Introduction

Issues in relation to ‘race’ and racism have generated substantial, and ever-growing, interest from and within a multitude of academic, policy and research contexts. Within criminological and criminal justice arenas, issues in relation to ‘race’/ethnicity have attracted much attention, particularly in the aftermath of the Macpherson Inquiry into the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence, which found the police service to be ‘institutionally racist’.

The over-representation of Black people in prison, particularly those of African/Caribbean heritage, has generated much research attention, under the so-called ‘race and crime’ debate. Here, questions have been raised about Black people's offending rates and any discriminatory treatment that they might experience at various points throughout the criminal justice system. Racial discrimination has, however, proved to be an elusive phenomenon to investigate and measure empirically, with a number of criminologists arguing that statistical evidence can never conclusively establish this (Reiner, 1989; Holdaway, 1997). Indeed, many researchers have highlighted the difficulties involved when collecting data about ‘race’, arguing that this is a social construct that is influenced by historical, social and political contexts that attach particular labels to particular groups of individuals at particular points in time. Information in relation to ‘race’ is therefore partial and incomplete and subject to many inherent biases.

The fluidity of ‘race’ as a concept has helped to fuel debate abut whether people's oppression must have a material basis, particularly in relation to class relations, or whether culture in relation to ‘race’ can constitute the material from which to experience oppression and from which to build resistance. For example, for Miles (1982), ‘race’ is viewed as an ideological construct that obscures economic relations of power (in Back and Solomos, 2000) so that class, rather than ‘race’, relations constitute the material basis of people's oppression. This position is largely reflected in the work of the left realists, who have argued that when looking at criminality amongst Black communities, social deprivation and a lack of political power are key factors (Lea and Young, 1993). On the other hand, for writers such as Gilroy (1993) and Hall et al (1978), ‘race’ can be viewed as a cultural resource through which social life is experienced and from which identities are built. According to Chigwada-Bailey (1997), African and Caribbean peoples have mobilised around their collective experience of racist treatment by agencies of the criminal justice system, particularly from the police and the courts.