NCJ Number
205047
Journal
International Review of Victimology Volume: 10 Issue: 2 Dated: 2003 Pages: 137-156
Editor(s)
David Miers,
Leslie Sebba
Date Published
2003
Length
20 pages
Annotation
This paper goes beyond the main focus of research about victims and ethnic minorities in England, concerned primarily with disproportionate rates of crime victimization among ethnic minorities and argues that it is necessary to extend the study of immigration and victimization within criminal justice organizations, specifically law enforcement.
Abstract
During the 1950's and early 1960's, a large number of immigrants from the Caribbean and South Asia entered Britain with claims of citizenship. This history of immigration and settlement into Britain has been well documented with a history shaped by themes of racial prejudice and discrimination with differences in victimization rates of immigrants being charted year after year. However, the effects of actual or possible crime victimization on many aspects of immigrants’ and subsequent generations of ethnic minorities’ lives, such as their choice of career and experience of employment have been neglected. This paper is specifically concerned with how aspects of policing in England have sustained and reinforced a sense of victimization by prejudicial and discriminatory action, linking the experience of being an immigrant to that of being a member of a settled ethnic minority. After discussing briefly the wider social context of immigration and racial prejudice and discrimination within contemporary England, three contexts of policing are considered. One is the police use of powers to stop and search people in the street. The second is the investigation of racially motivated offenses. The third and final context is the consideration of a police career and the experience of police employment. It is argued that the police have mediated notions of victimization across generations, from immigration to the main settled ethnic minorities. Police action is seen as having helped sustain the legacy of immigration. This extension of the study of victimization within criminal justice organizations allows for research on how different forms of prejudice and discrimination are articulated. References