Police recorded crime increased throughout most of the 1980s and then fell each year from 1992 to 1997.
Changes in the crime counting rules led to a rise in police recorded crime in 2002 but there was a near continual decline in crime between 2004 and 2014, except for 2012 when the criteria for fraud offences changed.
The CSEW showed that there were an estimated 6.3 million incidents of crime experienced by adults aged 16 and over in 2016.
This was 6 per cent fewer than in 2015.
The police recorded 4.5 million offences in the year ending March 2016, an increase of 8 per cent compared with the previous year.
Of the 44 forces (including the British Transport Police), 40 showed an annual increase in their recorded crime, which was largely driven by rises in violence against the person and sexual offences.
The social distribution of offending and victimisation
An examination of the official criminal statistics as well as statistics relating to convictions in the courts and the prison population suggests that some social groups are more likely to be arrested, convicted and punished for crime.
The official measures of crime considered in the previous section give us a picture of offending and victimisation, in terms of the most common types of offences and trends in crime.
However, they are also used to consider patterns of offending and victimisation in terms of social class, gender, age and ethnicity.
The ‘typical criminal’ and the ‘typical victim’ appear to be very similar:
Working class, male, young and disproportionately likely to be black.
This has become a starting point for many theories of crime, which focus on explaining why individuals with these characteristics are most likely to be involved in crime.
However, the patterns are slightly more complex than this, and many sociologists challenge them, not least due to the potential flaws in the measurement of crime already considered.
Social class
Statistical evidence is not routinely collected by the government on the social-class background of offenders in the UK.
However, Robert Reiner observes that there is a working-class bias in the prison population because, prior to being imprisoned, 74% of prisoners were either unemployed or employed in low-paid unskilled manual jobs.
Houchin found a strong relationship between living in the most deprived areas of Scotland and being in prison, while Omolade found that 43% of adult prisoners had no academic qualifications and that 60% were on benefits at the time of their conviction.
Hagell and Newburn’s study of youth detention centres found that only 8% of persistent offenders came from middle-class backgrounds.
Offences can also be differentiated by social class.
Middle-class offenders tend to be associated with white-collar crime, fraud and tax evasion; working-class offenders are found guilty mainly of burglary and street crime.
Corporate crimes are most likely to be committed by upper-middle-class corporate professionals and executives, while state crime is committed bythose in senior positions in government.
Some sociologists have suggested that there is class bias in the process of policing and criminalisation.
Self-report studies suggest there is little difference in offending between working-class and middle-class young people, so it may be that working-class people, especially the young, are more likely to be negatively stereotyped by the police and courts as potentially criminal, and to be stopped, arrested, prosecuted and sent to prison than other social-class groups.
Working-class areas too may be stereotyped and consequently experience greater levels of policing.
However, class differentials in criminalisation may also have something to do with the visibility of crimes committed by different social-class groups.
Working-class people are more likely to commit street crimes.
Most police resources are focused on the streets, so such crime is likely to be visible to them. In contrast, white-collar, corporate, state and green crimes are often complex and invisible to both the general public and the police, who dedicate few resources to policing these types of crime, perhaps because they erroneously underestimate their impact on society.
Findings from the CSEW suggest that the risks of being a victim of burglary or theft positively correlate with the level of unemployment in the victim’s community.
High crime areas tend to be those in inner cities and deprived neighbourhoods, populated by the working class.
The risks of being a victim of violent crime are also inversely linked to income — the lower your income, the higher your risk of violent victimisation.
Additionally, Kinsey found in the Merseyside Crime Survey in 1984 that the poor suffer more than the wealthy from the effects of crime.
For example, a victim of burglary who is uninsured will be hit harder economically than a middle-class victim who has contents insurance.
The poor are also more likely to be vulnerable to a range of victimisation — or ‘multiple victimisation’, according to Young — due to their vulnerable situation and the social problems they face.
Offending
It is difficult to find official data that links criminality to social class in the UK because the socio-economic status of offenders is generally not recorded by the police or CSEW.
Most information about offending and social class tends to come from an examination of the social background of those who have been convicted of crimes and the population of youth detention centres and prisons.
Although the Ministry of Justice does not keep records with regard to the social-class backgrounds of prisoners in British jails, there are clues which suggest there is a relationship between criminality and deprivation:
11 per cent of prisoners ran away from home as a child and were either homeless or in care before their conviction.
About one in three female and half of male prisoners were excluded from school and a majority have no qualifications compared with 15 per cent of the population.
41 per cent of prisoners witnessed domestic violence as a child and almost a third experienced abuse.
Sociologists have pointed out that 74 per cent of the prison population is drawn from the poorest 20 per cent of the population.
Most prisoners prior to their conviction were either unemployed or employed in semi-skilled or unskilled manual work.
Sutherland (1949) pointed out that ‘criminal statistics show unequivocally that crime, as popularly understood and officially measured, has a high incidence in the lower socio-economic class and a low incidence in the upper socio-economic class’.
Despite Sutherland’s claim, it is surprisingly difficult to find data in the UK relating to the social class backgrounds of offenders.
The evidence which does exist, for example, relating to the social characteristics of frequent young offenders, points to the disorganised and chaotic social backgrounds that are associated with poverty and deprivation.
In 2002, the Social Exclusion Unit reported that many prisoners have a history of social exclusion, being more likely than the general population to have grown up in care, poverty, and to have had a family member convicted of a criminal offence.
