Racism, ethnicity and criminology: developing minority perspectives

Abstract

In empirical and theoretical criminology references to racism and ethnicity are commonplace, although much discussion has centred on the narrowly defined ‘race and crime’ debate. In an attempt to move beyond this debate, which is focused on whether certain ethnic minorities are over-represented in the prison population because of elevated rates of offending or because of discriminatory treatment in the criminal justice system, this paper proposes the formulation of minority perspectives in criminology. These would be concerned with empirical, theoretical, practical and policy issues and address matters of representation, knowledge production, the historical contextualization of minority experiences in theory development, and the ethical duties of criminologists working within a minority perspective