Race Notes

This is a sample of our (approximately) 10 page long Race notes, which we sell as part of the Criminology Notes collection, a 1st package written at Oxford in 2016 that contains (approximately) 158 pages of notes across 11 different documents.

The original file is a 'Word (Docx)' whilst this sample is a 'PDF' representation of said file. This means that the formatting here may have errors. The original document you'll receive on purchase should have more polished formatting.

Race Revision

The following is a plain text extract of the PDF sample above, taken from our Criminology Notes. This text version has had its formatting removed so pay attention to its contents alone rather than its presentation. The version you download will have its original formatting intact and so will be much prettier to look at.

BACKGROUND HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT
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Lombroso (1876): directly linked race with crime o Concluded that the coloured races and even "other" Whites (since the idea of race was centred around White northern Europe) shared many characteristics with "habitual delinquents" After WW2, there was an attempt to separate racial ideology from social/physical sciences o Montagu (1943): race is a fallacy based on ideology Increasing focus on ethnicity o Based on self-defined collectives rather than strictly biology 1960s Britain: anti-immigrant and racist o As a result of significant immigration from the former colonies o Major political parties were committed to reducing and stopping immigration 1970s: media images of "black criminality" led to entrenched views (Gilroy) o General population began to associate black people or ethnic minorities with violence and disorder In 2001, 8% of the general population was made up of ethnic minorities o Because immigrants mostly settled where there were jobs which the indigenous community did not want, they are not evenly spread o Most are in deprived neighbourhoods and have educational underachievement as well as higher unemployment Heaven and Hudson (2005): absurd that ethnicity matters for crimes involving blacks and Asians but not when whites are the offenders

5 suspects arrested but not convicted Accusations of corruption and race considerations in the investigation 2 suspects retried and sentenced in 2012

Public Inquiry commissioned by Home Secretary, carried out by Macpherson
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Found evidence of institutional racism in the Metropolitan Police and other institutions Found that the original investigation had been incompetent and corrupt, although the evidence was not as compelling as that showing racism

Black people more likely to be stopped and searched, listed in the DNA database and make up the prison population Media portrays Black culture as being inherently criminogenic, resulting in racist stereotypes Institutional Racism is not entirely eradicated o Trever Phillips (2009): Institutional racism no longer relevant to police practice o BUT some policies and practices still "systematically target and disadvantage ethnic minorities", especially those that give officers discretion (Bowling)
 E.g. stop and search, especially under CJPOA 1994 s60 (can stop and search without reasonable suspicion) Minorities are also at a socio-economic disadvantage o Webster: Many studies fail to control for socio-demographic factors when making comparisons to guide practice and decisions o African Caribbean men more likely to be young offender prisoners than University undergraduates

Lack of attention to the problem
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No clear government steering on the matter Voluntary sector faces funding problems and cannot act

STATISTICS Prison
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Runnymede Trust: Black people make up 15% of the prison population MoJ (2009): 35% of male prisoners and 27% of female prisoners were from ethnic minorities o Increases in prison populations are greater for Black and Asian populations o Increases in prison population have been greater for black and Asian populations than white o Black: 6.8 incarcerated per 1000 nationals, White: 1.3 per 1000

Offending
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According to self-report studies, White and Black patterns of offending are very similar Webster: Self-reported statistics show that even where young White males reported higher drug use than young Black males, Whites were underrepresented for drugs offences while Blacks were "substantially overrepresented"

Victimisation
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MoJ (2009): Black people 5 times as likely to get murdered, Asians 2 times as likely o NOTE (Bowling and Phillips, 2002): Most homicide is intra-ethnic

Stop and Search
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Black: 7 times more likely Asian: 2 times more likely Webster: Might be related to class and geography, not just ethnicity o Black suspects less likely to admit offences because more likely to be arrested when innocent, or have less faith in CJS fairness Phillips and Brown (1998): Black and Asian people were more likely than White people to be arrested and charged without sufficient evidence (more likely for CPS to terminate cases)

ISSUES WHAT IS RACE/ETHNICITY?
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Heaven and Hudson (2005): Ethnicity tends to only be a consideration when dealing with BME offenders but not White offenders, which is absurd Administrative categories used are NOT CONSISTENT o Categories in the CSEW are a mix of race, colour, nationality and geographic origin o Bowling and Phillips (2002): Categories fail to take into account "internal heterogeneity" of the groups