Despite a rate of unemployment of 5 per cent in the general population, the research showed that 67 per cent of the prison population had been unemployed prior to imprisonment, and 32 per cent had been homeless, compared to 0.9 per cent of the general population.
Williams et al (2012) also found that other factors found more frequently in the prison population included: having run away from home; experiencing violence and/or drug and alcohol misuse within the family; regularly truanting from school; being excluded from school; and having no qualifications.
Literacy and numeracy levels of prisoners are significantly lower than those found in the general population.
For some additional evidence on the link between social deprivation and criminality, see the 2012 statistics for those in prison.
One consequence of evidence such as this is that most theories of criminal behaviour tend to focus on explaining working class criminality, basing their ideas on lack of status, money, opportunities and so on.
However, information relating to the social class background of offenders may be more relevant in showing who gets caught than who commits crime.
Data from self-report studies tends to show that the difference between offending rates for working and middle class people is not as high as the figures above suggests.
In their review of such data, Cavadino and Dignan (2001) point out that ‘somehow between the commission of offences and the official responses of prosecution and punishment, the difference between the classes gets vastly magnified’.
Reasons for this may include the types of offences committed, but also class biases operating at various stages of the criminal justice process.
Evidence for such bias is explored further in the next section, as are explanations for working class criminality and for white-collar and corporate crime
Victimisation
The British Crime Survey from 2010–11 showed that young households, lone parents and the unemployed are all more than twice as likely to be burgled as the average household and the unemployed are more than twice as likely to be the victims of violence as the average person. Young (1988) discussed the ‘myth of the equal victim’, suggesting that certain groups, such as the poor, are hit much harder when they become a victim of crime than other groups.
This is supported by Kinsey’s findings in the Merseyside crime survey (1984): the poor suffer more than the wealthy from the effects of crime.
For example, a victim of burglary who is uninsured will be hit harder economically that a victim who has contents insurance.
The poor are also more likely to be subject to ‘multiple victimisation’, as the many social problems they face increase their vulnerability to a range of crimes
The CSEW concluded that poorer households were more likely to be burgled than higher income households.
Both the Islington and Merseyside crime surveys concluded that poorer communities were more at risk of being victims of crime than more affluent communities.
Both the Islington and Merseyside crime surveys found poor people were often the victims of repeat victimisation – they were mugged or burgled more than once over the course of a year.
Moreover, the experience of crime was more traumatic for poorer communities because they could neither afford the insurance required to replace stolen goods nor the investment required to install the locks, alarms and security lights needed to design crime out of their lives.
The poor’s experience of being a victim of crime was often made worse by poor or hostile police–community relationships which made them reluctant to report crime because they strongly believed that police officers did not take crime reported by them seriously.
Gender
Offending
The police recorded crime figures consistently show that males commit around 80 per cent of all offences.
Data from the Ministry of Justice shows that females accounted for only 18 per cent of arrests and 25 per cent of convictions in 2013.
Although the number of offenders formally dealt with has been falling for both genders, it has been falling faster for females, meaning that these proportions are at their lowest in the past decade.
Official crime data suggests that the peak age for female offending is 15, younger than the peak age for males, at 18.
Though girls may continue to offend in their teens, offending drops markedly after this whereas offending for males does not decline significantly until well into their 20s.
Gender may also intersect with social class.
In 2010–11, female offenders were more likely than male offenders to be on benefits before and after their caution, conviction or prison sentence, whereas in the general population, males were more likely than females to be on benefits.
The number of female offenders has risen faster than the number of male offenders since 1958 but approximately 88 per cent of offenders found guilty or cautioned for violent crime are male.
In the past decade, female convictions have been falling more quickly than male convictions, such that the proportion of convictions that are for females is now at the lowest ever.
At least one third of men have been convicted for a criminal offence before the age of 35, compared with only 8 per cent of women.
In 2016, only 5 per cent of prisoners in British prisons were female.
Around 89–90 per cent of convicted murderers are men.
Pountney observes that female offenders were more likely than male offenders to be claiming benefits, which suggests deprivation may shape women’s criminality more than men’s.
This suggests that deprivation may have more of an impact of women’s criminality than on men’s.
The clear differences in patterns of offending in terms of gender have been challenged by those who argue that females get treated more leniently by the police and the courts.
This view is known as the ‘chivalry thesis’ and will be considered in the next section, alongside the explanations for lack of female offending and explanations for why males may be more criminal
A disproportionally large number of offences are committed by males.
Ministry of Justice statistics in 2014 show that men are three times more likely to be taken to court and to be convicted of offences than women, are five times more likely to be arrested, eleven times more likely to be sent to prison and nineteen times more likely to be in prison than females.
At least one-third of all men are likely to have been convicted for a criminal offence, compared with only 8% of all women
Official statistics suggest that women are less likely to be convicted than men for crimes in every offence group.
However, when females do commit crime, it is likely to be in the fields of theft (especially shoplifting), fraud and handling stolen goods.
There is some evidence that female convictions for violence against the person is rising slowly, although violence is still overwhelmingly a male offence.
In 2014 there were 3,826 women in prison in England and Wales compared with about 80,400 men.
Self-report data on crimes committed by males and females is mixed.
For example, Campbell found that her female sample admitted almost as much crime as her male sample back in the 1980s but fairly recent research by Roe and Ashe suggests that males admit to being more frequent offenders.
Some criminologists argue that these statistics give a false picture of crime as women are more likely to escape detection because police officers do not label women as potential criminals. Some sociologists argue in favour of the chivalry thesis — this is the idea that officials in the criminal justice system (from police to judges), who are mainly men, treat women offenders more softly.
