‘A Tale of Two Englands’

Ellie Keen — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 21:50:12 +0000

‘Race’ and Violent Crime in the Press

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This report explores the reporting – and the semantic meanings transmitted through reporting – of violent crime in relation to the ethnicity of both victim and perpetrator. The purpose of this study is to analyse the place of ‘race’ and ethnicity of both victim and perpetrator in reporting of violent crime, and to draw out and make explicit the implicit theories underlying and informing this reporting. By systematically examining crime articles in the national print media as well as a selection of regional media over a period of two months, this report demonstrates how notions of race still tint the lens through which criminality is both viewed and projected. The report argues that violent crime is seen as endemic within the minority ethnic ‘communities’, but unrelated to the structure of British society and the experience of minority ethnic people within it. In crime reporting, wider structural factors – such as discrimination, disadvantage and inequality – are generally ignored as contributors to crime trends and patterns.

The key argument is that a particular understanding of ‘culture’ has replaced overtly racist ideologies as the dominant discourse on race and crime. However, following the decline of racial determinism as a paradigm of diversity, ‘culture’ has re-introduced racism through the back door. ‘Culture’ appears to have replaced ‘race’ because, as a non-biological concept, it is supposedly non-racialized, and thereby non-racist. But in spite of its de-essentializing appearance, ‘culture’ still leaves racial understandings of diversity and difference as a profound challenge. Together with two other master tropes – community and ethnic identity – culture has become one of the pillars of the dominant discourse about ethnic diversity and ethnic minority groups. This discourse conceives culture as an innate quality, something people have and makes them act in certain ways under certain circumstances; culture is understood as a ‘way of life’ determined by birth.

Culturalist explanations for behaviour have entered crime reporting of the mainstream media in force. The debate about crime in contemporary Britain, particularly violent teenage crime, habitually invokes a specific notion of ‘culture’ to explain the behaviour of perpetrators of violent acts. Gang, gun and knife violence is conceptualized as ‘cultural’ phenomena, albeit pathological sub-cultures distinct from and in contrast to the moral values of the law-abiding majority. Given the simplistic equation between ‘culture’, ‘ethnic identity’ and ‘community’, the report demonstrates the ways in which the press connects different types of criminal ‘cultures’ to specific ethnic communities.

The connection between criminal ‘cultures’ and ‘communities’ leads to a logical fallacy. The claim that ‘culture’ is the source of violent crime necessarily attaches violence to certain ‘communities’ defined by their ethnic ‘identity’. This implies that most members of those groups are violent. The effect is that entire ‘communities’ are criminalized on the basis of their ‘cultures’. Importantly, this equation relates exclusively to ethnic minority groups, but largely excludes the white majority. ‘Culture’ and ‘community’ are seldom evoked when speaking about white Britons. White middle-class England is not thought of as a ‘community’ in itself, and to be English is not considered a ‘cultural’ trait.

The purpose of this study is not to accuse the media of institutional racism – a term that is often used without particular qualification of what it actually means – but rather to explore the ways in which popular understandings of race and crime influence reporting in the media, and vice versa. A fair and reflexive media representation of the state and nature of crime in Britain – including the involvement of all ethnic groups as both victims and perpetrators – is necessary not only from a social justice point of view, but for practical reasons as well. Through this report, we hope to engage the media in a constructive dialogue on how British society thinks about the complex relationship between race and crime.

Key points

Although diverse views are discernable both between and within papers, there are clear differential patterns in the way in which the press reports on violent crime. These patterns are strongly informed by notions of race.

In essence, England is conceived as two-fold: an England consisting of a law-abiding and morally superior Us; and an England inhabited by criminal and pathological Others. The current breakdown of law and order is conceived as spilling out from inner cities and sink estates into leafy suburbs, threatening the very pillars of Englishness.

Many journalists employ a strategic lack of precision when discussing different ethnic groups. In some instances, this includes an allusive taxonomy equating criminal cultures with particular communities: Eastern European bag snatchers, Jamaican yardie crack dealers, Somali gang members and so on. At other times, however, all these different ‘communities’ are lumped together as standing in direct contrast to white middle-class England. This strategic lack of precision creates an impression of a ‘tide’ of alien and hostile elements threatening the white English identity and its values.

Media theories – both implicit and explicit are often ‘common sense’ theories. Anecdotal evidence is habitually treated like evident truths and conclusive proof. For example, an inconclusive and brief Metropolitan Police report on the London gang profile was employed as evidence that the majority of young refugees from ‘anarchistic warlord cultures’ are necessarily committing violence on the streets of Britain.

An important aspect of the common sense connection between ‘culture’, ‘community’ and crime is that it freely lends itself to a logical fallacy generic in the press; while it may be true that certain groups are responsible for a disproportionate amount of certain types of crimes, it does not logically follow that most members of those groups are involved in offending behaviour. However, this logical leap is often made.

Although a ‘gang’ can refer to both black and white youth, it is not a race neutral term. young black criminality would more often be associated with ‘gang membership’, drawing on stereotyped images of gangs in America. The archetypal ‘gang member’ is black; correspondingly, a murder covered in the news was more likely to be assumed to be ‘gang related’ if there was black youth involved than if all involved were white.

It would be unfair to point the finger exclusively towards the media. The press is part of a discursive system which includes a range of social actors. However, the media does have an immense influence on the development of social and ideological perceptions and practices of not only its audience, but other elite institutions and influential social actors as well, such as politicians, corporations and civil society.

Judging from senior politicians’ responses to the media frenzy of 2007, crime reporting is potentially a strong force in policy development. The over-representation of young black people in the criminal justice system (CJS) is a problem of enormous severity, and the gap appears to be growing wider. Media attention to these matters may prompt a more decisivepolicy response. However, the question is how the problem, and by extension the solution, is analysed and formulated. Policies based on the assumption that black ‘culture’ is criminogenic, that black crime is qualitatively different from white crime, and that black communities are themselves to blame for their overrepresentation in the CJS are unlikely to be effective.

The rest of the report can be downloaded here

The Runnymede Trust | ukwatch.net

‘A Tale of Two Englands’

‘Race’ and Violent Crime in the Press

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Key points