Black and Minority Ethnic Issues in Community Safety and Crime Prevention

This introductory page covers the general background and links to the BME issues in crime reduction and community safety. They fall into two parts:

• BME people as victims of crime
• BME people as perpetrators of crime

Neither of these two areas have been fully explored and therefore with the  recent changes in UK demographics and required changes in the delivery of community safety - with the influx of eastern European peoples from the A8 countries - services are having to change through topical experience rather than planned development to effectively tackle the new and emerging crime and disorder problems. On this site these issues are covered on this page and on Hate Crime (Race) and Community Engagement.

Black and ethnic minority people are significantly over represented as victims and perpetrators of crime. This appears to be so in most western countries. Much research in the 80's and 90's illustrated that the institutions within the criminal justice system were racist; there was a distinct lack of economic and social analysis - was it racism or the place of 1st and 2nd generation black migrant peoples in the economic and social order that produced an environment in which crime flourished?

Although the Macpherson Inquiry into the death of Stephen Lawrence (published in 1999 - see link below) clearly illustrated the institutional racism within the criminal justice system and very clear recommendations on practice and approach were identified, little has been done in a systematic way to maintain the initial, post Macpherson flurry of activity.

However, actual practices did not change. There are a number of reasons why this has been the case and we would suggest that two of those has been institutional inertia (reluctance to and rejection of change) coupled with a confused description of the place of black people within criminal justice (characterised too often as the main 'natural' perpetrator of certain types of crime).

The Home Office and the Runnymede Trust undertook a series of valuable conferences and published practical information (Link to Runnymede Trust Bulletin) considering the issues of the delivery of criminal justice services within the context of multi ethnic Britain. More recently the Trust undertook further work into the use of anti social behaviour orders and race equality (see below). Another useful link is the Institute for Race Relations (Police and Criminal Justice page).

As mentioned above the rapidly changing demographics in the UK and especially in its major cities mean that different problems are now presenting themselves. This is not to say that the old one are not still with us but in the context of crime and disorder new higher profile issues linked to new and emerging communities with increasing percentages of immigrants in UK gaols, use of violence within the context of immigrants recent experience, misuse of drugs and alcohol etc are changing the emphasis of community safety work and the perception of the crime stereotype.

   BME Issues in Crime Prevention and Community Safety

Young Black People and the Criminal Justice System

The House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee published the report of its Inquiry on Young Black People and the Criminal Justice System (CJS)1 on Friday 15 June 2007. The Inquiry looked at the relationship between young black people and the CJS, focusing on the reasons for their over-representation in the system. This Command Paper sets out the Government’s response to the recommendations in that report.

 Race and Crime - Practice and Research