As a result, females are less likely to be arrested, are more likely to be let off with a warning or caution and, if they do get to the courtroom stage, they are less likely to be convicted or sent to prison if they are found guilty.
In the 1990s, Hood found that women were three times less likely to be given prison sentences than men, even for serious offences.
However, feminists are critical of the chivalry thesis.
For example, Steward found that women are more likely to be remanded in custody than men, even for trivial offences, while Hedderman reports that women’s imprisonment rates in the UK have steadily increased since 2000.
Heidensohn argues that the UK criminal justice system is characterised by double standards in that girls and women who deviate from traditional stereotypes of femininity are treated more harshly by magistrates and judges compared with young mothers whom the courts are reluctant to send to prison.
The statistical evidence regarding victimisation suggests that women are less likely to be victims of street violence than men — for example, women comprised only 30% of murder victims in 2013, but they were twice as likely to be the victims of domestic violence and seven times as likely to report being victims of sexual assault.
Seven out of ten homicide victims are male, and they are most likely to be killed by a stranger or an acquaintance.
However, over half of female homicide victims since 2003 were killed by a husband or partner.
Victimisation
Historically, the victimisation level for women has been lower than for men.
The CSEW has shown each year since 1982 that fewer women are victims of crime than men. However, levels of victimisation for men have also decreased over the past five years according to the CSEW, and victimisation rates now differ little between men and women.
The types of crime men and women are victims of do differ.
According to the CSEW, current rates of victimisation are very similar between men and women, but the types of crime that men and women are victims of do differ.
According to the CSEW, women worry more about being the victims of crime compared with men, but young men aged 16–24 are the group most at risk of being victims of crime, especially violent crime.
The ICS found women experienced a curfew on their activities – over half the women in their sample never went out after dark because they feared being victims of sexual crime.
The Crown Prosecution Service has estimated that nine out of ten rapes go unreported because victims believe that the criminal justice system will not help them.
Two thirds of homicide victims in the UK are male.
Males are more likely to be murdered by strangers: females are more likely to be murdered by a husband or boyfriend.
Females are more likely than males to be victims of sexual and domestic violence.
Female victims of domestic violence are often repeat victims because women can find it difficult to leave abusive relationships because they lack economic independence, because there is a shortage of safe shelters because of austerity cuts and because it is sometimes difficult to leave an abusive spouse if the victim has very young children.
A higher proportion of men are victims of violence, but the perpetrator of the violence is more likely to be a stranger or acquaintance.
However, women are twice as likely as men to have reported being a victim of non-sexual partner abuse and seven times as likely to have reported being a victim of sexual assault.
Males account for 7 out of 10 homicide victims, and they are most likely to be killed by a stranger or an acquaintance.
However, over half of female homicide victims since 2003 were killed by a husband or partner, and on average, 2 women every week are killed by a husband or partner.
Young (1988) points out that the same crime does not have the same meaning or seriousness in all cases, and discusses ‘the meaning of a punch’ being very different in some situations that others, depending on the power relationships between the two parties.
Such power dynamics are masked by the statistics.
Feminists often consider issues of domestic violence and female victimisation, and research suggests that the statistics on domestic violence vastly under-estimate the problem.
Hanmer and Saunders (1984) carried out unstructured interviews with women in one street in Leeds, and found that 20 per cent of the women there had been sexually assaulted and not reported it.
Stanko (2000) found that over one 24-hour period, an incident of domestic violence was reported every second.
Yet very few of these led to an arrest.
Walklate (2006) considered repeat victimisation and the reasons why women often remain in an abusive relationship.
She found that many women are unable to leave, and by implication unlikely to report the abuse, due to various factors.
These include the fact that they have nowhere to go, which is made worse when children are involved, and that some women lack economic independence.
Psychological issues, such as self-blame, dependence and lack of confidence also play a part, and these may be key reasons why many incidents of domestic abuse go unreported.
Changes in patterns of gender and crime
Age
Offending
Evidence from police recorded crime figures suggests that young people are more likely to offend than adults.
Statistical evidence shows that the older a person gets, the less likely he or she is to commit a crime.
Most crime is committed by those under the age of 40.
In 2016, only 10 per cent of the total prison population was aged 60 and over.
Official statistics suggest that half of all street robberies, especially ‘acquisitive robbery’ which involves mugging school children for their mobile phones and other gadgets; one in three burglaries and a fifth of violent crimes, sex crimes and shoplifting offences are committed by the 10–17 age group.
Although young people aged 10 to 17 are responsible for a minority of incidents of police recorded crime – 23 per cent of police recorded crime in 2009–10 – this represents a disproportionate amount of crime, given that 10 to 17-year-olds account for only about one in ten of the population above the age of criminal responsibility (currently 10 years old).Gender differences can be seen in youth offending: males aged 10 to 17 were found to be responsible for 20 per cent of all police recorded crime in 2009 –10 and young women responsible for only 4 per cent.
Juvenile offenders are more likely than adult offenders to receive a caution rather than a conviction for their first offence, with females (83 per cent) more likely to receive a youth caution than males (75 per cent) in 2013.
Despite these figures, McVie (2004) has argued that in reality, the relationship between age and offending is not quite so clear-cut.
She points out that the data is often grouped into age-bands which may mask more precise trends.
For example, Home Office data often groups everyone over 21 together, making it impossible to identify trends in adult offending, and the age groupings for teenagers often differ, making comparisons difficult.
