A Fair Hearing? Ethnic Minorities in the Criminal Courts

177 Pages·2013·3.441 MB·English

by  Hood, Roger, Seemungal, Florence, Shute, Stephen

A Fair Hearing?
Ethnic minorities in the criminal courts
STEPHEN SHUTE, ROGER HOOD
AND FLORENCE SEEMUNGAL
WILLAN
PUBLISHING
A Fair Hearing?

A Fair Hearing?
Ethnic minorities in the
criminal courts
Stephen Shute, Roger Hood
and Florence Seemungal
WILLAN
PUBLISHING
Published by
Willan Publishing
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© Stephen Shute, Roger Hood and Florence Seemungal 2005
The rights of Stephen Shute, Roger Hood and Florence Seemungal to be identified as the
authors of this book have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the
Publishers or a licence permitting copying in the UK issued by the Copyright Licensing
Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 9HE.
First published 2005
ISBN 1-84392-084-0 (hardback)
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Project managed by Deer Park Productions, Tavistock, Devon
Typeset by TW Typesetting, Plymouth, Devon
Printed and bound by TJ International Ltd, Trecerus Industrial Estate, Padstow, Cornwall
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
1 Equal justice in a multi-cultural society 1
Perceptions of fairness 1
Mounting concerns 2
The search for empirical evidence 6
How do ethnic minority citizens experience the courts? 10
The need for a new study 14
2 Researching perceptions 16
Some necessary conceptual distinctions 16
Getting at the issue 18
The fieldwork 21
Some possible biases 25
Obtaining views from other participants 28
Plan of analysis 30
3 Perceptions of fairness: a quantitative assessment 32
Unfairness of any kind: the defendant's perspective 32
The extent of perceived racial bias 35
The views of black defendants 39
The views of Asian defendants 41
Conclusion 41
4 Perceiving racial bias 42
Inequitable sentencing 42
The conduct of the judiciary 51
The performance of lawyers 55
Probation officers and pre-sentence reports 57
The conduct of security staff 58
The language of the court 59
Conclusion 59
5 Perceptions of unfairness in context 61
Personal characteristics 61
Acquittal 62
A Fair Hearing?
Previous experience of criminal courts 62
The sentence imposed 63
Ethnic composition of the courts 64
Response bias? 70
6 A question of confidence 71
Confidence in equal treatment 71
Fairness of treatment compared with previous occasions 74
Current experience: its impact on confidence 74
7 The views of informed observers: court officials and lawyers 79
What court staff observed 79
What did lawyers perceive? 82
Conclusion 91
8 The judicial and magisterial perspective 92
The views of Crown Court judges 92
The views of magistrates 98
9 The experiences of witnesses 105
10 A 'cultural change'? 108
A judicial perspective 108
Magisterial perceptions 111
Experiences of advocates 114
Conclusion 116
11 What still needs to be done? 117
Defendants' views 117
The views of witnesses 120
The views of court staff 121
The views of lawyers 122
Suggestions from the judiciary 126
Suggestions from magistrates 127
In conclusion 129
Appendix: Interview Schedule for Defendants 134
Bibliography 151
Index 155
vi
Acknowledgements
The study on which this monograph is based was carried out for the
Lord Chancellor's Department (now the Department for Constitutional
Affairs) between 2000 and 2002. The first fruits were published as a
report by the Lord Chancellor's Department: Roger Hood, Stephen Shute
and Florence Seemungal, Ethnic Minorities in the Criminal Court: Percep­
tions of Fairness and Equality of Treatment. With the Department's support,
which we gratefully acknowledge, that report has been transformed into
this monograph in the hope that the findings will reach a wider
audience. In undertaking the transformation, we have tried to place the
research in the broader context of the concerns that have been expressed
over the last fifteen years or so about the treatment of minority ethnic
people by the criminal courts. We have also rearranged the ordering and
presentation of the findings and augmented the text in various ways.
The research on which the new Chapter 1 is based was carried out by
Stephen Shute. For this reason his name is placed first, although the new
text has been jointly written by him and Roger Hood. Stephen Shute
would like to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Board and the
University of Birmingham for having funded a period of research leave
which allowed him to devote time to the book's completion.
The fieldwork for the book would not have been possible without the
support of the Senior Presiding Judge for England and Wales, Lord
Justice Judge, the Resident Judges and their colleagues and the Crown
Court Managers and their staff at Isleworth, Manchester, Birmingham
and Inner London Crown Court centres. Nor would we have been able
successfully to complete the work without the assistance of the Court
Service, area managers, Justices' Clerks, their staff and the magistrates at
Uxbridge, Manchester, Birmingham and Camberwell Green/Tower
Bridge magistrates' courts. We thank also the lawyers - solicitors, legal
representatives and barristers - who made time in their busy schedules
to talk to the researchers.
We are indebted to Premier Prisons, Securicor and Group Four for
permitting us to interview defendants while they were held in their
custody. As will become apparent, our task would have become
immensely more difficult if this permission had not been forthcoming.
Similarly, we are grateful to HM Prison Service for giving us access to
vii
A Fair Hearing?
interviewees where this was necessary. At each of the courts the
researchers were made welcome and given excellent facilities for their
work. Many kindnesses were shown to them, for which we are very
grateful.
The fieldworkers for this arduous study played, of course, a key role.
They were led by Dr Florence Seemungal, Research Officer at the Centre
for Criminological Research, whose dedication and ability to engender a
sense of teamwork among her colleagues was much appreciated.
Gregory Smith was a tower of strength, and no doubt the high response
rate owes much to his and Florence's personal charm. They were greatly
helped in different courts by Anqa Butt, Danielle Griffiths, Leela Jackson,
Elena Martelloza, Alexander Rudolph and Emmanuelle Versmessen.
Interviews with the lawyers were expeditiously and skilfully carried out
by Mohammad Idriss, Mussadak Mirza and Ravinder Thukral. Florence
Seemungal was also in charge of data entry and management and was
assisted cheerfully by Gabriella Romano, Alexander Rudolph and
Emmanuelle Versmessen. Several of the secretaries in Oxford and at
Birmingham helped us by transcribing tape-recorded interviews and
Helen Goldie provided research assistance for Chapter 1. We are also
very grateful for helpful comments on the original report received from
Dr Marian Fitzgerald, Dr Tahir Abbas and Professor Andrew Ashworth.
Throughout we have been supported and encouraged by Mavis
Maclean: we are indebted to her. Above all, we thank the defendants and
witnesses who agreed to talk to researchers at a time which, for most of
them, was very stressful. It goes without saying that without such
marvellous cooperation this study could not have been completed.
Stephen Shute Roger Hood
University of Birmingham All Souls College, Oxford
About the authors
Stephen Shute, BCL, PhD is Professor of Criminal Law and Criminal
Justice at the University of Birmingham.
Roger Hood, CBE, QC, PhD, DCL, FBA is Professor Emeritus of
Criminology at the University of Oxford and an Emeritus Fellow of All
Souls College, Oxford.
Florence Seemungal, PhD is a Research Associate of the Centre for
Criminology, University of Oxford.