Ethnicity & Crime

1
Ethnicity Crime

• Afro-Caribbean males figure disproportionately in
  the crime statistics. Why is this?

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Home Office 2002Ethnicity Justice System
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Home Office 2002Arrests Prisoners rate per
1000 people of the three main ethnic communities
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Home Office 2001 of Ethnicities as Victims
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Home Office 2000 Victimisation Risk of
Racially Motivated Attacks
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Gilroy The Myth of Black Criminality 1982
1

• The Commission on Racial Equality argues that the
  crime figures for blacks are distorted.
• Black communities cluster in the inner-cities,
  where, as environmental studies show, crime rates
  are high . Blacks will inevitably have higher
  than average rates of crime, whilst white MC
  lowers the white rate generally.
• The white community is aging low birth rate
  people living longer The black community has a
  far higher proportion of young people, who are
  generally more likely to offend

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Gilroy The Myth of Black Criminality 1982 2

• Much black crime is low-level drug related.
  Such crimes have high rates of multiple offending
  This gives a false impression of the real
  numbers of blacks people involved in criminal
  behaviour.
• Institutional racism will account for much of the
  difference between white and black crime rates.
  EG rates of stop search gt rates of conviction.
• Public concern about crime, as whipped up by
  moral panics in the media and Parliament, are
  much more likely to target street crime than
  white collar crimes. This gives the mistaken
  impression that crime is something blacks do to
  whites.

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Walker Interpreting Race and Crime 1 1987

• The number of prosecutions that failed were
  similar for both blacks whites
• SO the original accusations police
  prosecutions must have been reasonable.
• Asian crime rates much lower than A-F, despite
  both sharing inner-city deprivation.
• Hindus Sikhs more likely, than Muslims, to be
  MC, with both parents English speaking
  educated. Unemployment White 8, Indians 12,
  Pakistani, Bangladeshis A-Fs 25.

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Walker Interpreting Race and Crime 2 1987

• Lower Asian rates cannot simply be explained by
  all Asians being better off than all A-Fs.
• Research suggests Asians have stronger family
  loyalties obligations, a greater sense of
  community and are integrated by customs, religion
  culture
• Asian street gangs raising crime levels amongst
  Muslim Asians. Increased stop search of Asians,
  following 911, is provoking resistance.
• A higher proportion of Asians are 1st 2nd
  generation immigrants. Rates might yet rise.

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Phillips Bowling 2002 1 Race the
Criminal Justice System

• Phillips Bowling believe that cultural
  stereotyping heightened suspicion do amount to
  racist discrimination on the part of the police
  and the courts, particularly of Afro-Caribbeans.
• Before 9/11, stereotypes of Asians were as
  self-regulating passive unthreatening. Izzat
  or family honour inhibited deviancy in boys,
  whilst girls had little opportunity to become
  deviant. Yet Asians experienced similar poverty
  to Af-Cs.
• Recent studies Desai suggest a rise in Asian
  gangs, promoting a Bengali Bad Boy image. They
  interpret this as resistance to harassment.

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Phillips Bowling 2002 2 Race the
Criminal Justice System

• Alexander 2000 challenges Desai, claiming that
  Asian gangs were a media invention, following
  the Bradford riots.
• Since 9/11 Asians have been increasingly
  stereotyped as terrorist sympathisers stopped.
• Policing decisions are based on stereotypes that
  lead to aggressive policing over-policing of
  immigrant neighbourhoods armed raids, riot
  squads, stop search and abusive language.

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Phillips Bowling 2002 3Race the
Criminal Justice System

• P B concluded that Stop and Search continued to
  operate against immigrants, by something between
  2 to 5 times A Home office study, based on CCTV
  evidence of S S, contradicted this.
• The Youth Lifestyles Survey 1999 large sample
  found that 58 of Af-Cs 43 of Asians believed
  the police discriminated against them.
• There are so many accusations of police racism
  and mistreatment that they cannot be dismissed.