Additionally, different offences may have different ‘peaks’ in ages of offenders, but statistics often fail to break these down.
For example, Soothill et al (2004), found the peak age of conviction for some crimes, such as burglary, to be around 16 or less, whereas motoring and drug offences peaked between 21–25 before declining
Given the problems with police recorded crime statistics seen in the previous section, the age patterns in offending can be questioned.
It may be that youth crime is more visible, thus appearing in the statistics more frequently than adult crime, which may be more likely to be undetected.
Explanations for the prevalence of criminal behaviour in the teenage years are put forward by subcultural theories
Statistical evidence shows that the older a person gets, the less likely they are to commit a crime.
Most crime is committed by those under the age of 40 years.
In 2014, only 12% of the total prison population was aged 60 and over.
The number of crimes committed by young people aged 10–17 years has fallen by about a quarter since 2011, although this age group still commits about 12% of all crime (despite making up only 10% of the population).
However, labelling theory argues that official crime statistics may give a misleading impression of crimes committed by the young because they may be disproportionately targeted by the police.
Young people, especially if male, black or Asian and working class, may fit police stereotypes about criminality and consequently may be subjected to greater police attention than older people.
Young people may also be paid excessive attention by the mass media via moral panics, which may put the police under pressure to stop, search, arrest and prosecute them.
Although older people are more likely to fear crime, evidence suggests that young people are actually more likely to be victims of crime.
The vulnerability of elderly victims should be taken into account, but it is also likely that media over-reporting of ‘shocking’ crimes against the elderly may give a false impression.
Data on victims of crime under the age of 16 have been systematically gathered since January 2009 by the BCS (British Crime Survey) and its successor the CSEW.
The CSEW asks children aged 10 to 15 about their experiences of crime as part of their parents’ survey.
Using this data, in June 2014, 12% of children had been victims of crime.
The majority of these crimes (56%) were categorised as violent crimes, and most of the rest were thefts of personal property
Victimisation
As with other social groups, it is often argued that the incidence of victimisation in terms of age is disproportionate to the fear of crime.
For example, older people are more likely to fear crime, whereas young people are actually more likely to be victims of crime.
Though evidence from the Islington Crime Survey (1986) supported this to an extent, Young (1988) argued that such fears are not as disproportionate or irrational as they may seem.
In terms of the over forty-fives, the ICS found that they do have a lower crime rate against them than young people.
However, when assault occured, they were more likely to be injured and to lose time off work, more likely to have an attack involving severe violence, such as kicking or use of a weapon, and the attack was therefore more likely to have a greater effect on their lives.
It is only recently that data on victims of crime under the age of 16 has been systematically gathered.
Since January 2009, the CSEW has asked children aged 10 to 15 about their experience of crime.
Based on CSEW interviews in the year ending June 2014, 12 per cent of children had been victims of crime.
Of these crimes, the majority (56 per cent) were categorised as violent crimes, and most of the remaining crimes were thefts of personal property
Victim surveys indicate that the elderly have a disproportionate fear of crime but young people are actually more likely to be the victims of crime.
According to the CSEW, one in four children aged between 10 and 15 has been a victim of personal crimes, such as robbery, assault and theft.
However, the CSEW also found evidence of considerable under-reporting among this group. Only one in ten children reported crimes against them to the police.
Young men are the most likely victims of violent crime, especially knife attacks linked to territorial gang violence.
Ethnicity
Offending
Official crime statistics show that, in England and Wales, people from some minority ethnic groups are more likely to be arrested for and convicted of crime than the white ethnic majority.
- Black people, especially African-Caribbeans, who make up only 3.1% of the population, are six times more likely to be stopped and searched by the police than any other ethnic group despite the fact that 90% of such stops do not lead to an arrest.
They are twice as likely to be convicted of an offence compared with white people and three times more likely to be sent to prison.
In 2014, 13% of male prisoners and one-fifth of female prisoners in UK prisons were black or black British.
- Asian ethnic groups are twice as likely to be stopped and searched as whites but are less likely to be arrested or convicted.
About 7.4% of the prison population were British Asian in 2014.
- Ministry of Justice statistics in 2014 showed that the number of Muslims in the prison population more than doubled to nearly 12,000 in the previous 10 years.
One in seven prisoners (14%) in England and Wales is a Muslim.
Official Crime Statistics show that in England and Wales, people from some minority ethnic groups are more likely to be arrested for and convicted of crime than the White ethnic majority
Black people are twice as likely to be convicted of an offence compared with White people and three times more likely to be sent to prison.
13 per cent of male prisoners and one fifth of female prisoners in UK prisons were Black or Black British in 2014.
Some research suggests around one third of Muslim inmates are from Caribbean or African backgrounds.
Some research suggests around one-third of Muslim inmates are from Caribbean or African backgrounds
Statistics suggest that proportionally more people from black and Asian backgrounds are stopped and searched, arrested and charged, and sentenced to imprisonment, than their white counterparts.
According to Ministry of Justice data, black people were stopped and searched seven times more than white people in 2009 –10.
In 2013, black people comprised 3.1 per cent of the population, but accounted for 14.2 per cent of all stop and searches.
Asians comprised 6.4 per cent of the population, but accounted for 10.3 per cent of stop and searches.
The overall number of arrests decreased by 3 per cent in the five years to 2010, but arrests of black people rose by 5 per cent and arrests of Asian people by 13 per cent.
Black people were arrested over three times more than white people in 2010.
