Institutional racism, Lombroso and Official crime statistics in New Zealand

Cesare Lombroso came up with traits that he deemed to be telling signs of a criminal. This was used as a means to prevent crime as people identified with these traits could be stopped and ideally prevented from delivering social harm. These traits included things like big lips, abnormal teeth, unusual size or shape of the head, too long arms and even dark skin. These traits for Lombroso were signs of the born criminal, the idea that the way you looked had a direct correlation to the way you are likely to behave. I combination with these “born criminal” traits, Lombroso had other physical traits that determined a criminal such as tattoos, unemployment and use of “criminal slang”. Although this is seen by most today as total bull, people are still judged by how and what they look like. Important to note that for Lombroso, you had to poses at least 5 physical traits in order to be seen as a born criminal. In New Zealand, you may be familiar with the concept of the Warrior gene, the idea that native indigenous peoples poses a gene that predisposes them to crime. An idea that was developed by a British scholar who never set foot in countries with people who possessed the so called gene. Again, this is an idea that seems total rubbish as it is not backed up by empirical data. However, ethnic minorities are still typecast as more likely to commit crime than majorities. Let me ask you this. How many of you have either crossed the road, avoided an area or acted differently in the presence of minority groups in New Zealand such as Maori and Pasifika based on what you have been told or seen in the news? (The traits brought up in the lecture refer to Lombroso’s ideas in terms of head size). In south Auckland a number of years ago the media portrayed it as having a massive gang problem, that it was unsafe and dangerous. This was also fueled by politicians which escalated the problem and further type cast the people living there. So much so that I was told to never go there by people who had themselves never been there but were going off the information from the media. Criminologists went into the area and found that it was more of a youth problem than a gang problem. There were a lot of wannabe youths trying to emulate American gangs that they had seen on TV and typically went home to their parents at night. It was identified that police officers had been driving around and counting “gang members” purely based on what they looked like. This leads me onto the issue with official crime statistics and the way it is used to reinforce peoples’ stereotypes. