Crime and Deviance: Assess sociological explanations of ethnic differences in the patterns of crime and deviance.

Left realists have a similar view to this last suggestion that marginalisation of black people means that they turn to violent behaviour. Taylor suggests that many young black people don't have fathers or other male role models so have neither a strong ethnic or gender identity but have a frustration at being economically marginalized so develop pseudo masculine identities such as 'you've got to be hard'.

The social constructionist approach is related to the label that black people have of being more criminal. They believe that the statistics are so because of public bias, police bias, and judicial bias. In 40% of cases the victim cannot describe the race of a non-white, they cannot identify between Indian, African or Chinese offenders. They believe that ethnic minority criminals are more likely to be less favourably treated in courts by the judge and jury, also they are more likely to get longer sentences and are six times more likely to end up in prison. Smith in '97 disagrees with this view and says that the proportion of black people at the beginning of the legal system is the same as at the end.

Another approach is the combined approach, as it suggests it uses a combination of approaches to try to explain ethnic differences in patterns of crime. It combines critical criminology and sub-cultures with the ideas of economic marginalisation, they say that the capitalist system has failed the ethnic minorities and that this marginalisation is made to be ideological as well as it is a capitalist strategy to produce subservient cheap reserve labour. The effect of this combination is to divide black people and white people so that black people are made into the scapegoat for the country and crime is blamed on them This argument is weak however as there is little evidence to support this conspirational theory.

Sampson and Wilson in '93 also opt for a combined approach to explain ethnicity and crime. They believe that a socially disorganised community, severe poverty and family instability leads to deprivation. This supports a culture of violence and criminality as they are forced to seek a living illegitimately as they don't know any better ways. Racial segregation means that these areas mainly contain black people.

Paul Gilroy suggests that crimes committed by ethnic minorities are frequently conscious and deliberate political acts. He believes that they can only be understood once the existence of racism in British society is fully acknowledged. He also suggests that many beliefs about black criminality are myths created by the capitalist society and extreme police bias. Gilroy's views have attracted strong criticism from John Lea and Jock Young, especially the police bias theory, as 92% of crimes known to police are brought to their attention by members of the public.

Post modernists criticise many of the modernist theories in that they say modernist theories emphasise the sameness of criminals where as differences should be emphasised. They reject an all-embracing truth. Also they say that modernists use their own discourse, which prevents ethnic minorities from being understood.

Many of these theories don't explain why only a small number of black people turn to crime or why it is mainly young males who commit crime nor do they examine differences in class, therefore in conclusion many are lacking in explanations and so cannot fully explain the differences in crime statistics between black and white people.