Bowling and Phillips (2006) point out that the Crown Prosecution Service is more likely to drop cases put forward by the police involving black suspects, suggesting that the police charge black people more frequently based on inadequate evidence, than they do with suspects from other ethnic groups.
Over the last few years there has been much public debate about levels of migration from Eastern European countries which are now part of the European Union.
One concern which has been raised by some politicians and in the media is the high levels of criminality found amongst these groups.
However, a report from the Association of Chief Police Officers in 2008 found that, despite newspaper headlines linking new migrants to crime, offending rates among mainly Polish, Romanian and Bulgarian communities were in line with the rate of offending in the general population.
During the last fifteen years, whilst immigration from these countries has increased, the overall crime rate has fallen steadily, casting further doubt on such claims.
Some sociologists have argued that these statistics suggest that the criminal justice system is both institutionally racist and Islamophobic and consequently the criminal statistics tell us little about ethnic minority crime.
There is strong evidence that suggests racial profiling or stereotyping by some police officers may be a crucial element governing their decision to stop and search people from ethnic minority backgrounds.
Research studies by Shiner (2012) revealed that Black people are 30 times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched by police in England and Wales.
He describes this police behaviour as ‘discriminatory’, ‘abusive’ and ‘highly intrusive’, and claims this racial profiling was an aggravating factor in the 2012 London riots.
Newburn (2007) argues police racism means that officers assume that areas with high proportions of minority ethnic residents are more prone to crime and therefore they deliberately target and over-police those areas.
Interviews with police officers have found evidence of racist attitudes held by individual officers which affect decisions about who to stop and how suspects are treated during stops.
Bowling (1999) found many white police officers believed that African-Caribbeans and Asians antagonised white people (and police officers) by failing to adapt to ‘British culture’.
Holdaway (2002) argues that there is substantial evidence of police racism in what he calls the ‘canteen culture’ of police stations.
His observations of white officers found that racist language, jokes and banter were common.
Interviews with ethnic minority youth about their experience of policing conducted by Wilson and Rees (2006) suggest that young Asian and black males view their encounters with the police very negatively and are convinced that police officers routinely discriminate against them on the basis of racial stereotypes
There are fears, too, that young Muslim males are being targeted by the government through the Prevent programme, as well as the police and courts, from a very early age because of official fears about radicalisation and terrorism.
Quraishi (2014) observes that the increasing number of Muslims in prison may reflect the fact that they are under more surveillance because they have become a suspect population in the eyes of law-enforcement agencies
Other sociologists suspect that there is institutional racism at the conviction stage of the judicial process.
Ball et al. (2011) analysed over 1 million court records and found that black offenders were 44% more likely than white offenders to be given a prison sentence for driving offences, 38% more likely for public order offences or possession of a weapon and 27% more likely for possession of drugs.
There is evidence from victim surveys that those from ethnic minorities have a higher risk of victimisation.
The 2014/15 CSEW shows that the risk of being a victim of personal crime was significantly higher for adults from the mixed, black or black British and Chinese or ‘other’ ethnic groups than for adults from the white ethnic group.
In particular, the proportion of victims from the mixed ethnic group is over twice that seen for the white ethnic group and consistently higher in each of the previous 6 years.
Victimisation
The 2012–13 CSEW shows that adults from mixed, black and Asian ethnic groups were more at risk of being a victim of personal crime than adults from the white ethnic group.
This has been consistent since 2008–09 for adults from a mixed or black ethnic group; and since 2010–11 for adults from an Asian ethnic group.
Distinctions can be made between intra-racial and inter-racial crimes.
Overall, the number of racist incidents and racially or religiously aggravated offences (inter-racial) recorded by the police decreased over the last five years from 2005.
Home Office evidence from 2005 suggests that black people are five times more likely to be murdered than their white counterparts in England and Wales, but police records indicate that in about one in three gun murders, both victims and suspects are black (intra-racial)
The CSEW concluded that White people were less likely to be victims of crime compared with Black and Asian people.
Both African-Caribbean and British Asian ethnic minorities are particularly prone to being the victims of street robbery, and also suffer higher rates of victimisation from racially motivated, hate crime offences compared with White people
Patterns of crime in a global context
Globalisation challenges our notions of ‘crime’ and ‘the criminal’, which have traditionally focused on national and cultural definitions of criminality and the policing of such activities in specific countries.
Global crime transcends national borders and police forces, and is thus difficult to define clearly and to investigate and punish
Global organised crime
Global crime is a term used to describe illegal activities pursued by organised criminal groups or gangs which cross national borders, such as drugs, people or arms trafficking, money laundering and terrorism.
These global gangs exploit increasing global inter-connectedness; for example, global criminal gangs have taken advantage of new developments in communication such as the intenet and the 24 hour banking system
Globalisation refers to the increasing interconnectedness and interdependence of societies around the world.
It involves sharing economic products such as consumer goods and cultural products such as music, television and film.
Evidence suggests that criminal behaviour has also become globalised.
Globalisation has resulted in a global criminal economy which Castells estimates is worth over £1 trillion a year.
Global or transnational organised crime is a growing concern, but is also a contested category of crime which is used in different ways.
It may be used to refer to criminal activities themselves as well as those involved in the activities.
One useful definition is ‘the cross-border activities of organised crime groups arguably exploiting to their advantage increasing global interconnectedness’ (Franko Aas, 2007)
This global organised crime network is involved in the following areas:
- Dealing in illicit drugs — estimated to be worth £300–£400 billion annually.
