Offending And Recidivism Sociology

This study will explore how the UK’s macro-structural set up has impacted on the salient issue of young black male offending and recidivism. Existing research on young black male offending and recidivism has focused mainly on individual-level factors. It is important to understand theories of social structure, social process and social conflict, in order to illuminate young black males’ involvement in the criminal justice system. In the context of this study, Essed’s (1991) definition of contemporary racism will be employed to fully capture societal beliefs in a cultural hierarchy. The author argued that, “contemporary racism justifies and legitimates inequalities between groups, …on claims that certain groups transgress fundamental social …show more content…
Whilst there has been purported individual level characteristics of criminality, the purpose of this study is to explore the race-crime link evoked by social, structural and racial inequalities. It is important to identify why young black people offend and reoffend as it is reflected in their overrepresentation in the criminal justice system? It is important for this study to scrutinize whether young black males’ offending trends reflect socio-economic and structural disadvantages affecting this particular group. Furthermore, the overrepresentation of young black people in the criminal justice seems to suggest their criminal behaviour patterns to differ from that of other young people in British society. Throughout history the notion of black male criminality has been attributed to their supposed genetic and cultural inferiority. Society thus perceive black youths as predisposed to criminal behaviour, which in turn enables justification of discrimination towards this group. The study will first analyse media’s role in influencing societal perceptions of the relationship between race and crime, precisely focusing on young black males.t is also imperative to explore the effects of labelling an individual or group as deviant, and how that influences the labelled to commit crimes or reoffend. A careful analysis of Blau …show more content…
It is important to first analyse how the media has the capability to manipulate the public’s perception of a certain group through the dissemination of information designed to influence societal compliance (Herman and Chomsky, 1988; Jewkes, 2015). Societal awareness and perceptions of social deviance in a modern society has been largely influenced by the media. Since the media is identified as a societal data-sphere which breeds uncontrollable infectious media viruses which serve to alter society’s perception of reality (Rushoff 1994), the negative portrayal of certain groups as deviant may result in society seeing it as a homogeneous group. This is evident in the media’s report of the 1970s muggings which were portrayed as a young black male crime (Muncie and Wilson, 2006). With the media portraying the young black men as ‘muggers’, societal moral panic was ignited, resulting in the alienation and marginalisation of the young black men in British society. These findings clearly show how the human consciousness is vulnerable to visual and auditory impressions (Entman 1993). The media thus have the power to tap into its audiences’ inner consciousness through feeding its selective biases of certain groups in society. So in this context, the negative portrayal of young black males as ‘muggers’ and a threat to society, certainly evoked unwholesome emotional