WJEC Eduqas GCSE Sociology Revision Guide

Ethnicity and crime Chapter 5 Crime and deviance 92 The Ministry of Justice produced a report in 2017 stating that about 9 in every 10,000 young black people were locked up in secure units such as young offender institutions. For white young people it was 1 in 10,000. What sociological explanations can you apply to these figures? AO2 Apply Take it further What other questions about the above figures would you like to know the answers to? Link to textbook pp 228–229: What is the situation for ethnic minorities and crime? pp 230–231: Institutional racism Institutional racism Ethnicity is the cultural group to which a person belongs. Some ethnic groups have higher arrest and conviction rates than others. Afro-Caribbean males are over-represented in the crime statistics. People from ethnic minority groups also are more likely to be victims of crime. Hate crime has doubled in the UK since the Brexit vote in 2016. Higher conviction rates for some ethnic minorities may be based on harmful stereotypes and assumptions about black people. The attitudes of police officers and courts have been linked to these stereotypes. Sociologists have written about the idea of a ‘canteen culture’for police officers which is racist and sexist. The Stephen Lawrence case is famous because it brought to light racist attitudes in the police force. Stephen Lawrence was a black teenager murdered by racists whose case was not investigated effectively by the police. The reason for this was found to be racist assumptions made by the officers. The Macpherson Report which followed found the police to be institutionally racist. Racism was found deep within the culture of the police. The Stephen Lawrence case has prompted the police to spend time training recruits to have greater awareness of stereotyping and discrimination. Despite the efforts to improve, the police in the UK were embarrassed by a report written by human rights experts for the United Nations. In April 2018, they released a report 25 years on from Stephen’s death criticising the UK police. They said that black people were more likely to die in custody and that ethnic minorities were overpoliced and criminalised in the UK. Studies based on ethnicity and crime The high levels of convictions for ethnic minority groups has led to different viewpoints. One view is that poverty is closely linked to high levels of crime. Some ethnic minority groups are more likely to live in poverty and therefore may turn to crime. The New Right would argue that the culture of poverty leads to crime and that ethnic minorities are more likely to live in poverty. Other famous studies were completed by Paul Gilroy. Gilroy has been criticised for saying that on one hand there is not as much ethnic minority crime as the figures say because the police are racist. At the same time, he says that there is a lot of ethnic minority crime because of racism. However, Gilroy’s work raises questions about official statistics. Ethnic minority groups are often the focus of moral panics and receive negative attention because of this. Islamophobia has been a feature of the reporting in the press in recent years. The threat from Islamic terrorism may be used to create stereotypes about all Asians. The Independent in 2017 claimed that the Daily Mail , the Sun and the Daily Express all published inaccurate stories about Asians, causing hostility. Stuart Hall found that black people were stereotyped as muggers in the 1970s. Spec spotlight 6.3 Patterns of criminal and deviant behaviour: patterns of criminal behaviour by ethnicity 6.4 Sociological theories and explanations of deviance and criminal behaviour: ethnicity and crime, racism, institutional racism, scapegoating Bowling and Phillips found that ethnic minority defendants often decided to go to Crown Court, where a jury would try them, as they were mistrustful of magistrates.