- D867_2Race, ethnicity and crime About this free courseThis free course provides a sample of postgraduate study in Criminology www.open.ac.uk/courses/qualifications/q92.This version of the content may include video, images and interactive content that may not be optimised for your device. You can experience this free course as it was originally designed on OpenLearn, the home of free learning from The Open University – www.open.edu/openlearn/society/race-ethnicity-and-crime/content-section-0There you’ll also be able to track your progress via your activity record, which you can use to demonstrate your learning.Copyright © 2016 The Open UniversityIntellectual propertyUnless otherwise stated, this resource is released under the terms of the Creative Commons Licence v4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.en_GB. Within that The Open University interprets this licence in the following way: www.open.edu/openlearn/about-openlearn/frequently-asked-questions-on-openlearn. Copyright and rights falling outside the terms of the Creative Commons Licence are retained or controlled by The Open University. Please read the full text before using any of the content. We believe the primary barrier to accessing high-quality educational experiences is cost, which is why we aim to publish as much free content as possible under an open licence. If it proves difficult to release content under our preferred Creative Commons licence (e.g. because we can’t afford or gain the clearances or find suitable alternatives), we will still release the materials for free under a personal end-user licence. This is because the learning experience will always be the same high quality offering and that should always be seen as positive – even if at times the licensing is different to Creative Commons. When using the content you must attribute us (The Open University) (the OU) and any identified author in accordance with the terms of the Creative Commons Licence.The Acknowledgements section is used to list, amongst other things, third party (Proprietary), licensed content which is not subject to Creative Commons licensing. Proprietary content must be used (retained) intact and in context to the content at all times.The Acknowledgements section is also used to bring to your attention any other Special Restrictions which may apply to the content. For example there may be times when the Creative Commons Non-Commercial Sharealike licence does not apply to any of the content even if owned by us (The Open University). In these instances, unless stated otherwise, the content may be used for personal and non-commercial use.We have also identified as Proprietary other material included in the content which is not subject to Creative Commons Licence. These are OU logos, trading names and may extend to certain photographic and video images and sound recordings and any other material as may be brought to your attention.Unauthorised use of any of the content may constitute a breach of the terms and conditions and/or intellectual property laws.We reserve the right to alter, amend or bring to an end any terms and conditions provided here without notice.All rights falling outside the terms of the Creative Commons licence are retained or controlled by The Open University.Head of Intellectual Property, The Open University978-1-4730-1269-1 (.kdl)
978-1-4730-0501-3 (.epub)IntroductionThis OpenLearn course examines the relationships between race and ethnicity and crime, criminalisation and criminal justice. It sets out why critical perspectives are concerned about the problematic ways in which race and crime have been – and continue to be – connected.This OpenLearn course provides a sample of postgraduate study in Criminology.After studying this course, you should be able to:explain why the concept of criminalisation is valuable for understanding race–crime debatesdescribe the problem of disproportionality in relation to the criminal justice systemprovide examples of some of the ways in which critical criminology has conceptually approached and researched ‘race’ and ethnicity.The US, Australia and the UKThe relationship between race and ethnicity and crime and criminology is characterised by conflict, dispute and contestation. The focus of explanatory concern for critical criminologists is the wider structural, cultural, political and historical contexts and divisions in which particular populations become associated with criminality and deviance and identified, labelled and pathologised as figures of menace, danger and threat. Understanding and challenging the ways in which this criminalisation leads to the over-policing, over-incarceration and under-protection of particular populations lie at the heart of critical criminological arguments. The indication of a problematic relationship between race, ethnicity and crime can be seen in the race and ethnicity data across the core institutions (policing, judicial and penal systems) that make up the criminal justice system in most national contexts in the Global North. This data reveals the significant disproportion and over-representation of Black and minority ethnic (BME) populations in all negative or unfavourable categories; for example, stop-and-search, arrests, convictions, custodial sentencing. Three examples of the data in three different national settings are outlined below. The United StatesIn his indictment of the race–crime relationship in the United States, Loic Waquant has argued that:Three brute facts stand out and give a measure of the grotesquely disproportionate impact of mass incarceration of African-Americans. First the ethnic composition of the prison population in the United States has been virtually inverted in the last half century going from about 70 per cent (Anglo) White to less than 30 per cent today … Next, … the White-Black incarceration gap has grown rapidly in the past quarter-century, jumping from 1 [White] for 5 [Black] in 1985 to about 1 for 8 today … Lastly, the lifelong cumulative probability of ‘doing time’ in a state or federal penitentiary based on the imprisonment rates of the early 90s is 4 per cent for whites, 16 per cent for Latinos and a staggering 29 per cent for blacks. (Waquant, 2002, p. 43)
