Using Material from Item B and elsewhere, assess sociological explanations of ethnic differences in offending and victimisation. According to official statistics there are significant ethnic differences in the likelihood of being involved in the criminal justice system. Black and Asians are overrepresented in the system. For example black people make up 2.8% of the population, but 11% of the prison population. Contrastingly whites are underrepresented.
Race of the defendant and jury`s play a massive part in the courtroom. Studies by Skolnick and Shaw, found that white juries are more likely to find a black defendant guilty compared to a white one. Also that black defendants also receive harsher sentences than a white person for the same crime. Characteristics involving appearance can be
These groups of people are more likely to be arrested, convicted and sent to prison than members of more powerful groups, even if they are causing less damage to society. Statistics show that black people are stopped and searched 5 times more than whites. This is the Marxists idea of law enforcement they believe there is different sentencing policies when it comes to certain types of crimes. Property theft committed during burglary is punished by long term imprisonment where as white collar crime rarely goes to court this type of crime is mostly committed by upper-class businesses. However evidence shows that criminals are most likely to come from the working class, the young and the black community.
Outline and evaluate institutional aggression Institutional behaviour refers to the violent behaviour which exists within certain institutions or groups; taking place within prisons, schools and healthcare settings. One theory of aggression is the “importation model”. Irwin and Cressey claim that inmates who enter prisons with particular characteristics are more likely to engage in interpersonal violence than other inmates. Research in the US has shown that black inmates compared to white inmates are more likely to be associated with violence. This may be because Black Prisoners often enter from impoverished backgrounds with higher rates of violent crimes; therefore “import “their cultural norms which condone violent behaviour.
Another example would be that the United States gives an average burglary sentence around sixteen months, but Canada gives a sentence of five months, and in England people get about seven months. This is a rather large difference, and can explain why the United States as of 2009 holds the highest incarceration rate throughout the world at 754 inmates per 100,000 people. The war on drugs in the United States has seriously impacted the criminal justice system. There have been a lot more people arrested and sentenced for non violent crimes. This has also had a big part in the current overcrowding of the United States prisons.
According to the American Academy of Political & Social Science, “America’s prisons and jails have become repositories for high school dropouts, thereby obscuring the degree of disadvantage faced by black men in the contemporary United States and the relative competitiveness of the U.S. workforce”. “Furthermore, evidence shows that spending time in jail affects future wages of minorities at a greater rate than white ex-cons” (2014). By no means, it should be suggested that because an individual is uneducated they will end up in prison. Although, the evidence does show that the majority of offenders are usually high school dropouts. According to Rumberger (2001), “intervention strategies should be put in place that focuses on providing resources that supports, strengthens, or restructure the families, schools, and communities of potential dropouts.
In addition, it is believed that as many as half of all burglaries go unreported, which might account for the low clearance average clearance rate of 14 % in the U.S. A significant factor related to the low clearance rate is that about 65 percent of residential burglaries investigated do not produce enough evidence or information about the crime, therefore making it one of the most difficult crimes to solve (Weisel, 2004, p. 1). The official rate of residential burglary, as measured by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report (UCR) has changed dramatically over the last 50 years. Burglary rates increased in the United
r James Holland Soci 3212 Reading for April 3 Klein and Naccarato look at the portrayal of minorities in the media. Viewers abandon local news due to low quality, but an improved quality and more crime stories tend to increase ratings. Blacks and Latinos are portrayed as criminals. Whites are overrepresented as homicide victims, especially when the perpetrator is black or Latino. Whites believe that they are more likely to be victimized by a minority; however statistics show that whites are three times more likely to victimize whites.
According to Attorney General John Ashcroft “black and Hispanic defendants were less likely at each stage of the department's review process to be subjected to the death penalty than white defendants," The study found that other factors contributed to what appeared to be racial bias. The factors of geography, differences in state laws, and decisions by state prosecutors explain why the majority of defendants facing death row are minorities. “The study also showed that only nine of the ninety four U.S. attorney districts accounted for about forty three percent of all cases that prosecutors called for the death
To add to that most of the innocent people on death penalty were black. It costs more about a little more than 2 million for a person to receive the death penalty. It’s less money for a criminal to do life in prison. The government is trying to find so many ways to get money because our country is in dept, but how about ending capital