12 - Ethnicity and crime

All minoritized ethnic groups account for 18% of the total population for England and Wales.

Ethnic minoritized groups are more likely to be offenders and victims of crime.

Offending levels for ethnic minoritized groups are no higher than for whites they just appear this way because:

Discrimination in the criminal justice system (CJS)

Graham and Bowling (“young people and crime”) in this study found that ‘white and black respondents have very similar rates of offending (44% and 43%), this study challenges the widespread view that the rate of offending of Black ethnic groups is higher than that of the White ethnic groups.

Black people are 7x more likely to be stopped and searched by the police, which could lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Stop and search statistics

Racist attitudes - there are 3 ways in which racism may exist within the police force:

1. institutional racism: The McPherson report accused the Metropolitan police of being institutionally racist. The report came after the death of the murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence. The Casey report 2023 that found that there continues to be a ‘culture of bullying, racism, sexism and misogyny’ within the metropolitan police force. Neo Marxists, Hall et. al. also suspected the bourgeoisie of systematically setting out to use working class black men as scapegoats for the problems of capitalism.

2. Cultural racism: Waddington’s ‘canteen culture’ shows how canteen culture can help socialise police officers. Abbas argues that previous stereotypes of Asians as passive, law abiding are giving way to a culture of islamophobia since 9/11 and the July 2001 London bombings. these tragedies have led to a change in public behaviour due to increased security in airports and at public events.

3. Individual racism: The Scarman report was commissioned in 1981 after the Brixton riots. it concluded that there was the occasional ‘bad apples’ (raciest) in the police force. Scarman argued it was unrealistic to expect there to be no racists in the police force as they are simply a reflection of the population.

Some argue that ethnic minority groups DO have higher rates of offending because they actually commit more crime.

Scraton who argues that minorities face discrimination and are in a worse socio-economic position than whites. Scraton agrees with Hall et. al. that policing, media coverage and political debates all use members of the black working class as scapegoats in response to this ‘culture of resistance’. when young members of the ethnic minority, working class community commit crimes they are doing so as a political act, rather than as a criminal act.

Criticisms of Scraton: Lea and Young accuse writers such as Scraton for ‘romanticising’ crime and criminals, and in doing so ignoring the very real harm that crime does to its victims. Leas and Young show that most crime is black on black (intra racial) so how is that evidence of an ‘anti colonial struggle’. Venkatesh explains the alternative illegal economy or outlaw capitalism which exists in deprived areas. Carlen (feminist) highlights that sociology has failed to research the relationship between women, ethnicity and crime. she argues that female criminals stem from amongst the poorest and the least powerful of all social groups.

Right realists believe they can explain higher rate of ethnic minority crime, in their book ‘the bell curve’ Murray and Herrnstein suggest that criminal involvement is linked to intelligence. Low IQ is associated with being unemployed, injured and welfare dependant, which they argue occur more in black families, hence their higher criminality. Murray and Herrnstein have clearly ignored all the evidence in the official statistics. critics argue black Americans do not commit more crime than other ethnic groups, nor are they less intelligent.

Glynn states that ethnic minorities groups do face racism but this isn’t the full story as this racism creates a defiant reaction among some black males. crime becomes a way of getting back at the society which has rejected them.