Race, Ethnicity, Crime, and Justice

An International Dilemma

Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, Shaun Gabbidon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781317415039
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Race, Ethnicity, Crime, and Justice: An International Dilemma, Second Edition, takes a unique comparative approach to the exploration of race- and ethnicity-related justice issues in five countries around the world.

Using the colonial model as a theoretical lens, Owusu-Bempah and Gabbidon analyse data from Great Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia, and South Africa. These international case studies help students contextualize race and justice issues within and across nations. Concise historical framing illuminates today's racial dynamics in these diverse justice systems, and accessible theory grounds the comparison of crime and justice data from the early 21st century with current statistics. A new concluding chapter revisits the question of where these nations fit in the global context of state and non-state actors and of ethnic and racial justice issues.

This new edition is suitable for use as a core or supplemental text for advanced undergraduates and early graduate courses on race and crime, minorities and criminal justice, diversity in criminal justice, and comparative justice systems. It is also appropriate for use in sociology and ethnic studies courses that focus on race and crime.

Chapter 1

Introduction

After studying race and crime for some time, and taking a self-critical look at our field, one thing has become apparent to us: The colonial model is vastly underappreciated as a potential perspective to contextualize the overrepresentation of racial and ethnic minorities in justice systems around the globe—particularly in post-colonial societies. This short introduction first provides an overview of the terms race and ethnicity and then briefly discusses the perils of using crime statistics to examine race and crime cross-nationally in a historical vacuum. An overview of the colonial perspective follows, which serves as the theoretical foundation for this work. As noted in the Preface, though not a direct test of the colonial perspective, we lay out the ways that the social, economic, and political marginalization experienced by Black, Indigenous, and other racialized groups, as part of the legacy of colonialism, influence their present-day experiences with crime and criminal justice. Only those readers wearing blinders will miss the connection between colonialism and race, ethnicity, crime, and justice.

Race and Ethnicity

The terms race and ethnicity are both used to classify groups. Race is considered the more distinctive marker, and yet in use the terms are often conflated. That is because the terms are limited, overlapping and imprecise in themselves. The term race has a long history and was applied to humans by the Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus at a time when scientists were attempting to understand and classify (or categorize) the natural world. Johan Fredrich Blumenbach built on Linnaeus’s work by separating the human species into five “races”: Ethiopian (African or Negroid), Mongolian (Asian), American (Native American), Malaysian (Pacific Islander), and Caucasian (White). This division set off a seemingly infinite debate as to whether there are truly distinct races. That is, do the differences between the assorted groups make them so distinct that they warrant a different classification? DNA research suggests that there are some slight biological differences between groups; as examples, mostly Blacks get sickle-cell anemia, and some drugs have been found to be more effective for some groups than others (Soo-Jin Lee, 2005). However, this does not prove that the use of racial distinctions is appropriate, especially considering that the Human Genome Project has found “that humans share 99.9% of their genetic makeup” (Soo-Jin Lee, 2005, p. 2133). Despite these conclusive findings, the racial classification system has continued to follow a pattern of Whites at the top of the racial hierarchy and other racial groups falling below. In short, the classification system has been widely used as a way to promote White supremacy (Painter, 2010). We discuss this further when we review the Colonial model.

In light of the existing scientific evidence, social scientists have tended to view race as a social construct or a manufactured term used to identify people based on their color. In the United Kingdom, for example, scholars long used inverted quotes when they used the term race to signify that it has no scientific meaning (e.g., “race”). Other countries, such as Canada, minimize the use of race altogether, especially in government documents. In a similar vein, residents in the United States referred to as “people of color” or racial and ethnic minorities, are considered “visible minorities” in Canada. As you will see in subsequent chapters, countries tend to handle the use of the term differently. In addition, each country has its separate racial classification scheme for who is deemed a racial minority. Therefore, we understand race as being produced and reproduced through the processes of racialization, or the classification of people into different groups by reference to their anatomical features, such as skin color and facial features, and subsequently making judgments about their innate and cultural attributes or worth based upon those features (Miles, 1989).

Ethnicity also is a term used to classify groups. However, rather than being based on color or rooted in biological notions, the term ethnicity relates more to a group’s cultural traditions, geographical ties, common language, and other similarities. Both terms are imprecise and have limitations. Nonetheless, over time, they have been used as a means to better understand the experiences of assorted groups across the globe. Hence, the terms are reluctantly used herein under a similar guise.

