Ethnicity and Crime Flashcards
What is the average custodial sentence for white, black and Asian criminals?
White - 15.9 months.
Black - 23.4 months.
Asian - 22.4 months.
What does the average custodial sentence show about differences in ethnic groups?
Disproportionate - police typifications and selective law enforcement.
Who makes crime statistics?
Police (PRC).
What might crime statistics made my police be showing?
Institutional racism.
What are trends in victim surveys?
In the cases of ‘mugging’, black people are significantly over represented among those identified by victims of offenders.
A great deal of crime is ‘intro-ethnic’, meaning that it takes place within ethnic groups rather than between ethnic groups.
What’s an evaluation of victim surveys?
They rely on memory of the event.
They only cover 20% of personal crimes.
Exclude under 10s, when EM have a higher population of younger people.
They exclude crimes committed by organisations such as businesses.
What are the trends in self-report methods?
Based on a sample of 2500 people, Graham and Bowling (1995) found that Blacks (43%) and Whites (44%) admitted to similar rates of offending.
Sharp and Budd (2005) noted that of 1200 people in their sample, whites and EM were more likely to say they committed an offence than other EMs.
Use of class A drugs was much higher amongst whites than blacks and Asians.
What’s an evaluation of self-report methods?
These results challenge the stereotypes of black people as being more likely than whites to offend.
They support the view that Asians are less likely to commit crime than any other ethnic group.
Who discusses strain theory?
Merton (functionalist)
Why is this a reason why the EM commit crime?
Poor education (black boys 6x more likely to be excluded) = bottom sets = no quals = low paid job = don’t have the means to achieve goals.
Adaptations to strain
- Innovation (theft)
- Retreatism (drugs/alcohol)
- Rebellion (terrorism)
Why is this a reason why whites appear to not commit crime?
Less marginalised in society. More likely to be successful in education = well paid job = no strain = no crime.
What’s an evaluation of strain theory?
CAGES - class and gender affect educational achievement success - more complex.
WC white boys = lowest educational attainment score.
Also strain mainly explains low level crime - street crime.
Not corporate/white collar/HC crime.
