Neo-Marxism

• Gilroy and Hall

  Reject view that official stats reflect reality, believe they're outcomes of a social construction process that stereotypes minorities as more criminals
• Gilroy, myth of black criminality

  Idea that black criminality is a myth created by racist stereotypes

  • groups are no more criminal than any other group
  • CJS acts on these stereotypes and so minorities are criminalised and appear in greater numbers on official stats
• Gilroy, crime as a political resistance

  Argues crimes of ethnic minorities are a form of political resistance against a racist society, resistance started with struggles against British imperialism
• Gilroy

  Most blacks and Asians in the UK are from former British colonies, where anti-colonial struggles taught them how to resist oppression, e.g. riots

  • finding themselves the victims of racism in Britain, they adopted the same struggle to defend themselves, but their political struggle was criminalised by the British state
  • argues a lot of w/c crime is an act of resistance to capitalism
• Criticisms of Gilroy

  • Lea and Young = pointed out first generation immigrants were law abiding citizens, don't appear to have passed on tradition of anti-colonial struggles
  • Gilroy wrongly romanticises street crime as revolutionary, Asian crime rates are similar to whites, if Gilroy was right the police are only racist towards blacks and not Asians
• Hall et al

  Argues 70's moral panic over black muggers served interests of capitalism in dealing with a crisis

  • argues ruling class are able to rule society through consent
  • 70's British capitalism faced crisis of high inflation rates, unemployment and widespread strikes
  • media led moral panic about rise in 'mugging', supposedly committed by black youths
• Hall, policing the crisis

  Myth of 'young black mugger' = used as a scape goat to distract people from real cause of people's problems, was a capitalist crisis

  • by showing black youths to be a threat to society, moral panic helped to divide w/c on racial groups and weaken opposition to capitalism
  • government used certain procedures to eliminate protests, Hall goes against this as it causes more oppression
• Hall

  Doesn't argue that black crime is just a product of media labelling

  crisis of capitalism was increasingly marginalizing black youths through unemployment driving some to petty crime to survive
• Evaluation of Hall

  • Study is inconsistent; claims black street crime was not rising but then claims it was rising due to unemployment
  • doesn't show how crisis led to moral panic or that public the were actually blaming crime on blacks
• Ethnic differences in crime rate: Neighbourhood factors

  Fitzgerald et al = street robberies were highest in poor areas where the people have contact with richer groups

  • young blacks more likely to live in these areas and be poor
  • poor whites in these areas were more likely to commit street crime, ethnicity was not found to be the cause
• Ethnic differences in crime rate: Getting caught

  Sharp and Budd = black offenders more likely than whites to be arrested because they committed crimes where victims could identify them (e.g. street robbery) and had been excluded from school or associated with known criminals, factors raising their ability to police