Racial profiling in the UK: continued victimisation of black and minority ethnic groups

Patel, T

Abstract

Today I am going to present a paper, Racial Profiling in the UK – Continued Victimisation of BME Groups. Using in particular, the case of young people of South Asian and Muslim background (‘war of terror’) and young people of black African Caribbean background (knife and gun crime), this paper considers from a critical criminological perspective, the roots and modes of racial inequality in a post-MacPherson UK (MacPherson, 1999).
MacPherson is a report on an inquiry that took place following the racist murder of a black African-Caribbean youth in London, Stephen Lawrence in 1993. The report highlighted failures of the police and problems of institutional racism. As a result, a number of recommendations were made for criminal justice institutions to address this problem of racism. Following the publication of the MacPherson Report (1999), there are seemingly more entrenched systems for reporting, monitoring, and combating institutionalised racism, and yet the modalities of racism seem to have articulated with this, ostensibly hostile, institutional framework in order to persist in ever more ambiguous and nebulous forms.
In utilising conclusions drawn from my own research (including, research on racist violence and the police; and BME excluded youth), and the current body of literature (on WoT), the key issue being highlighted is that there is in post-MacPherson UK, a revival in the problematic construction of crimes as scientifically racialised (illustrated by moves towards increased racial profiling), meaning that older notions of ‘black criminality’ and the dangerous ‘immigrant other’, undeserving of right to a place in UK space, are once again appearing.
In offering this consideration the paper highlights why this thinking and its impact on crime policy (and for example, its relationship to wider immigration policies) needs to be challenged.

Citation

Patel, T. (2009, May). Racial profiling in the UK: continued victimisation of black and minority ethnic groups. Presented at Race, Ethnicity, Wellbeing and Society Forum, University of Sheffield, England

• Presentation Conference Type: Other
• Conference Name: Race, Ethnicity, Wellbeing and Society Forum
• Conference Location: University of Sheffield, England
• Start Date: May 14, 2009
• Deposit Date: Oct 28, 2011
• Additional Information: Event Type : Other