What is the relationship between race and crime How is the relationship explained?
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The relationship between race and crime has been a primary concern among sociologists and criminologists since the beginning of the disciplines in America. Various racial and ethnic minorities in the United States have consistently been associated with higher rates of criminality, including peoples of Italian, Polish, Irish, German, Hispanic, and African descent, among others. Throughout history, most of the "high crime groups" have been newly immigrated populations. However, at the turn of the millenium, most of these groups seem to be distinguished predominantly by their skin color, residential location, and socioeconomic status. Hispanics and African Americans living in impoverished ghetto neighborhoods are subject to disproportionate police attention, and are overly represented in court dockets, jail and prison populations, media accounts of crime, street crime victims, and public fear of crime. Show
Clearly, a relationship between race and crime exists. It is less clear what accounts for this relationship. Research suggests that both disproportionality and disparity play a role; however, additional research is needed to better understand the complex nature of the race/crime correlation. Abstract It is popular among whites to attribute to blacks a propensity to commit crimes of particular types because of somatic, physiological, or psychological traits peculiar to or more commonly found in that race. That blacks are convicted of 'street' crimes in greater proportion to their numbers in the general population than whites is established by the statistics. Only from arrests are the races of offenders known, but arrests in any year represent only about 30 percent of the index crimes reported. It cannot be known with certainty, then, the actual amount of crime committed by any particular racial or ethnic group in American society. Based on existing empirical evidence, no genetic theory of crime is given credence by scholars involved with either crime or genetics. Criminality is generally viewed as learned behavior derived from interaction with a particular environment of circumstances, persons, and perceptions. The majority of blacks enter an environment of deprivation surrounded by a white-dominated culture in which worth is measured by material possessions and social status gained through education, developed vocational skills, and employment opportunities that permit advance up the economic and social ladder. Racial discrimination and the absence of educational and vocational resources that will enable blacks to compete with whites in the dominant socioeconomic arena has left blacks to establish their worth and status in a deviant domain where property crime, drug trafficking, and prostitution yield relatively impressive material rewards and status in the underworld. This pattern will only change as blacks are not only prepared to establish their worth in the legitimate world of socioeconomic transactions, but are given maximum opportunity to use this preparation in a nondiscriminatory environment. Tabular data and 144 references are provided. Unless otherwise stated, copyright © 2022 The Open University, all rights reserved. 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. Learning outcomesAfter studying this course, you should be able to:
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 States In his indictment of the race–crime relationship in the United States, Loic Waquant has argued that:
(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 UK In 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:
(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. Download this video clip.Video player: Racial disproportion in the US Show transcript|Hide transcript Transcript: 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. End transcript: Racial disproportion in the US Racial disproportion in the US Interactive feature not available in single page view (see it in standard view). 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
ReferencesBlagg, 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. 41–60 Further readingGilroy, 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: AcknowledgementsCourse image Chris Yarzab in Flickr made available under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Licence. Don't miss out If 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. Copyright © 2016 The Open University What is the relationship between crime and culture?Culture influences crime as differing social groups compete over the definition of crime. 45 This competition reflects the contestation of different cultural forces. The competition over the definition of crime thus provides a "feedback mechanism," so as crime influences culture, culture in turn influences crime.
What is the relationship between race and victimization?There are significant disparities by race and sex in victimization over time. Black men are at greatest risk for serious violent victimization. Black women experience especially high rates of chronic victimization. Hispanic women experience more persistent, low-rate victimization over time.
What is the relationship between crime and development?These changes include: urbanization, industrialization, longevity or increased life expectancy, increased manufacturing and gross domestic products. According to this theory these characteristics alter social tendencies to stability and conformity, and therefore result in increased deviance and crime.
Is there a correlation between population and crime?These theories, however, differ in the types of changes in social interaction and how they can produce a population–crime relationship. From a structural perspective, a higher number of people increases the chances of social interaction, which increases the occurrence of crime.
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