The availability and price of drugs in any city in the UK depend on how efficiently global drug-trade gangs can move drugs around the world while avoiding detection.
- Illegal trafficking in human beings, usually for the purpose of prostitution or slavery.
- Financial crimes such as fraud and money laundering.
- Cyber- or internet-based crime which includes credit card fraud, identity theft and phishing (e-mails sent by fraudsters claiming to be from a bank and asking for personal banking details) and hacking.
- Smuggling legal goods such as alcohol, tobacco and cars.
- Counterfeiting designer goods.
- Green crimes, which are damaging to the global environment, such as illegally dumping toxic and radioactive waste in developing countries
- Violent crimes, particularly terrorism.
- War crimes via the illegal traffi cking of weapons
The nature of the criminal organisations involved in such activities varies widely, from paramilitary and terrorist groups to gangs and from warlords to business cartels.
Article 2a of the UN’s Convention on Transnational Organised Crime defines an organised criminal group as a ’structured group of three or more persons existing for a period of time and acting in concert with the aim of committing one or more serious crimes or offences in order to obtain, directly or indirectly, a financial or other material benefit.’
The convention also states that an offence is transnational if it is committed in, planned in and/or affects more than one state.
It is very difficult to provide accurate estimates relating to global organised crime, both due to difficulties in defining its scope, and because only a fraction of these criminal activities become known to law enforcement agencies every year.
Some estimates give an idea of the scale of the problem.
For example, in 2009 the United Nations estimated transnational organised crime to be an $870 billion business annually.
This figure equates to six times the world’s annual official development aid budget.
Other estimates suggest that the world’s shadow economy, including organised crime, could be as high as 10 per cent of global GDP.
However, global crime is a contested category of crime because it is difficult to define its scope. Only a fraction of global crime comes to the attention of law enforcement agencies.
It has been estimated that the global criminal economy is worth the equivalent of 10 per cent of the world’s Gross National Production.
Castells values it as worth £1 trillion a year.
In 2017, Europol (the law enforcement agency of the European Union) reported that at least 5,000 global gangs were operating in Europe.
These gangs were particularly involved in people or migrant trafficking, drug smuggling/dealing, supplying forged documents and digital attacks on businesses known as ‘ransomware’.
The international response to the problem of transnational organised crime has been slow and is hampered by various factors.
These include:
- the diversity of the groups and the range of activities involved;
- difficulties relating to international co-operation;
- border issues and lack of common definitions;
- the increased trend towards state deregulation;
- the lack of global attention at the expense of the threat of terrorism.
Criminal organisations have also taken advantage of new developments in communication and transportation, as well as increasingly open borders that facilitate the international movement of goods and services.
Criminal organisations have taken advantage of new digital communication technologies.
Europol argues that integral to the success of global criminal networks has been the development of an anonymous cyber-network, accessible via software such as The Onion Router (TOR), I2P and Freenet, known as the dark net.
The fastest growing global crime according to Europol is ‘cryptoware’, which involves hacking into the files of small and medium-sized businesses, encrypting their user-generated files and denying them access until a ransom is paid.
Europol observes that many global criminals are ‘poly criminals’ which means that they often operate across several criminal subcultures.
They may be involved in smuggling drugs, migrants, sex slaves and counterfeit designer goods across national borders, as well as being involved in cyber-crime such as peddling pornography and cryptoware ransom attacks.
Hobbs and Dunningham observe that global criminal networks often serve and feed off established local or domestic criminal networks in western countries.
This is known as ‘glocalisation’.
For example, local prices and the availability of drugs in any city in the UK depend on how efficiently global drug trade gangs can move drugs such as heroin, cocaine and marijuana around the world while avoiding detection.
Local crimes such as burglary, shop-lifting and street robbery are often the result of addicts attempting to raise cash to buy drugs supplied by global gangs.
Peter Gastrow, from the International Peace Institute in New York, argued at an international conference on transnational organised crime in 2013 that the popular perceptions of organised crime, such as the stereotypical Mafia drug cartel with a Godfather boss, are out of date. Today’s global criminal enterprises ’turn over billions of dollars and prey on every aspect of global society, fuelling conflict, destroying the environment, distorting markets, corrupting governments and draining huge resources from both’.
Gastrow suggests that a key problem is that state borders, which mean so much to governments, are irrelevant to the global criminal organisations, and this makes them very difficult to track and pursue. He predicts that increasing wealth gaps and skewed income distribution in the global economy will contribute to a growing demand for cheaper contraband goods and the expansion of criminal economies.
Castells (2000) sees organised crime groups as resembling business networks, which take the opportunity afforded by globalisation to link up with criminal groups in other countries.
For example, to minimise risk and maximise profit, they may co-operate by basing their management and production in low-risk areas which lack regulation, whilst targeting their markets in more affluent areas.
However, this view of global co-operation is challenged by those who stress the relevance of ‘glocal organised crime’, which refers to the importance of the local context in which criminal networks function.
This draws on Robertson’s (1995) concept of ‘glocalisation’, referring to the intertwining of the global and the local, and the way in which local conditions impact on global phenomena.
For example, though the drugs trade is a global criminal enterprise, the way it is organised in individual countries varies based on the political context, local demographics and culture, law enforcement issues and so on.
Taylor points out that the globalisation of crime often creates a ‘grey’ area between legitimate and illegitimate activities.
For example, it is now easy for elite groups and transnational corporations to move funds and profits around the world to avoid taxation.
