Essay
Is racism a major cause of crime
An essay answering whether racism is a major cause/contributing factor of crime
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Taylor Purrott Mrs Cody‘Assess the view that racism is a major cause of crime’ (40)
Intro:
Racism is the prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism caused by an individual, community, or institution
against a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group,
typically one that is a minority or marginalized. A common result of racism is that the majority ethnicity
believe that ethnic minorities are criminals due to predetermined beliefs and stereotypes.
For 1:
To begin, Hall argues that racism is a major cause of crime and uses the example of police discretion and
stereotyped beliefs to bring forward his point. For example, the Scarman report focused in on the murder
of black teenager Stephen Lawrence and the subsequent police investigation that followed. The report
found and officially recognised that social and economic disadvantages faced by ethnic minorities could
create a disposition for violent protest. Similarly, it also highlighted issues relating to the policing of
ethnic communities, advocating for more racial awareness training programmes. However, Hall notably
points out that the recommendations of the Scarman report were only ‘partially implemented’ and ‘not
fully supported by the government/police’. As a result of this Hall argues that racism is a major cause of
crime, especially when noting the flawed police investigation into Lawrence’s case compared to cases
involving white people, racism causes crime as it allows for institutional racism to take hold, ‘crime’
occurs as a result of police stereotyping (McPherson Report).
Against 1:
However, Waddington et al argue against the belief that racism is a major cause of crime. Instead opting
to argue that higher levels of police stopping and searching young ethnic minorities such as black and
Asian males is not evidence of racism. They explain that wider factors such as the ‘availability’ of people
from ethnic minorities must be considered when policing in public places. Waddington et al’s research
found and concluded that black and Asian men were not treated disproportionally to their white
counterparts by police. This is due to the fact that the number of times in which they were stopped and
searched remained in line with the proportion of their ‘available population’. Thus, Waddington et al
argue that racism cannot be a major cause of crime because policing in an area largely populated by
ethnic minorities will provide large quantities of stop and search data on ethnic minorities because there
are a disproportionate amount of them within the public community. Instead of racism, factors such as
ethnic population must be considered when viewing data and police records.
For 2:
Contrary to this, Anderson researched policing in a neighbourhood in Philadelphia which saw police more
often than not assuming white people were middle-class and therefore trustworthy. As a result of this
Anderson argues that racism is a major cause of crime because police in turn believed that black people
were ‘lower class and criminal’. Anderson referred to this as ‘colour coding’ and noted how police would
stop, abuse and harass young black people on the street ‘on a regular basis’ despite most not having
done anything to deserve to it. Responses from black males often varied as some went to great lengths in
order to defer to the police by dressing differently whilst others accepted it ‘as inevitable and just part of
life in their neighbourhood’. In support of Anderson, Government statistics (GOV UK) state that ‘in
2020/21, White suspects accounted for 76% of arrests, 10% were for Black suspects, 8% were for Asian
suspects, 4% were for Mixed ethnicity suspects and 2% were for other ethnicity suspects. Relative
proportions of arrests across ethnic groups remained stable between 2016/17 and 2020/21’. Reinforcing
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