Gender Inequality in the Third World

Race, Crime and Criminology
[e-mail] Week 10

Lecture structure
Language and policy around race and ethnicity Changes in society BME in the criminal justice system Explanations Contemporary examples Racial profiling

Lecture outcomes
Develop an understanding about race and ethnicity Consider the differences in people’s race/ethnicity and whether it is a factor in relation to numbers within the CJS Examine in depth the rationale behind racial

Language
Race – traditionally been used to distinguish between groups on the basis of supposed biological differences Ethnicity – refers more broadly to groups possessing some degree of solidarity based on culture, descent and territory Racism– way of describing the beliefs and practices that can result in people being discriminated against on the basis of their perceived ethnic

Policy and legislation
Race Relations Act (1976) subsequent Race Relations Act (2000) Unlawful to discriminate against anyone on the grounds of race, colour, nationality, or ethnic or national origin The Crime and Disorders Act (1998) established a new set of racially aggravated offences – hate crime

Society has significantly changed
Rivers of blood speech by Conservative MP Enoch Powell (1968) shaped future direction of immigration policy in the UK
He predicted that “in this country in fifteen or twenty years’ time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man” Criticised immigration (open-door policy) Relaxed immigration laws responsible for crime and disorder

Collecting data
1981 landmark year in the context of British Race Relations – recognition of ethnic minorities as victims Home Office published Racial Attacks, its inaugural report highlighting evidence of the racist harassment directed at minority ethnic communities It is only since1981 that local and central government agencies have kept records of

BME people as victims and offenders (Newburn, 2007)
People from BME backgrounds slightly more likely to be at risk of victimisation across all categories 2010/11 BCS – there was a statistically significant fall in the risk of being a victim of personal crime for members of the White group (2010/11) 51,187 recorded racist incidents – that represents a 18% decrease from 2006 Black people six times more likely to be victims of murder than white people People from ethnic minorities are more fearful than

Explanations
Generally speaking, minority ethnic groups are disproportionality victimised, in part because of where they live – in poorer urban areas – and partly because they tend to be a younger population. They may also suffer from less police concern and protection (Webster, 2007) The social geography of robbery (Hallsworth, 2005) and homicide (Dorling, 2005) shows the links between these crimes and social exclusion – from this perspective it is poverty rather than ethnicity that is the key explanatory variable But…Smith (1989) Racism interacts with class disadvantage to produce patterns of social inequality experienced differently by minority ethnic communities The problems may start at school. The study shows that black children are three times more likely to be permanently excluded from education (Equality Commission, 2010)

Explanations
Racial Profiling – the use of race or ethnic appearance as a factor in deciding who merits police attention as a suspicious person (Harris, 2002: 8) Cultural differences – some argued that cultures of crime or ‘resistance’ are imported to the country (Gilroy, 1987)
Criticised because it over-simplifies the cultural complexities of life and ignores notion of

Tony Blair – 2007 put it down to Black Culture
Seven knife/gun murders in London first 5 months Not caused by poverty but a distinctive black culture – not part of a general crime wave, but specific to black youth Needed to be an intense police focus on the minority of

Wider criminal justice system (Cavadino and Dignan, 2007)
Black people are arrested in numbers disproportionate to their presence in the population Race is a factor in the polices decision to caution someone BME defendants are more likely to be committed for Crown Court trial – thus more likely to attract more severe sentences Black defendants are more likely than white defendants to be refused bail (Bowling and Phillips, 2002)

Arrests
Black and Asian defendants are more likely to have prosecutions against then dropped after charge
Black defendants are more likely to plead not guilty Black and Asian defendants who plead not guilty are more likely to be found not guilty Suggests that the police might charge Black and Asian suspects based on a lower level of evidence than that for

Arrests
Decrease 09/10 in number of white people arrested, for Black persons this rose by 5% and Asian people by 13% Black persons were arrested 3.3 times more than White people and 2.3 times more for mixed groups

