role of police and courts in c+d Flashcards
point 1
Bowling and Phillips noted that some police officers in London based their decision to stop young Black males in cars on a stereotype known as ‘driving whilst Black’. Police officers assumed that Black youth were driving upmarket cars because they were either drug dealers or they had stolen them.
explain 1
this shows that the role of police in c+d is racist as their is strong evidence that suggests racial profiling by some police officers may be a crucial element governing their decision to stop black people
development 1
Lea and Young also note a military-style police presence in ethnic-minority dominated areas which may result in more confrontation between police and young Black people which artificially amplifies the criminal statistics.
eval 1
It is important that not all police officers are dismissed as racist. Most sociologists accept that only a minority of police officers are prejudiced against ethnic minorities. The McPherson report suggested that ‘institutional racism’ was a greater problem than individual police officers acting in racist ways. Also, the police are working hard on changing some of the outdated attitudes described above.
point 2
Feminist criminologists argue that male officers tend to adopt paternalistic attitudes towards female offenders who are less likely to be stopped, arrested and charged, i.e. females when found committing criminal offences are more likely to be cautioned rather than arrested and charged. Heidensohn calls this the ‘chivalry’ factor. According to Ministry of Justice statistics, 49 per cent of females recorded as offending received a caution in 2007, whereas only 30 per cent of male offenders received the same.
explain 2
This shows that the policing system benefits women and opposes men, Police culture is very masculine (women officers constitute less than 20% of officers) and interaction with groups such as young men or ethnic minorities may be shaped by a need to be seen to be tough by other officers.
development 2
Heidensohn also found that women are more likely to receive shorter sentences than men. This also ‘chivalry’ as the male-dominated legal system treats women differently, seeking to explain away their offending, as males find it difficult to believe that women can be ‘bad’.
eval 2
Walklate believes that it is the female victim rather than the male suspect who ends up on trial in rape cases. Women have to establish their respectability if their evidence is to be believed. Dobash and Dobash (1979) found that police officers were very unlikely to make an arrest in cases of domestic violence.
point 3
Marxists stress that the very definition of law is biased in favour of the powerful groups in society and against the working class. Evidence for this view can be found in Tarling’s study which showed that over 65% of police resources are devoted to the uniformed patrolling of particularly poorer neighbourhoods and central city areas. The result is that about 55% of prisoners in police custody were unemployed and of the rest, 30% were manual, working class jobs.
explain 3
This shows that police are biased against those of the working class, Marxists would argue this is because any upholding of the law, involves upholding the values of capitalist society and therefore any discretion is shaped by the dominant values and forces in society.
development 3
Holdaway notes that young people in general, and particularly those from working-class backgrounds are more likely to fit police stereotypes about criminality than older people or middle-class people. These stereotypes are likely to lead to a greater police presence in some urban neighbourhoods.
eval 3
Some of the research is now out of date. Police training today aims to make new officers much more aware of some of the issues with discriminating against the working class. Left Realists argue that the police do need to spend more time in poorer areas as these often have the highest levels of victimization.
intro
It is often assumed, particularly by the mass media, that the official criminal statistics are collected in a reliable way and that they are valid in the picture of crime and criminality that they present. However interpretivist sociologists argue that the OCS are of limited usefulness and that they are in fact a social construction - they tell us more about the social groups involved in their collection such as the police and the courts than they tell us about crime and criminals.
conclusion
In conclusion the police are very discriminative against ethnic minorities According to Reiner, they categorize and stereotype certain people as a ‘police property’. This involves regarding young males and particularly youths from ethnic minorities as potential troublemakers, However Those who join the police in the first place are rarely radical, and the actual job of policing itself emphasizes a non-political attitude to the job.
