2. What do
official
statistics
show?

3. Home Office 2002:
Arrests & Prisoners rate [per 1000 people]
of the three main ethnic communities
140
120
100
80 white
black
60
asian
40
20
0
Arrests M prisoners F prisoners

4. Home Office 2000: Victimisation
% Risk of Racially Motivated Attacks
4.50%
4.00%
3.50%
3.00%
2.50%
Risk of racially
2.00% motivated attacks
1.50%
1.00%
0.50%
0.00%
White Black Indian Pak/Bangl

5.  2001-2002 Home Office found that black
people were 8 times more likely to be
stopped and searched than whites.
 Ethnic minorities are more likely than
whites to be victims of crime.
 Police record about 50,000 racially
motivated crimes each year- many others
go unreported or unrecorded.
 Black men are more likely to receive a
custodial sentence for a similar offence,
and to receive a longer sentence for it

6. Prison Rates:
• Ethnic minorities are over
represented in prisons.
• Black British prisoners form about
19% of the total prison population,
about seven times higher than
would be expected in terms of
their presence of the population
HOWEVER………
self report studies suggest that ethnic
minorities have lower rates of
offending

7. WHY?
 Police Targets- More likely to be stop- searched
 Diversity of areas- more likely to police deprived
areas
 Ethnic minorities make up a large proportion of the
underclass- strain theory?
 Institutional Racism- stereotypes
 Social theory- labelling theory and moral panics
(media/ police opinions/ public opinions)
 Subcultures- due to social isolation in mainstream
society

8. • Recorded crime only provides a partial
view of crime
• It is hard to investigate whether the
Criminal Justice System (CJS) is racist
• To investigate this, would need more self-
report studies and other comparitable date
to make a judgement.
• This is not available- = methodological
probs.

9. Role of the Police:
• Reiner (1989)- police racism can be
individual, cultural or structural.
1. Individual officers may discriminate
2. Officers actions may be affected by a
‘police culture’ in which certain
groups are seen as troublesome and
suspicious
3. Structural content of police activity-
i.e. police certain areas more (deprived
areas), white collar goes unnoticed.

10. • Concern over policing, crime and racism
has been a long- running theme in UK
society.
• Concern was heightened following the
racist murder of Stephen Lawrence
(1993) See separate handout
• Murder of 10 year old Damilola Taylor
(2001) was seen as the Metropolitan
Polices 1st big test since S.L case. However
the trial collapsed in 2002 due to police
and crown prosecution failings according
to official investigations.

11. Evidence for Institutional Racism 1
• Stephen Lawrence was murdered in 1993.
• The police at first thought it was ‘just another drug
deal gone wrong in the Black community’.
• Interviews with white racists were bungled and it
later became impossible to make a conviction
against the killers stand, even in the civil court.
• The McPherson report 2000 argued that
institutional racism, the stereotyping of blacks in
police ‘canteen culture’, was to blame.
• The government began keeping stats. on ethnic
criminality and victimisation, to monitor progress on
justice, recruitment and community relations.

12. Evidence for Institutional Racism 2
• The Policy Studies Institute found that blacks
were 100% more likely to be stopped & search
on sus’. Yet only 3% of all incidents resulted in
an arrest.
• Landau & Nathan found that the police
exercised discretion in favour of whites and
against blacks, who were less likely to be
cautioned and more likely to be charged.
• Blom-Cooper found that blacks in Brixton were
more likely to charged with the more serious
offence, where police had a choice of several.