Sentencing and the courts
Gelsthrope, 2006 concluded that there was limited research on the issue – one study in the West Midlands (1980s) noted Black adult male offenders were slightly more likely to be sent to prison 69% of Black offenders serving more than 4 years Newburn (2007) – (1)there was a tendency to send more Black people to prison for offences of medium seriousness, and that some mitigating factors were less likely to be taken into account if the defendant was Black (2) recent evidence

Why?
Experts and politicians said over-representation of black men was a result of decades of racial prejudice in the criminal justice system and overly punitive approach to penal affairs (How Fair is
Britain, 2010: Equality Commission)

Diane Abbott (Labour) “very much regretted that the last Labour government swallowed Michael Howard’s line that prison ‘works’...there was never a serious examination of the consequences of locking up a generation of young black men. The result is there are some prisons in the south

Prisons
Black people are over-represented in prisons 30th June 2010 the total prison population in England and Wales was 85,002 – of these 21,878 (26%) were from BME groups – consistent with five years ago ‘the black prison population rate per 1,000 population is over four times higher than that for whites and about seven and a half times for Asians’ (Newburn, 2007) Significant progress and change – why?
Cavadino and Dignan (2007) describe how stereotypes held by prison officers have led to the best jobs in prisons being allocated to white prisoners Verbal abuse and physical mistreatment and deaths in

Deaths in custody
Zahid Mubarek – murdered in his cell by his violent and racist cell mate Robert Stewart in a Young Offenders institution (2000) Official inquiry reported (2006)
Prison service characterised by institutional racism and suffered from poor systems and poor communications Stewarts racism not picked up by staff Neither confirmed or ruled out that both young men had been deliberately put in the

Policing
The Brixton Riots – 1980
The Scarman Report (1981)

The murder of Stephen Lawrence – 1993
The Macpherson Inquiry (1999)

The Brixton Riots
Confrontation between the MET and protestors in South London 10th – 12th April 1981 280 injuries to police / 45 injuries to the public 82 arrests, over 100 buildings destroyed Area with serious social and economic problems – recession – unease between locals and police, criticisms of police response to crime, alleged discrimination Operation Swamp – plainclothes operation to reduce crime – 1000 people stopped and searched and 82 arrests

Aftermath
Thatcher dismissed the notion that unemployment and racism lay beneath the disturbances claiming…’nothing, but nothing, justifies what has happened’…’money cannot buy trust or racial harmony’ Knight, Ted…the police presence ‘amounted to an

Scarman Report (1981)
Disproportionate and indiscriminate use of stop and search powers by police against Black people Training programmes inadequate with no emphasis on community relations The police have to be more representative of the communities in which they serve Behaviour that is either racially prejudiced or otherwise discriminatory should be a disciplinary offence Safeguards introduced to monitor stop and search Police priority should be maintenance of

The murder of Stephen Lawrence
22nd April 1993 stabbing of Stephen Initial police response characterised by a ‘lack of command and a lack of organisation’ (Macpherson, 1992: 62)
Decisions made at the scene not recorded Leading officer left scene without determining what occurred Failed to find out what the key witness had said Suspect vehicles allowed to drive through cordons Decision to watch suspects instead of arrest them – 4 days later 1 suspect seen with black bin liner with clothing not stopped

Failure to recognise murder as racially motivated Public Inquiry 1997 – Macpherson Inquiry (1999)

Justice at last
Gary Robson and David Norris found guilty in January 2012 on forensic evidence 18 years later Three people still to be charged

Macpherson Report (1999)
Police Incompetence
Series of mistakes in the investigation Treatment of the family – progress (Family Liaison Officers) Police behaved insensitively

Police corruption – unsubstantiated rumours of bribes Institutional racism – the collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour

Cont…
Hate Crime
A racist incident is any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person (Macpherson, 1999, 47: 12) Emphasises experiences of the victim and does not require a police officer to make a judgement

Stop and Search
We are clear that the perception and experience of the minority communities that discrimination is a major element in the stop

Stop and search
2009/10
There were 1,141,839 Stop and Searches (20% increase in four years) Per 1,000 of the population, Black persons were stopped and searched 7.0 times more than White people Proportion of S & S remained stable for Chinese/mixed/other groups – proportion decreased for white group (53%-42%) and