This may lead to an overlap between criminal organisations and the powerful wealthy elites who run the legitimate capitalist global economy, as the former invest in ‘legitimate’ businesses in an attempt to launder profits from crime
Castells claims that global criminal networks have developed because globalisation means that knowledge as well as goods and people can move quickly, easily and cheaply across national borders.
Hobbs and Dunningham observe that drug crime in the UK is now ‘glocal’ in character, meaning that it is still locally based but it now has global connections.
Global organised crime often originates in relatively weak states in which law enforcement is either corrupt or feeble to feed demand from the wealthy West for criminal commodities such as drugs.
Some global criminal networks have developed because of inequalities in the global capitalist economy and the terms of world trade.
For example, in South American countries such as Colombia and Bolivia, local farmers prefer to grow illegal crops such as the coca plant, as it brings in more money from the global economy than growing conventional crops.
Cocaine, for example, outsells all of Colombia’s other exports combined.
Poverty in the developing world is also fuelling people trafficking, which involves paying criminal gangs to be smuggled to the West, where people believe they will be better off.
Global organised crime is difficult to police because international laws are ill defined and international criminal justice agencies do not have the global powers to pursue global criminals. Cooperation between international agencies is limited, or hindered by local corruption, conflict between local and international police agencies and also conflict between governments. Radical criminologists point out that many global crimes are committed by powerful people, who use their influence to ensure that no laws exist to criminalise their activities, and that no punishment is likely
Newburn has identified three consequences of globalisation for crime and criminals:
- It is almost impossible for individual countries to fight particular types of crime within their borders because the crime originates from outside the country.
For example, cyberfraud, which claims UK victims, may emanate from sites in eastern Europe.
- Globalisation has created new opportunities for crime.
For example, the main criminal motive for people trafficking until recently was the profit to be made from forced prostitution and domestic slavery.
- Countries are now more aware of the global risks brought about by crimes such as terrorism. Beck calls this ‘global risk consciousness’.
It refers to the fact that, in the past, any risk of becoming a victim of crime originated in our local environment.
Increasingly, however, we are now at risk from crime such as terrorism that originates thousands of miles away.
Evaluation
Global crime is difficult to police because international laws are ill defined and international criminal justice agencies do not have the global powers to pursue global criminals.
Co-operation between international agencies is limited or hindered by conflict between local and international police agencies and also conflict between governments.
Not all criminologists agree on how to define global crime.
For example, 2010 saw the emergence of the website Wikileaks, which released hundreds of thousands of confidential US cables from American embassies around the world on a range of sensitive political issues.
The US government views Julian Assange, who founded the site, as a criminal, whereas others see him as a crusader for democracy.
Green crime
Green crime refers to crime against the environment.
Green crime often has global effects.
Wild animal trafficking is regarded by Interpol as the third largest illegal business in the world after drug and arms trafficking.
It is seen as a major threat to biodiversity – the variety of animals and plants in a particular ecosystem which is seen as both important and desirable to the health of those species, including humans that are dependent on that system.
Air pollution such as CO2 emissions from factories, cars and so on in China, USA and Europe may be responsible for the degradation of the air that we breathe and for the ‘global warming’, which some scientists claim is responsible for environmental problems such as flooding caused by glacial melting and rising sea-levels.
Nigel South proposed a distinction between ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ green crimes. Primary green crimes are those which directly inflict harm on the earth’s resources, such as pollution of drinking water and the air that we breathe as well as the destruction and degradation of land resources such as illegal logging and deforestation. Secondary green crimes are those that arise from the exploitation of conditions that follow environmental damage and crisis, such as illegal markets for food and medicines and those which result from the violation of laws and regulations meant to regulate environmental damage and the potential for environmental disasters.
For example, states may violate their own regulations by turning a blind eye to environmental primary crimes committed by transnational companies because of corruption.
Secondary green crimes may also result from the overly aggressive policing of protest groups such as Greenpeace or the killing of environmental activists.
Seen first and foremost as criminal activity which affects the environment in some way. Examples may include the dumping of toxic waste, fly-tipping and the poaching and trafficking of endangered species.
Over the last 20 years, many new criminal offences which relate to the environment have been created.
Some of these offences are committed on a global scale by large criminal organisations, and so there is an overlap between global organised crime and green crime.
Additionally, because the planet is one unified eco-system, single-nation states have not got the power to deal with major environmental crime.
Therefore green crime transcends political and national borders.
Franko Aas (2007) points out that, like organised crime, green crime demonstrates the intersection of the local and the global, as local environmental harm is often the product of a chain of geographically dispersed events and activities.
However, as with the study of corporate crime considered later in this chapter, what constitutes ‘green crime’ is debateable, and many ‘green criminologists’ also focus on legal activities which are seen as harmful to the environment.
Thus, activities such as deforestation, CO2 emissions, and fishing are mostly legal but are seen as environmentally damaging and relate to the abuse of power in pursuit of profit. Critical criminologists, such as Marxists, would argue that the damage done by such activities far exceeds the damage done by ‘street crime’
For example, consequences of state sanctioned activities often relate to the environment, even if it is only indirectly, according to Potter (2010).
He gives the examples of food riots around the world as agricultural production has been given over to producing bio-fuels, and the fuel price protests by lorry drivers.
Such ‘crimes’ demonstrate how the competition for scarce natural resources can lead to public unrest and disorder
Green crime is increasingly seen as a form of global crime, for two reasons:
- The planet is a single ecosystem in which human beings, other species and the environment are interconnected and interdependent.