Australia In Australia, government figures and criminological research (e.g. Blagg, 2008) show that Aboriginal Australian populations are disproportionately represented in the country’s criminal justice and penal institutions. For example, while Aboriginal people make up only 2 per cent of the population of Australia, they represent 20 per cent of all prisoners. There are spatial and demographic clusters that show even more dramatic patterns of race disproportion: in Western Australia, 42 per cent of the adult prison population is Aboriginal. Furthermore, Aboriginal young people represent 4 per cent of the Western Australian population, yet make up around 80 per cent of all youths in detention (Hughes, 2009, p. 125). Policy interventions tend to remain focused on cultural explanations – that is, ‘the Aboriginal problem’ – for this over-representation. In this context, arrest and detention are most often viewed as first-resort tools for the maintenance of social order (Blagg, 2008).The UKIn the UK, figures available from the Ministry of Justice for 2008/09 show that within the criminal justice system ‘substantial differences continue to exist in the experiences of people from BME groups compared with people from a White background’. It is worth looking at some examples taken from the report in a little more detail:Trend data for 2004/05 to 2008/09 showed that, in England and Wales, the use of stop-and-search had increased each year in the last five years for every ethnic group. The greatest percentage rises were for the Black and Asian groups with increases of over 70 per cent. In 2008/09, there were three times more arrests of Black people than of White people per 1000 population. Trend data shows that there was a 4 per cent increase in arrests of White people between 2004/05 and 2008/09, a 16 per cent increase for Black people, and a 26 per cent rise for Asian people. In relation to courts and prisons the Ministry of Justice report also shows that a higher percentage of BME offenders were sentenced to immediate custody for indictable offences in 2008 than offenders from a White ethnic background. Research indicated that people from BME backgrounds are more likely to plead not guilty and be tried. A guilty plea can reduce the sentence by up to a third. As at 30 June 2009, members of BME groups accounted for 27 per cent of the overall prison population including foreign nationals (83,454) compared to 25 per cent of the overall prison population (76,190) in 2005. (Source: Ministry of Justice, 2010)Case study: Racial disproportion in the USDeborah Peterson Small is Executive Director of Break the Chains, a small non-profit advocacy organisation working towards the reform of drug policy in the US. In this short video clip, she discusses the greater probability of a Black or Latino person being arrested for a drug-related offence than a White person, despite the fact that the different ethnic groups consume and trade in drugs at comparable rates. She unpacks the consequences of this disproportionate likelihood of being drawn into the criminal justice system both on individuals, and their families and communities.Watch the video below now. Racial disproportion in the USDeborah Peterson Small … Just this week, Human Rights Watch issued a report about racial disparities in drug arrest. And, basically, the report showed that for the last 27 years – since 1980 – the rate of Black arrests has been disproportionately higher than White arrests for drugs, ranging from 2.7 times more likely to the current average of more than five or six times more likely. And if you go from arrest to imprisonment, you know, for the past 20 years we’ve enforced a policy that results in Black people being ten times more likely to end up in prison for a drug offence than White people, even though we use drugs, and sell drugs, at the same comparable rates. And, to me, the harms are so duplicate – there’s so many – it has a lot to do with economic opportunity. A lot of the people who – especially who are young, who are selling drugs and doing it because those were the only jobs that they can get, once you’ve been convicted of a drug offence you no longer can get any other job, even if you get out of prison, you know, you’re banned from other jobs, you’re not able to get access to education, so you’re basically stigmatised for life. We have thousands of Black and Latino men, who have basically been pushed out of society – permanently – as a result of their involvement in drugs, which means that they’re not able to be good fathers to their children, to be good partners to the women and the mothers, the people in their lives. It means that the kids don’t benefit from having that, the women don’t have the kind of support that they would need, you know, it – the ripple effect across the community is rampant. But to me the most long term negative effect of the ‘War on Drugs’ is the fact that it’s created a perception in the public that the average Black man is a drug user, or a drug seller, either currently involved in criminal activity or will be involved in criminal activity. Unless they have the clean-cut look of an Obama, they’re assumed to be criminal. And that assumption, that starts early on when they are still in school, creates a set of circumstances that almost determines the reality. And I’ve seen so many young men who’ve ended up in a path that they wouldn’t have been on if they weren’t constantly being reminded by policing practices, by school disciplinary policies etc. that people think they’re bad. You know, and so to me, that is one of the most negative, you know, both immediate and long term consequences that I’ve seen of what we’ve been doing.Contexts of criminalisationTaking a critical perspective on the problems of disproportionality outlined in the figures previously discussed and in the interview with Deborah Peterson Small, means locating the causes behind these figures within wider social and political contexts. Anxieties about social order and urban conflict can be understood as arenas in which connections between race, ethnicity and crime have been potent and longstanding. Serious urban disorder has been a particular feature of race politics in multicultural societies such as the US, the UK, Australia and France since the 1950s. This is not to say social unrest did not happen before then, but rather that since the 1950s it has been possible to analyse urban conflict within a wider sociology of race and ethnic relations. In the UK context, the widespread urban conflict that characterised inner-city areas such as Bristol, London, Manchester and Liverpool during the early and mid 1980s was explained in competing ways. Some put emphasis on socio-economic factors, others on racism and others on criminality and cultural pathologies. However, even in the political mainstream there was some limited acknowledgment of the problematic nature of the policing of BME communities (see Scarman, 1981). This acknowledgement was extended in The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry: Report of an Inquiry by Sir William Macpherson in 1999, which described the policing of the murder of Black teenager Stephen Lawrence as a failed investigation due to the institutionalracism of the Metropolitan Police. This was defined as the systematic and ‘collective failure of the organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin’ (Macpherson, 1999, para. 6.34). Crucially, the Report noted that the racism was institutional because of the failure of leadership and managers of organisations to recognise and take effective steps to address racist practices and behaviours. However, the significance of this intervention (and the subsequent amendment of the 1976 Race Relations Act, 2000) was lost in outbreaks of sustained urban conflict mainly involving young Muslim men, far right political groups, and the police across northern towns in England in 2001. Again there were competing accounts of why this 2001 unrest happened but mainstream policy and political responses were articulated around concerns as to the ethnic polarisations between White English and Pakistani English residents in urban areas like Bradford (e.g. Ouseley, 2001). Community cohesion came to dominate an agenda in which local Muslim communities appeared to be blamed for the polarisation and cultural withdrawal that had occurred. As criminologist Eugene McLaughlin (2009) notes, there is an inherent contradiction in the combined emphasis on community cohesion on the one hand and the emphasis on national security on the other. This contradiction was to become more apparent as the events of 9/11 in the US, Bali in 2002; Madrid in 2004; and London in 2005 – were read as further confirmation of the ‘threats’ Muslim culture posed. As with those involved in urban unrest in the UK in the 1980s, the urban unrest of 2001 and the impact of political violence saw the configurations of notions of dangerous criminality – criminal figures and criminal practices – being ethnically rewritten around young Muslim Asian and Arab men (see, for example, the rising stop-and-search figures for Asian people cited earlier). ConclusionThe course has provided a brief overview of the diverse but connected and developing ways in which some critical criminological perspectives have engaged with the meanings of race, ethnicity and cultural difference in studies of ‘crime’ and criminal justice. Review questions Why might the concept of criminalisation be valuable to understanding race–crime debates? How can the data relating to race and ethnicity in criminal justice systems be interpreted?Building on what you’ve learned in this course, can you think of some ways in which other factors (such as political influences or different historical and cultural contexts) might matter for critical criminologists looking at the race–ethnicity–crime relationship?Blagg, H. (2008) Crime, Aboriginality and the Decolonisation of Justice, Cullompton, Willan.Hughes, G. (2009) ‘Community safety and the governance of problem populations’ in Mooney, G. and Neal, S. (eds) Community: Welfare, Crime and Society, Maidenhead, MacGraw Hill and Open University Press.Macpherson, W. Sir (1999) The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry: Report of an Inquiry by Sir William Macpherson of Cluny, London, Home Office.McLaughlin, E. (2009) ‘Community cohesion and national security: rethinking policing and race’ in Bloch, A. and Solomos, J. (eds) Race and Ethnicity in the 21st Century, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.Ministry of Justice (2010) Statistics on Race and the Criminal Justice System 2008/09 [Online], London, Ministry of Justice, Available at www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/statistics/mojstats/stats-race-and-the-criminal-justice-system-2008-09c1.pdf (accessed 12 February 2013)Ouseley, H. Sir (2001) Community Pride Not Prejudice: Making Diversity Work in Bradford, Bradford, Bradford Vision.Scarman, Lord (1981) The Scarman Report: The Brixton Disorders 10–12 April 1981, London, HMSO.Wacquant, L. (2002) ‘From slavery to mass incarceration: rethinking the “race question” in the US’, New Left Review, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 41–60Gilroy, P. (1987) Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack: The Cultural Politics of Race and Nation, London: Routledge.Holdaway, S. (1997) ‘Some recent approaches to the study of race in criminological research: race as a social process’, British Journal of Criminology, vol. 7, no. 3, pp. 383–400.Bowling, B. and Phillips, C. (2001) Race, Crime and Criminal Justice, Harlow, Longman.Webster, C. (2007) Understanding Race and Crime (Crime and Justice), Buckingham, Open University Press. More like this … If you’ve enjoyed this OpenLearn free course, you might also like to study the courses below, which were also adapted from D867 Critical criminological perspectives:An introduction to critical criminologyCrimes of the powerfulCriminology beyond crimeCourse image Chris Yarzab in Flickr made available under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Licence.Don't miss outIf reading this text has inspired you to learn more, you may be interested in joining the millions of people who discover our free learning resources and qualifications by visiting The Open University – www.open.edu/openlearn/free-courses.
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