Crime Statistics

In his important work, A Suitable Amount of Crime (2004), criminologist Nils Christie discusses the numerous problems with the term “crime.” He writes: “Crime does not exist. Only acts exist, acts often given different meanings within various social frameworks. Acts, and the meaning of them, are our data” (Christie, 2004, p. 3). While Emile Durkheim would certainly take issue with this statement, one can see where Christie’s insight is particularly useful when examining crime cross-nationally. Thus, the way one society defines or views a certain act as an offense is crucial. It influences the extent to which that “offense” is perceived as a problem as compared to another society which holds a different view. So, to take a relevant example, if one country is concerned with cannabis use and criminalizes it while another country does not, there could be a “wave” of crime noted in one country, whereas in the other country because of its different approach, no crime “wave” would exist. Taking this example one step further, if one country decided to crack down on street crimes in communities heavily populated by racial and ethnic minorities, as opposed to crime in other areas where the majority group tends to predominate in crime commission, then statistics will distort the nature and scope of the crime problem. In this case, “the crime problem” will be translated into the “minority crime problem.” Scholars around the globe have noted this racialization of crime (Brewer & Heitzig, 2008; Chan and Mirchandani, 2002; Covington, 1995; Hall, Critcher, Jefferson, Clarke, & Roberts, 1978; Knepper, 2008; Muhammad, 2010; Owusu-Bempah, 2017; Phillips et al., 2019; Van Cleve and Mayes, 2015). However, Christie’s important work reminds us of this important consideration, as we try to make sense of race, ethnicity, and crime across the globe. The next section provides an overview of the colonial perspective, the guiding framework for the book.

The Colonial Model

Too often, writing within the confines of their own situation in their own nations, criminologists have failed to see the wider role that colonialism has played in influencing the experiences of racial and ethnic groups in the criminal justice system across nations; they have bypassed the role that this brutal 500-year project has played in creating and criminalizing race in our present international context.

So, why provide an overview of the colonial perspective? The answer is simple: Because criminologists have excluded the perspective from the criminological canon, and though most students of crime and justice reading this text are likely to have heard of the word colonialism, they likely have never been exposed to a criminological perspective based on it.

Colonialism, most succinctly defined, refers to “control by one power over a dependent area or people” (Merriam-Webster, 2004, p. 142). Over 50 years ago, the work of Frantz Fanon (1963, 1967a, 1967b) popularized the perspective among scholars seeking to contextualize the relationships between Blacks and Whites in colonial and post-colonial societies (Agozino, 2005; Blackwell, 1971; Hall, et al., 1978; Killingray, 1986; Onyeozili, 2004; Saleh-Hanna, 2008). In the United States, for example, the perspective caught on because of its adoption by those associated with the Black power movement (Carmichael & Hamilton, 1967). But it was the early work of Blauner (1969) and Staples (1974, 1975) who applied the theory to Blacks and the work of Moore (1970) and Mirande (1987) who applied it to Latinos in America. More recently, scholars have revived the colonial perspective to analyze race, crime, and criminal justice in post-colonial societies (Agozino, 2003; Bosworth, 2004; Bosworth & Flavin, 2007; Brown and Barganier, 2018; Cuneen and Tauri, 2019; Kitossa, 2012; Owusu-Bempah, 2017; Saleh-Hanna, 2008). This body of work often emphasizes a focus on “internal” or “settler” colonialism in post-colonial countries where Indigenous peoples are also vastly over-represented in criminal justice systems along with other racial minorities.

So, how does colonialism help contextualize race and crime? Well, to answer that question, one first has to understand the nature of colonialism. The work of Becky Tatum (1994, 2000a) continues to serve as one of the best articulations of the perspective because it not only addresses more traditional forms of colonialism but also explores the notion of internal or settler colonialism, which represents the way in which colonialism takes hold and transforms a society, and from the perspective of those who have been colonized, usually for the worse.

Tatum’s Articulation of the Colonial Model

Drawing on the work of Fanon, Tatum’s (1994) conception of the colonial model is based on a socio-psychological perspective; that is, she combines sociological factors with psychological factors to explain the etiology of crime and justice in society. More specifically, Tatum’s perspective requires one to examine the intersection of “structural oppression, alienation and three adaptive forms of behavior—assimilation, crime or deviance, and protest” (p. 34).

Early in her articulation of the model, Tatum (1994) points to the connection between colonialism, race, and crime:

Individuals who are the victims of social, economic and polit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Great Britain
• 3 United States
• 4 Canada
• 5 Australia
• 6 South Africa
• 7 Conclusion
• Index