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Phillips Bowling 2002 4Race the
Criminal Justice System

• The arrest imprisonment stats make a prima
  facie case for there being discrimination against
  black Af-C males.
• The Crown Prosecution Service rejects many police
  cases against ethnic defendants, correcting
  police prejudice. 10 of CPS are from ethnic
  minorities, compared to only 4 of the police.
• BUT This could equally be seen as a bias in
  favour of the minorities, caused by the
  increasing fear of being accused of racism and by
  the need to keep statistics on ethnic crime low.

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Phillips Bowling 2002 5Race the
Criminal Justice System

• Hood, in Race Sentencing 1992, pointed out that
  blacks were 5 more likely to receive a custodial
  sentence. Black sentences were on average 3
  months longer than whites Asians 9.
• Black confidence in the police is low, black
  victimisation and deprivation are high and once
  in the system blacks are more likely to be
  confirmed in a criminal career by custodial
  sentencing.
• So black criminality is caused by their social
  exclusion. They are more likely to be
  criminalised by structural inequality in Society.

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Neo-Marxist views on black crime as resistance to
racism 1

• The Left targeted blacks as a marginalised group
  that would support social revolution.
• Hall, in Policing the Crisis 1979, saw moral
  panics over black crime as an excuse for
  saturation policing of poor estates. This
  intimidated all working class youth.
• Gilroy, in The Empire Strikes Back, saw black
  crime as resistance. The symbols of black culture
  music, rap, pidgin, dress were also a way of
  differentiating the black community from the
  dominant white culture.

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Neo-Marxist views on black crime as resistance to
racism 2

• Cashmore, in No Future 1984, argued that
  Functionalist integration today depended not on
  production, but consumption. 50 of black
  youngsters in the inner-cities were unemployed.
  Crime provided an outlet for anomie a chance to
  express Black Pride.
• BUT critics of the Left point out that there is
  no evidence that the majority of blacks who do
  not commit crimes see black crime as resistance.
  The older generation, who are often deeply
  religious, despair at the levels of crime they
  see.

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Jock Young New Criminology

• The crucial linkage is still between deprived
  social conditions, social exclusion, racism and
  crime.
• Neo-Marxism shares with Postmodernism the idea
  that the establishment finds it convenient to
  demonise some marginalised groups, as a warning
  to others and as a way of legitimating tougher
  controls over the WC generally.
• The association in the public mind of the A-F
  community with street crime legitimates
  government policies on immigration policing.

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Smith Race, Crime and Justice 1994

• A-F males were 71 over whites in general, 91 in
  rape cases, 271 for drug related offences.
• BUT there was evidence of institutional racism
  because blacks were more likely to be reported as
  perpetrators, were more likely to be stopped
  searched, more likely to be arrested, more likely
  to be found guilty and more likely to be given a
  custodial sentence.

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Evidence for Institutional Racism 1

• Stephen Lawrence was murdered in 1993.
• The police at first thought it was just another
  drug deal gone wrong in the Black community.
• Interviews with white racists were bungled and it
  later became impossible to make a conviction
  against the killers stand, even in the civil
  court.
• The McPherson report 2000 argued that
  institutional racism, the stereotyping of blacks
  in police canteen culture, was to blame.
• The government began keeping stats. on ethnic
  criminality and victimisation, to monitor
  progress on justice, recruitment and community
  relations.

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Evidence for Institutional Racism 2

• The Policy Studies Institute found that blacks
  were 100 more likely to be stopped search on
  sus. Yet only 3 of all incidents resulted in an
  arrest.
• Landau Nathan found that the police exercised
  discretion in favour of whites and against
  blacks, who were less likely to be cautioned and
  more likely to be charged.
• Blom-Cooper found that blacks in Brixton were
  more likely to charged with the more serious
  offence, where police had a choice of several.

