ETHNICITY AND CRIME

A lot of crime is seen to be depicted by ethnic minorities such as Blacks and Asians. The media largely emphasizes black subcultures as being deviant especially through musical rap and hip hop. The Ministry of Justice notes that White people are under-represented at all stages of the criminal justice process, for example members of Black communities are 7 times more likely to be stopped and searched by the police force. According to stastistics adapted from the Ministry of justice official statistics 2006/7 to support this:

<!--[if !supportLists]-->· Black people make up 2.8 of the whole population but a massive 11% of the prison population to compare.

<!--[if !supportLists]-->· Asians also make up 4.7% of the whole population but 6 % of the prison population.

Many sociologists criticize such statistics as being to do with the fact that policing strategies are more aimed at targeting these ethnic groups rather than a generalisation of all of society. This has led many to believe the criminal justice system is much harsher to ethnic minorities in terms of sentencing and arresting.

BRITISH CRIME SURVEY (VICTIM SURVEYS)

Reveal a great deal of crime is intra ethnic, which means it mostly takes place amongst those of the same ethnic groups. The BCS reveals 90% of victims that were white had at least 1 person who was a white offender. This shows that blacks are over represented by victims as the criminal offenders in society.

However, the BCS can be criticized for only telling us about the ethnicity of a small proportion of offenders which may not be representative.

GRAHAM AND BOWLING (SELF REPORT STUDIES)

In Graham and Bowling’s 2500 sample of self-report studies of crime and deviance, they found in the rates of offending blacks (43%) and whites (44%) had similar rates. Indians (30%), Pakistani’s (28%) and Bangladeshi’s (13%) had much lower rates.

MCPHERSON REPORT (INSTITUTIONAL RACISM)

This is a typical example of institutional racism where the Metropolitan Police failed to investigate the racist murder of the black teenager Stephen Lawrence. It came to a consensus that the officers held a canteen culture that is racist towards ethnic minorities holding negative stereotypes of them. This is why the case wasn’t investigated properly and the convicts clearly got away with the crime for years. An officer at the scene didn’t get medical help on time and Stephen Lawrence’s close friend at the scene was constantly harassed by the police believed to be a prime suspect. (This is proof to support the over exaggerated claims that ethnics are mainly responsible for crimes as it shows that they are actually discriminated against.)

GILROY (MYTH OF BLACK CRIMINALITY)

Gilroy found that in reality these ethnic minority groups are no more criminal than any other. However, as a result of the media portraying them as deviants, the criminal justice system and police judge them as the perpetrators. For example, police will more likely perform stop and searches on ethnic minorities and courts will give them much harsh punishments. (Gilroy also believes ethnic minority crime can be seen as a form of political resistance against this oppression.)

HALL ET AL (POLICING THE CRISIS)

Similar to Gilroy’s argument, Hal et al’s studies argue that a moral panic was created in society which was “black muggers” during the 1970’s in a period where capitalism was challenged and people went on strikes. This new name for the old crime street robbery became associated with the media, police and the youth. Marxists would argue that the myth of the black mugger was an illusion to disguise the true problems in society.