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Fair Hearing?: Ethnic Minorities in the Criminal Courts

NCJ Number
210733
Author(s)
Stephen Shute; Roger Hood; Florence Seemungal
Date Published
2005
Length
170 pages
Annotation
This book reports on research that examined the experiences of ethnic-minority and White defendants and witnesses in British criminal courts, with attention to Black and Asian individuals' perceptions of fairness in the Crown Court and magistrates' courts.
Abstract
Commissioned by the Lord Chancellor's Department (now the Department for Constitutional Affairs), the study was conducted between 2000 and 2002. Three court jurisdictions--Manchester, Birmingham, and South London--were selected for the study because of the high proportion of ethnic-minority persons residing there. Researchers interviewed 362 defendants who had appeared in the Crown Court and 416 defendants who had appeared in the magistrates' courts. A total of 93 witnesses in the Crown Court were interviewed, along with 57 in the magistrates' courts. Seventy-five percent of defendants in both the Crown court and the magistrates' courts had been born in the British Isles, and 9 out of 10 were British citizens; however, 29 percent of the Black and 33 percent of the Asian defendants had been born overseas. The authors advise that the sample of defendants interviewed in both types of courts were facing potentially serious outcomes in their cases. The heart of the study and of this book reports on the defendants' and witnesses' perceptions of their treatment by the courts, particularly perceptions of unfairness and whether they perceived it as related to racial bias. Based on these interviews with mostly convicted defendants immediately after they had been sentenced showed that between a quarter and a third believed their treatment by the court had in some way been unfair. A much lower proportion believed that their treatment had been racially biased. Extensive tables and figures, a 38-item bibliography, a subject index, and appended interview schedule

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