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Evidence for Institutional Racism 3

• Hood in Race Sentencing found that blacks were
  more prone than whites to receiving a custodial
  sentence.
• Stevens Willis in Race, Crime Arrests found
  little evidence for direct racism. 92 of crimes
  were discovered by public report there was
  little room for police discretion to operate
  against blacks. But public perception of black
  crime was distorted by selective reporting or
  highlighting of certain crimes mugging in the
  media, in Chief Constables Reports Home Office
  summaries.

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Evidence for Institutional Racism 4

• The Scarman Commission found that stop search
  always caused offence, however much training
  police had in politeness.
• Lea Young found that black perception of police
  racism affected black cooperation with the police
  reinforced the suspicion of the black community
  that was a feature of police canteen culture.
• Gaskill found that blacks were twice as likely as
  whites to have negative images of the police.

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Evidence for Institutional Racism 5

• Clancy 2001 The Experience of Ethnic
  Minorities, from the 2000 British Crime Survey.
• The survey confirmed that blacks Asians were
  more more likely than whites to be the victims of
  street crime burglary.
• Blacks are 5 times Asians twice as likely to
  be the victims of a homicide.
• 1999-2000 there were 48,000 racially motivated
  offences. 11 of harassment prosecutions 2 of
  assaults were racially aggravated.
• Racial murders The Lawrence killing are very
  rare. 1999-2000 of 15, 3 were black 3 Asian.

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The New Right Ethnicity 1

• The idea that ethnicity can explain or excuse
  crime is insulting to ethnic minorities, the
  great majority of whom are law-abiding and more
  likely to be the victims of crime than are
  whites.
• Hall, in Policing the Crisis, cannot say both
  that black criminals are framed by racist police
  and then also claim that black poverty excuses or
  explains, their higher rate of offending.
• Left wing agitators, like the Anti-Nazi League
  are more dangerous than the tiny ridiculous
  BNP. Outsiders from the ANL were responsible for
  provoking the Asian rioting in Bradford.

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The New Right Ethnicity 2

• The Left exploited race to create police No-Go
  areas in the cities to intimidate the police
  and win support for their extreme, hard-left
  policies.
• The McPherson Enquiry highlighted individual
  failures, on the part the police in the case of
  Stephen Lawrence. These made it impossible to
  achieve either a criminal or civil conviction.
• BUT the enquiry itself and its headline finding
  of institutional racism proved that the British
  legal system is self-correcting works for all.
• Improved recruitment retention of black police
  officers was another hopeful sign.

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The New Right Ethnicity 3

• Many police consider McPherson to be a knee-jerk
  reaction to a shocking, but untypical case.
• Police doubted that institutions could be said to
  exhibit emotional attitudes, like racism.
• The charge of Institutional Racism seemed to
  rest only a generalised stereotype of all police
  was driven by the need to placate the
  minorities.
• Racist acts or remarks are already punishable by
  dismissal from the police, if proven. BUT the
  charge of IR, once made, cant be disproved it
  is true the police are institutionally racist,
  because otherwise blacks wouldnt think they
  were!

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The New Right Ethnicity 4

• Under Labour the Home Office had stopped
  recording the ethnicity of criminals, for fear of
  exacerbating strained race relations. McPherson
  reversed this, to monitor progress on improving
  relations between police blacks
• BUT Black street crime is not an artefact of
  distorted crime statistics. 4.3 of Londoners in
  1977 were black, yet blacks accounted for 12 of
  all arrests and 35 of arrests for robbery
  violent theft IE mugging. By the 1990s, 60
  of reported street crime specified an Af-C
  assailant. For corporate crime black convictions
  are low, but for blue-collar crime they are high.

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The New Right Ethnicity 5

• The New Right worry that political correctness is
  making it impossible to have a mature discussion
  of the issues. Facts cannot be politically
  incorrect, only embarrassing or hard to explain.
• The black crime rate is bound to influence police
  strategies for crime prevention detection to
  Police, this explains the stop search
  statistics.
• Black community leaders were themselves calling
  for police intervention in black areas of town,
  to control the rising levels of gun and knife
  crime.
• Black mothers supported police initiatives to
  establish zero tolerance of drugs petty crime.