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This paper is a critique of the usefulness of quantitative research in illuminating our understanding of the over-representation of black people in crime figures including prison statistics. With reference to the United Kingdom, the paper offers a critical review of some of the narratives of quantitative research and its search for 'direct discrimination' in accounting for the disproportionate presence of black people in UK crime data. In doing so, the paper fundamentally argues for a deeper understanding of encounters between black people and the criminal justice system from a perspective which prioritises qualitative research into the role of 'indirect discrimination' in the formation of crime data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the race in Great Britain being absorbed into popular discourses about drug trafficking. During the 1980s, drug trafficking became racialized and was portrayed within the context of black people and deprived inner cities. The concept of the Jamaican "Yardie" that found favor in the 1980s and its connection with crack, guns, and violence enriched media representations of race, blackness, and drug trafficking. It was a discovery that similarly effected police practices toward racialized drugs policing in domestic and international contexts Black communities attracted media attention, and over-policing operations were justified through descriptions of those communities as a mafia-style drug market.

Identifies, through the theme of violence, how popular racial symbols in British society intersect with the way court cases are discerned and elucidated beyond the legal context of perception and interpretation. Reflection of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry of 1998-1999.

The article is based on the observation of a number of drug trafficking cases before a London Crown Court by the author. She is concerned to study how the court is established as a site where racial imageries and divisions are reproduced and raises questions as to how courtroom discourse may affect a jury's decision‐making regarding a defendant's conviction or acquittal. She argues that comparable conditions of black and white defendants that are supposedly congruent with socioeconomic deprivation were discursively constructed in their criminal link to a drug offence only in cases involving black defendants. She documents the academic, popular and state linkage of race and deprivation in the post‐1945 period and then applies these insights to her study of the discursive construction of race and deprivation in drug trials. She shows how the socioeconomic factor became relevant in prosecution attempts to justify a drug trafficking allegation by locating the alleged proceeds within the defendant's socioeconomic circumstances in a racialized fashion. She provides extracts from a number of cases showing these processes in operation, including a shared understanding between judges and the prosecution. “Those judges show an awareness and knowledge of the purported connection between black people and crime, including the widespread notion that black involvement in criminal activities emanates from their peripheral socioeconomic position.” She concludes that the courtroom encompasses racial imageries as part of legal discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary aim of this article is to look at the impact of drugs on the drug-using Black population, and in doing so, the article draws comparative attention to drug use within the White community. The article is based on a research study of problem drug users registered with a London drugs project in 2000 and 2001. During the period of fieldwork, the vast majority of clients of the drug project were male, and the gap in the sex composition of the clients was more conspicuous in the Black group. For the sake of clarity in the use of statistical information, the article draws substance solely from information on the Black and White male clients. The findings present the Black community as a group who is also victimised by drugs but whose experiences of drug victimisation have often been undermined in the "war on drugs" rhetoric about drug trafficking.