ethnicity and crime

• official statistics - dark figure of crime

  the official crime statistics will miss out a wider range of criminal activity that occurs but isn't recorded
• statistics on ethnicity and crime

  13.2 % of the prison population is black and Asian and mixed-race people are over represented in the prison population

  members of ethnic minority groups are more likely to be stopped and searched whereas white people are more likely to be found guilty
• functionalist explanations for ethnicity and crime

  subcultural and strain theories
• subcultural theory - ethnicity and crime

  people from minority ethnic groups are more likely to form deviant subcultures
• strain theory - ethnicity and crime

  members of some ethnic minority groups perform less well at school and therefore may be denied social mobility by legitimate means and turn to crime
• marxist explanation for ethnicity and crime

  Hall - suggested that black people were forced into the informal economy by being a reserve army of labour only required to do 'white man's shit work
• interactionist explanations for ethnicity and crime

  labelling theory - the impact of stereotypes about the typical criminal may lead to deviancy amplification, secondary deviance and the self -fulfilling prophecy
• right realist/ new right explanation for ethnicity and crime

  underclass - African Caribbean families are statistically more likely to be matrifocal lone parent families

  this is due to the lack of male role models
• left realist explanation for ethnicity and crime

  relative deprivation - members of some minority ethnic groups are more likely to be working class or have a low income
• institutional racism - Stephen Lawrence


  1993 he was murdered by a racist gang and the policy inquiry for the suspects was unsuccessful

  showed the metropolitan police as being institutionally racist
• evaluation of ethnicity and crime

  self report studies have found that black and white people have near identical rates of offending and Asians have much lower
• evaluation of ethnicity and crime - Waddington

  Waddington argued that when the police stopped vehicles, especially at night, they were unaware of the ethnicity of the driver