Blog

Crime and Ethnicity Revision

Jim Riley

25th May 2009

This is a real hot potato of a topic – politically charged and sociologically controversial. So how can we tackle it? I’d advise a critical approach to official statistics and referring to some relatively recent research.

Official stats show that a high proportion of offenders come from minority ethnic groups. But as a critical sociologist, you need to be asking whether this provides a valid representation of reality, or whether it is more a reflection of policing processes.

Way back in 1983 the Policy Studies Institute published a report entitled Police and People in London. Two researchers used a range of qualitative methods, including non-participant overt observation (‘shadowing’ police officers) and interviews to investigate the attitudes of Metropolitan Police officers. The researchers found that the use of racist language and jokes was common and had become a part of the institutional culture.

Also back in the 80s, sociologist and ex-police officer Simon Holdaway conducted qualitative research – participant observation – into the occupational culture of the police. He found widespread evidence of racist language and attitudes amongst police officers.

More recently, a large multi-method research project carried out in 2001 by Marion Fitzgerald and Michael Hough, The Policing for London Survey, found that although many people stopped by the police were satisfied with their treatment, there had been a decline in confidence as to the effectiveness of the police and policing. Dissatisfaction with the police was highest among young people, balck suspects, and those living in poor areas. The study found that the best predictors of being stopped by the police were ‘being young, being male, being balck, being working class and being single.’
The evidence of these research findings, spanning a period of two decades, seems to give considerable support for the view that policing practices are often institutionally racist. However, as hinted at above, there are methodological issues with all of the research discussed.

Phillips and Bowling (2002) argue that the structural context of minority ethnic groups in British society (poor and underprivileged, less qualified, higher levels of unemployment) cannot be neglected. Smith – one of the co-authors of the PSI report in the 80s, argues that black over-representation is so great that it cannot all simply be explained as the result of institutional racism.

However, it can also be argued that while structural factors and inequalities can lead some ethnic minorities into criminal ways, the evidence of institutional racism simply underlines the fact that in a highly unequal society, law enforcement will be a selective and uneven process. This argument could quite reasonably suggest that black people are quite possibly no more or less criminal than other groups in the population – but they are seen as such and therefore the police focus efforts on that group- from then on, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Jack Straw recently said that he believed the Metropolitan Police Force is no longer ‘institutionally racist’. That may be so, but it is unclear on what evidence Mr Straw was able to base his statement.

In 2002, 19 per cent of male prisoners were from minority ethnic groups; young black people were eight times more likely to be stopped and searched by the police. Yet minority ethnic groups are 6-7 per cent of the population of the UK.

So, are black people more criminal than white people? Given all that we know about the partiality of official statistics and the way in which the police operate, it seems highly unlikely. As we have seen recently, a sizeable proportion of people in the vicinity of Westminster - they’re called MPs - have been doing things which many members of the public feel are criminal. Yet this section of the population have remained at liberty and the police have not felt a pressing need to reassure the public by mounting more patrols in the area. Seek and you shall find; criminals are all over the place, and not just in the areas inhabited by minority ethnic groups.

Jim Riley

Jim co-founded tutor2u alongside his twin brother Geoff! Jim is a well-known Business writer and presenter as well as being one of the UK's leading educational technology entrepreneurs.

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