Ethnicity and Crime

• Self Report Studies

  Graham and Bowling

  • Found that black people (43%) and white people (44%) had similar rates of offending.
  • Indians (30%), Pakistani (28%)and Bangladeshi (13%) had much lower rates.
• Interactionist view

  Phillips and Bowling

  • found that black communities are over-policies and subjected to oppressive attention.

  Cicourel

  • officers hold typifications - stereotyped categories labelling
  • these affected police decisions - arrests/ charges
  • justice becomes a negotiation depending on social class, gender and ethnicity
• Holdaway - Canteen culture

  • Police use strategies to manage their time and workload.
  • They have ‘sort cuts’ when dealing with offenders which are understood within a canteen culture.
  • Abbreviations and quick references are part of the banter and dialogue
  • This leads to stereotyping in their routine policing.
• Neo Marxist view

  Policing the crisis by Hall

  • Black people became criminalised in 1970s when blame was put on them for ‘mugging‘ and other street crime
  • During this time there was a ‘crisis of capitalism‘
  • Focusing attention on minority communities was used as a distraction.
  • Hall believed that the stats were manufactured by a repressive racist state.
• Neo Marxist view

  The empire strikes back

  Gilroy

  • Racial prejudice and stereotypes exist
  • Ethnic minority are blamed during time of unrest, unemployment.
  • Blacks are accused of illegal immigration
  • Gilroy says that crime is a response to colonialism
• Evaluation - Neo Marxism

  • Views are see as over-romanticised to the left realists.
  • Overlooks how Crme is intra-racial with both offenders and victims from the same minorities.
  • Left realists focus on the relative deprivation suffered by BAME individuals
  • Traditional Marxists views say that it is capitalism that is at fault and the corresponding inequalities.
• Left Realist View

  Lea and Young

  • Accept the higher crime rates shown in the statistics and apply their ‘causes’ of relative deprivation, marginalisation and subcultures.
• Right Realist View

  • Blame certain types of groups for crime using ideas of:
  • Biological differences
  • Inadequate socialisation
  • Rational choice
  • View Crme as a growing problem committed by lower working class boys often black from inner city areas.