What do official

statistics show?

Home Office 2002:Arrests & Prisoners rate [per 1000 people]

of the three main ethnic communities

Home Office 2000: Victimisation % Risk of Racially Motivated Attacks

2001-2002 Home Office found that black people were 8 times more likely to be stopped and searched than whites.

Ethnic minorities are more likely than whites to be victims of crime.

Police record about 50,000 racially motivated crimes each year- many others go unreported or unrecorded.

Black men are more likely to receive a custodial sentence for a similar offence, and to receive a longer sentence for it

Prison Rates:• Ethnic minorities are over

represented in prisons.

• Black British prisoners form about 19% of the total prison population, about seven times higher than would be expected in terms of their presence of the population

HOWEVER………

self report studies suggest that ethnic minorities have lower rates of offending

WHY? Police Targets- More likely to be stop- searched

Diversity of areas- more likely to police deprived areas

Ethnic minorities make up a large proportion of the underclass- strain theory?

Institutional Racism- stereotypes

Social theory- labelling theory and moral panics (media/ police opinions/ public opinions)

Subcultures- due to social isolation in mainstream society

• Recorded crime only provides a partial view of crime

• It is hard to investigate whether the Criminal Justice System (CJS) is racist

• To investigate this, would need more self- report studies and other comparitable date to make a judgement.

• This is not available- = methodological probs.

Role of the Police:• Reiner (1989)- police racism can be

individual, cultural or structural.

1. Individual officers may discriminate

2. Officers actions may be affected by a ‘police culture’ in which certain groups are seen as troublesome and suspicious

3. Structural content of police activity- i.e. police certain areas more (deprived areas), white collar goes unnoticed.

• Concern over policing, crime and racism has been a long- running theme in UK society.

• Concern was heightened following the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence (1993) See separate handout

• Murder of 10 year old Damilola Taylor (2001) was seen as the Metropolitan Polices 1st big test since S.L case. However the trial collapsed in 2002 due to police and crown prosecution failings according to official investigations.

Evidence for Institutional Racism 1• Stephen Lawrence was murdered in 1993.

• The police at first thought it was ‘just another drug deal gone wrong in the Black community’.

• Interviews with white racists were bungled and it later became impossible to make a conviction against the killers stand, even in the civil court.

• The McPherson report 2000 argued that institutional racism, the stereotyping of blacks in police ‘canteen culture’, was to blame.

• The government began keeping stats. on ethnic criminality and victimisation, to monitor progress on justice, recruitment and community relations.

Evidence for Institutional Racism 2

• The Policy Studies Institute found that blacks were 100% more likely to be stopped & search on sus’. Yet only 3% of all incidents resulted in an arrest.

• Landau & Nathan found that the police exercised discretion in favour of whites and against blacks, who were less likely to be cautioned and more likely to be charged.

• Blom-Cooper found that blacks in Brixton were more likely to charged with the more serious offence, where police had a choice of several.