Understanding race and crime / Colin Webster.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Webster, Colin (Criminologist)

Series:

Crime and justice (Buckingham, England)

Crime and justice

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Crime and race.

Physical Description:

xiii, 239 pages ; 24 cm.

Other Title:

Understanding race & crime

Place of Publication:

Berkshire, Eng. ; New York : Open University Press : McGraw-Hill, 2007.

Summary:

Why are some ethnic minorities associated with higher levels of offending? How can racist violence be explained? Are the police and criminal justice system racist? Are the reasons for offending and victimization among ethnic minorities different from those among ethnic majorities? Understanding Race and Crime provides a comprehensive and critical introduction to the debates and controversies about race, crime and criminal justice. While focusing on Britain and America it also takes a broader international perspective, with case studies including the racist state crime in the Nazi and Rwandan genocides.

The book provides a conceptual framework in which racism, race and crime might be better understood. It traces the historical origins of how thinking about crime came to be associated with racism and how fears and anxieties about race and crime become rooted in places destabilized by rapid social change. The book questions whether race and ethnicity alone are significant enough factors to explain differing offending and victimization patterns between ethnic groups.

Issues examined include: Contact/conflict with the police, Public disorder, Involvement with the criminal justice system. Understanding Race and Crime is essential reading for students on a variety of criminology and criminal justice courses. It is also useful to practitioners in the criminal justice field and those interested in understanding the issues behind debates on race and crime.

Contents:

1 Conceptualising 'race' and crime: racialisation and criminalisation 1

Biological and cultural racism 1

Race and ethnicity 2

Criminalisation and racialisation 3

The problem of 'racism' 3

Race relations and situational racism 5

Focusing on white ethnicity and perpetrators 6

The importance of context 6

Structure, themes and purposes of the book 7

2 Origins: criminology, eugenics and 'the criminal type' 11

A transformation in how 'race' is thought about? 11

The beginnings in race and crime thinking in criminal anthropology 12

The criminal type 13

Emergence of eugenic ideas in Britain 14

Applied eugenics in America 15

Eugenics in National Socialist Germany 17

The legacy of biological criminology and eugenics 21

Criticisms of biological criminology and eugenics 22

Understanding the origins of race and crime in criminology and eugenics 24

3 Context: race, place and fear of crime 26

Conceptualising fear of crime: the racialisation of fear 27

Fear of crime: prevalence 27

Youngstown, Ohio: American deindustrialisation, race and class 28

Detroit, Chicago and Harlem: segregation, inequality and the meaning of 'whiteness' 30

Camden, North London: narratives of crime and decline 33

Competition over local resources: the availability of affordable housing and ethnic enmity 34

Bow and Battersea: why are some places more racist than others? 36

Neighbourhood feelings vary by age 37

South London: cultural syncretism? 39

Understanding race, place and fear of crime 39

4 Offending and victimisation 43

Introduction: are cross-national comparisons possible? 43

Offending patterns in England and Wales 44

Case study: street robbery 50

Victimisation patterns in England and Wales 51

Offending patterns in the United States 53

Victimisation patterns in the United States 54

Offending and victimisation patterns together in the United States 55

Offending and victimisation patterns in Australia 57

European offending and victimisation patterns 58

Conclusions from cross-national data on offending and victimisation 60

The immigration and crime thesis: intergenerational crime patterns? 62

Understanding offending and victimisation 64

5 Racist violence 67

Introduction: the British context of reform 67

Historical background to racist violence in Britain 69

A peculiarly American tradition of 'popular justice': lynching and extralegal punishment in the United States 72

Case study: the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence 77

Macpherson and its aftermath: policing racist victimisation and the law 78

Extent of racist victimisation: patterns and trends 81

Have understanding and policy towards racist victimisation improved? 85

Understanding racist violence 86

6 Race, policing and disorder 90

Introduction: the centrality of policing in black and minority ethnic groups' experiences 90

Lore and disorder: history of minority-police conflict in Britain 91

Policing black and minority ethnic communities in Britain 94

'Suspect populations' 94

Attitudes towards the police 95

Contact with the police: stop and search 96

Arrests 97

Police beliefs 97

Police racism 98

Policing black and minority ethnic communities in the United States 99

Policing black and minority ethnic communities in Australia 100

Explaining conflict and hostility between black and minority ethnic young people and the police 101

Case study: the British 'Asian' disorders of 1995 and 2001 102

Explaining the Asian disorders: 'parallel lives'? 105

Understanding race, policing and disorder 106

7 Race, criminal justice and penality 110

Race and criminal justice in England and Wales 111

Overrepresentation 111

Disproportionality in the criminal justice system: difference or discrimination? 113

Perceptions of fairness and equality 116

Race and criminal justice in the United States 116

Overrepresentation 116

Disproportionality in the criminal justice system: difference or discrimination? 119

A note on the death penalty in the United States: the case of Alabama 120

Race and criminal justice in other countries 121

The historical and social context of criminal and youth justice in Britain 121

Change and continuity in the lives of black and Asian young people 122

'Offender' populations and their context 123

Understanding race, criminal justice and penality 124

8 'Race', class, masculinities and crime: family, schooling and peer groups 127

Introduction: risk factors 127

Race, class and family structure 128

Family, masculinity and emasculation 131

The masculinity and crime thesis 132

Masculinities, race and schooling 136

School disaffection, failure and truancy 138

Race, class and peer groups 143

Understanding 'race', class, masculinities and crime 145

9 The African-American 'underclass' and the American Dream 146

Introduction: the existence of an 'underclass' 146

The isolation of the black ghetto: a history of segregation 148

The integration of the black ghetto 152

The paradox of the black ghetto 156

Understanding the ghetto 161

The feared and resented ghetto: beyond urban ethnography 166

Understanding the African-American 'underclass': the 'balance sheet' of segregation? 168

10 State crime: the racial state and genocide 170

Introduction: criminology's neglect of mass killing 170

The Nazi genocide 173

'Ordinary' perpetrators 173

The Nazi genocide 180

The decision-making process in Nazi Jewish policy 181

The Rwandan genocide 182

The legacy of racism: pre-colonial and colonial 'beginnings' 182

Racism and 'Rwandan ideology' 184

The end of colonialism and the advent of the Hutu republic, 1959-90 185

Preparation for genocide 186

Brief lull before the storm 188

The genocide 189

Who were the actors? Organisers, killers, victims and bystanders 189

Killing patterns 190

Understanding the racial state and genocide 191

Glossary of Rwandan acronyms and names 192

11 Understanding race and crime: some concluding thoughts 194

Race, criminality, normalcy and visibility 194

Racialised geography of fear 196

Disproportionality of offending and victimisation 196

Racist violence 198

Policing black and minority ethnic communities 198

Disproportionality in the criminal justice system 199

Race, class, masculinities and crime 200

Race and the American Dream 201

The racial state 202

The myth of 'race' 202.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [203]-221) and index.

ISBN:

0335204775 :

9780335204779

OCLC:

183311489