Ethnicity

• Official stats

  Show ethnic differences in likehood of being involved on the criminal justice system

  • e.g. blacks are 7x more like than whites to be stopped and searched
• Victim Surveys

  • Asks victims to say what crimes they've been a victim of
  • May ask about ethnicity of person who committed crime against them, relying on memory and assumption
  • Black people are more likely to be identified as the offender in muggings
  • Limitations and exclude white and corporate crime so we don't learn about the ethnicity of these offenders
• Self-report studies

  Asks individuals to disclose crimes they've committed

  • Graham and Bowling - found blacks and whites had almost identical rates of offending while Asians had lower
• Policing


  Philips and Bowling - many allegations of oppressive policing of ethnic minorities : mass stop and search operations, excessive surveillance, police violence

  • minorities more likely to think they're over-policed and under protected
• Stop and search

  • Black people 7x more likely to be stopped and searched than white, Asian people 3x under the Terrorism Act 2000
  • Only small proportion of searches result in an arrest, shows police abuse power to be racist
• Stop and search

  Ethnic differences in offending may reflect possibility that some ethnic groups are more likely to offend than others, police simply acting on relevant information about specific offender
• Stop and search

  Members of ethnic groups may be stopped because of police racism

  • in high discretion stops, police act without specific information and are more likely to discriminate
• Stop and search

  Ethnic minorities are over-represented in groups most likely to be stopped regardless of their ethnicity, e.g. young, unemployed
• Application of stop and search

  Stephen Laurence - institutional racism in the met. police force was killed by police

  • Canteen culture = in the police force. some officers make jokes about minorities and it's normalised
• Arrests and cautions

  Arrests rate for black people is over 3x higher than white, however once arrested blacks and Asians are less likely to receive a caution

  • ethnic minorities may not receive a caution because they don't admit to the offence, more likely to be charged
• Prosecution and trial

  CPS decides whether a case brought by police should be prosecuted

  • CPS more likely to drop cases against minorities than whites, blacks and Asian defendants less likely to be found guilty
  • when cases go ahead, ethnic minorities more likely to elect for Crown Court trial by jury rather than magistrates court > may be due to mistrust of magistrates impartiality
  • Crown Court impose harsher sentences
  • Suggests evidence against minority defendants is often weaker and possibly based on police stereotyping
• Sentencing and prison

  Jail sentences are given to greater percentage of black defendants

  • Hood = found black men were 5x more likely to be jailed even considering previous convictions and the seriousness of the offence