Explanations of ethnic differences in offending

History of EM criminality — 1950-70s

• ↑ EM migration

  • Accepted that ↓ EM criminality than White

History of EM criminality — 1970s

•  ↑ 👮-Afro Caribbean conflict, street crime arrests → ‘Black criminality’ seen as problem

History of EM criminality — 1990s and early 2000s

• 1990s – media perpetuated concerns about ↑ ‘Asian gangs’

• 2001 – 9/11 and Asian youth-👮 clashes up North

  • ☪ and Asian people seen as ‘enemy w/in’

Left realism — reason for EM crime

• Racism → marginalisation, economic exclusion and relative deprivation

LR — Lea and Young (1993) — EM response to racism

• EM respond to issues by forming subcultures → utilitarian crime (e.g. to solve relative deprivation)

  • Marginalisation of these groups → non-utilitarian crime

LR — statistical difference

• 👮 = racist, but doesn’t fully explain

% of crimes known to 👮 that are reported by the public

90%

LR — reason 👮 racism ≠ only explanation of statistical differences

• Black people commit ↑ crime than Asian people

  • 👮 can’t be that selective in their racism

CRITICISM of LR

• 👮 may stereotype groups differently, not just be racist to Black people (e.g. seeing Asian people as passive)

  • Now asian people are viewed as criminals post-9/11

Neomarxism (marxism + labelling theory) — Gilroy (1982)

• EM crime = same resistance as seen against imperialism, this time against racist society

3 CRITICISMS of Gilroy — Lea and Young

1. 1st gen immigrants were law-abiding so unlikely to have passed down anti-colonial struggle tradition to offspring

2. Most crime = intra-ethnic, so not a struggle against racism

3. Romanticises street crime as revolutionary

Neo-marxism — Hall et al (1979) — muggers moral panic

• 1970s muggers moral panic served interests of capitalism

  • Crisis meant ruling classes needed to use control to prevent ↑ opposition to capitalism

  • Needed something to make this legitimate

  • Created mugging moral panic – new name for same phenomenon that hadn’t even increased

  • Used ‘Black muggers’ as scapegoat to racially divide W/C and therefore reduce opposition to capitalism 

  • Crisis had also marginalised Black youth through unemployment and so ↑ utilitarian crime

CRITICISM of Hall et al — Downes and Rock (2011)

• Inconsistency - Black street crime wasn’t rising it was just the media creating a moral panic, but it also was because of unemployment?

CRITICISM of Hall et al

• No evidence of how capitalist crisis → moral panic

CRITICISM of Hall et al — LR

• Inner-city residents’ fears about mugging are realistic

Sharp and Budd (2005)

• Getting caught

• Black offenders ↑ likely to be arrested due to ↑ visibility to authorities:

  • Committing crimes where victims can ID them like robbery

  • Have been excluded from 🏫

  • Associating with known criminals

Fitzgerald et al (2003)

• Neighbourhood

• Crime rates highest in:

  • Poor areas

  • Poor and rich contrast areas

• Young Black people ↑ likely to live in these areas due to discrimination in housing and job markets

• All ethnicities ↑ likely to commit crimes if living in these areas