people in the criminal justice system?

1) Most black and Asians in the UK originated in the former British colonies

2) As a result they grew up in the context and atmosphere of anti-imperialist struggle

3) Therefore, they had a knowledge of how to resist oppression eg through demonstrations

4) This means that these tactics were adopted when facing racism and oppression in Britain

5) However, this struggle was criminalized by the British state, in order to keep the ruling classes position of power

6) Therefore, the increased rates of crime by the black community can be explained by its genuine increase (as a reaction against oppression) and constructed increase (with racism used to keep these communities in check

What are the criticism of Gilroys theory of ethnic differences in crime?

•Asian crime rates are similar to, or lower than white crime rates, despite them emerging from the same anti-colonial settings as those from Africa or the Caribbean.

•Young and Lea argue that Gilroy romanticieses street crime as somehow revolutionary against the system, where the reality is its normally intra-ethnic (directed within black and against black communities rather than against the state)

How does Hall et al (1979) explain the disproportionate number of BAME people in the criminal justice system?

1) Capitalism is usually able to subordinate the w/c through consent

2) However, a number of political and economic crisis in the early 1970s destabilized the system (eg 1973 Oil crash, the Troubles in NI, rise of the NF)

3) The 1970s saw the emergance of a media moral panic, about the supposed growth of black muggling, despite no evidence of its increase.

4) Hall argues the emergance of this moral panic against black people, at the same time as capitalism was in crisis was no coincidence

5) Black muggers served as a scapegoat to move blame from the ruling class onto black people (eg for unemployment)

6) This served to divide the working class on racial grounds and weaken opposition to capitalism, whilst simultaneous winning popular consent to for more authoritarian forms of suppression.

7) However, Hall refrains from blaming black crime purely on Police labelling and the media, identifying that the crises of capitalism meant those already at the bottom, black people, were hit hardest by the economic crisis, forcing them into both utilitarian and non-utilitarian crime.

How do recent approaches such as Fitzgerald explain the disproportionate number of BAME people in the criminal justice system?

FitzGerald et al (2003) found street robberies were highest were in areas were very deprived youths came into contact with affluent groups (relative deprivation). This was true of both poor black, and poor white communites, thus ethnicity was not the cause. However, black pople were more likely to live in these communities (due to racial descrimination in the housing and job markets)

How many hate crimes were reported in 2014/15?

54,000 (Police reported stats 2014/15)

What is the extent of victimization on religion crime?

38,000 (Police reported stats 2014/15)

Which factors other than racism explain differing levels of victimisation?

The differences may be partly the result of other factors, eg violent crime victim correlates to being young, male and unemployed.

However, these factors themselves are related to discrimination on the grounds of ethnicity eg unemployment, or a ethnic group may have a higher proportion of young men, and thus higher rates of victimisation.