London Riots – LSE research
Mark Duggan shot dead by police Tension between local people and police; anger and frustration at way police engage with communities
Everyday experiences negative Frustration at stop and search

Not seen as race riots more borne out of frustration with society
Longstanding mistrust of the system from Black respondents Antipathy towards police within black communities appeared to transcend generation

Reading the riots study
“Ok I fit the description. What’s the description? Young black male and I’m chilling for you to come and stop me and search me up. And violate me. Because that’s what it is, a violation, talking to me like I’m nothing” (32 year old Black Male)

“If you are of ethnicity, you’ll get stopped. ‘Where are you going? What you got pushing?’ But yeah…same group, white person, they wont” (18 year old black man) “All my friends are black. I know a couple of white boys and I think they do get away with a bit more. And I feel like young black people are punished a bit more. Like, I’m not just saying it to make excuses for them, I do. That’s genuinely what I have seen” (22 year white girl)

Recent stories – April 2012
RACISM in the MET
•

Suspension of eight officers and a civilian officer as a result of investigations into 10 separate allegations of racist abuse, bullying and violence involving 18 officers and one staff member RACISM in the PSNI

•

Suspension of four officers following investigation into alleged racist and sectarian text messages

RACISM in the Sanford (Florida) Police Department?
•

17 year old African American – Trayvon Martin shot by community watch coordinator

Racial Profiling
Is there a difference between racial profiling and proactive policing? Provocative topic – contentious – mixed views Clinton (1999) ‘morally indefensible, deeply corrosive practice’ and that it ‘was wrong, destructive, and must stop’ Public opinion in USA – against

Racial/Ethnic Profiling after 9/11
Changed the focus of the racial profiling debate from street crime to terrorism (Harris, 2002) Public opinion polls conducted just after 9/11 suggested that views had changed on racial profiling On the 14/15 September…58% of Americans favoured ‘requiring Arabs, including those who are US citizens, to undergo special, more intensive security checks before boarding airplanes in the US’ as a means to prevent terrorism’(Gallup Poll, 2009) August 2002…survey found that 59% favoured ‘allowing airport personnel to do extra checks on passengers who appear to be of Middle-Eastern

Interpreting the data
Americans are more approving of law enforcement using racial/ ethnic profiling to prevent terrorism than to prevent crime Impacts on views and opinions

Race Gender Attitudes and experiences with police Fear of crime Threat from terrorism

Johnson et al, 2011 ‘Attitudes towards the use of racial/ethnic profiling to prevent crime and terrorism’ in Criminal Justice Policy

BME in the Criminal Justice System
Judges 114 out of 3232 CPS Lawyers 354 out of 3298
Statistics on Race and the Criminal Justice System 2006/07 from Ministry of Justice ’08

07-11 the number of BME police officers rose from 3.9% to 4.8%
1.9% Asian 1% Black Senior officers – 3%

•

So what do we know?
There is an entrenchment in racial disparity within the criminal justice system Police arrest data, victimization surveys, witness descriptions all point to the conclusion that black people, are, in comparison with their numbers in the population, more likely, to commit some specific offences, such as robbery or be the victim/perpetrator in gun murders (Home Office, 2005; Phillips and Bowling, 2007)

Summary
• •

Disproportionate numbers of BME people in the CJS The commission for Racial Equality (2007) “people shouldn’t be afraid to talk about the issue for fear of sounding prejudiced” We cannot ignore social and economic issues Recent news reporting highlights the continued existence of racism within elements of the CJS.

• •

Reading
Stats taken from – Statistics on Race and the Criminal Justice System 2010 (A Ministry of Justice Publication under Section 95 of the Criminal Justice Act 1991 Bowling, B and Phillips, C. (2002) Racism, Crime and Justice, London: Palgrave Cantle, T. (2001) Community Cohesion: A report of the independent review team, London: Home Office

Next week…
Do you think racial profiling is necessary in the fight against crime? Do you think that racial discrimination continues to take place within elements of the criminal justice system?