race and victimisation

• Between 2011-14, homicide victims have disproportionately been black or Asian 
• Home Office is the number of racist offences reported increased. However, this may also be due to changes in reporting and people being more confident, we need to be careful regarding the limitations of official stats, and the CSEW shows a reduction in offences 
• Home Office report 1984- initial policy impetus to change in statutory agencies’ attitudes to racial harassment. Revealed Asians were 50x more likely to be attacked on racial grounds than white people, Black people 36x.  
• Smith 1994- racist victimisation- victims of a pattern of repeated incidents motivated by racial hostility, where many of these events on their own do not constitute crimes, although some crimes may occur in the sequence, so that the cumulative effect is alarming and imposes severe constraints on a persons’ freedom and ability to live a full life  
• Bowling 1999, Webster 2004- black and ethnic minority communities are overpoliced and under protected 
• Macpherson report- institutional racism.  Failures of the police to deal adequately with racist incidents, which resulted in a lack of trust in police among minority ethnic groups.  
• Dramatic rise in reported racist incidents in 1998-9 can be accounted for by a greater willingness to report and changed police recording practises as a result of the Macpherson inquiry and changes to the law 
• The majority of racist incidents recorded are either damage to property or verbal harassment, although an early local self-report survey found much higher levels of violent compared to damage or property incidents 
• According to the British Crime Survey 2002-4 Asians appear to be far more at risk of crime than other ethnic groups and whites. Black people face greater risks of homicide and are much more likely to be shot than any other group