- The borders of nation-states are not a defence against the effects of green crime.
For example, radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster of 1986 spread thousands of miles across Europe, resulting in the banning of sheep farming in parts of England and Wales
Sociologists who are interested in green crime usually take one of the following positions:
- They focus only on those green crimes which are illegal, that is, criminalised by local or international laws.
For example, some nations might break international agreements regarding fishing or emissions of greenhouse gases.
- Sociologists such as South believe that definitions of environmental harms should be extended to behaviour which is not actually illegal but which has the potential to have negative global effects.
South identifies two broad types of offence he argues should be regarded as green crimes:
- Primary green crime refers to those activities which are not currently illegal but which nonetheless destroy or seriously degrade the planet’s ecosystem or local environments.
South includes various types of pollution of air, oceans and clean water supplies, deforestation, as well as exploitation of natural resources that results in species decline in this category.
- Secondary green crime refers to behaviour which does involve breaking existing laws such as causing industrial pollution and disasters by flouting health and safety laws (as in the Bhopal chemical factory disaster of 1984, which killed at least 4,000 people in India) or dumping toxic waste near human settlements instead of following safe but expensive modes of disposal
However, White argues that definitions of green crime need to be extended to include the notion of ‘harm’ to nature rather than just to humans or animal species.
He advocates that green sociology needs to be underpinned by ‘zemiology’ — the study of social harms, whether they are legal or not.
He is particularly critical of current international laws aimed at protecting the environment because these are ‘anthropocentric’ — they assume that humanity has the right to exploit the environment and consequently such laws are mainly aimed at protecting humans from the effects of this ‘corporate colonisation of nature’.
However, corporate greed shapes the law-making process and law-makers rarely consider the long-term risks for either humanity or the planet.
White argues that criminologists need to take an eco-centric approach to defining environmental harm because any damage to the planet and its non-human species is likely to have negative consequences for humanity at some future point in time.
Ulrich Beck observes that many of the threats to the environment and, in the long term, life on Earth are the product of what he calls ‘manufactured risks’.
Beck argues that in pre-modern societies, many of the risks to human life were the products of forces outside people’s control.
For example, poor people had no control over their poverty and the diseases that resulted from this that killed their children.
People were also constantly at risk from natural phenomena such as earthquakes and floods. In modern society, technology and science developed to minimise these risks.
Mass food production and modern medicine minimised the risks caused by poverty, while scientists began predicting the risks brought about by natural forces, for example through more accurate weather forecasting, enabling societies to take successful action to avoid natural disasters or to minimise their effects.
However, in late modernity, Beck claims that massive demand for consumer goods and economic growth have created or manufactured new global risks such as global warming, climate change, cancers, obesity and exposure to nuclear radiation, chemicals and gases to which we are all, regardless of whether we live in the developed or developing world and regardless of social class, equally vulnerable.
However, regardless of how green crime is defined, it has proved difficult to police and punish for two main reasons:
- There are few local or international laws governing the state of the environment.
Current laws are inconsistent because they often differ across different countries.
France’s environmental laws, for example, may not focus on the same harms as the environmental laws that exist in the UK.
- Many of the environmental laws that do exist are influenced by powerful transnational oil, mineral and chemical companies and are constructed in ways that do not threaten their operations or profi ts.
Politicians, especially in the developing world, are reluctant to legislate against transnational corporations because these companies are economically powerful
Green criminologists argue that crime should be considered in terms of ‘harm’, rather than in terms of the activities which those in power have defined as criminal.
Even putting aside the ‘harm’ to the planet itself, the activities addressed by green criminology often cause much human harm.
For example, millions of avoidable deaths around the globe are linked to preventable environmental problems, such as the absence of clean drinking water.
Potter points out that it is nearly always the poorest people who suffer most from environmental harms, losing their livelihoods and way of life, or even their health and their lives, and the rich corporations responsible usually avoid any kind of criminal repercussions.
Carrabine et al (2004) classify green crimes into two distinct types, primary and secondary:
- Primary green crimes– are those crimes which directly inflict harm on the environment and, by extension, on people, because of damage to the environment.
Carrabine recognises four main categories of primary green crimes: air pollution, water pollution, deforestation and species decline and animal rights.
- Secondary green crime– refers to actions committed as a response to the commissioning of primary green crime, such as attempts to cover it up by breaking environmental regulations or by dealing aggressively with protestors.
Using criminal organisations to assist in the dumping of toxic waste would be an example. Additionally,
State violence against oppositional environmental groups, such as Greenpeace, could be seen as a secondary green crime.
Evaluation
On the positive side, green criminology recognises the growing importance of environmental issues and manufactured global risks as well as the interdependence of humans, other species and the environment.
Rob White has drawn attention to the fact that the present criminal law is inadequate for dealing with green crime.
White argues that green crime should be defined as ‘any action that harms the physical environment and any of the creatures that live within it, even if no law has been technically broken’.
However, his focus on harm rather than criminality means that his version of green criminology has been accused of bias and being engaged with subjective interpretation rather than objective scientific analysis.
Many capitalist corporations argue that humans have the right to exploit the natural environment and other species for the benefit of humankind.
From this perspective, environmental damage is an inevitable and unavoidable consequence of progress.
On the other hand, White argues that this irresponsible capitalist ideology is responsible for a great deal of environmental harm.
Green crime is extremely difficult to police because there are very few local or international laws aimed at protecting the environment or eco-system.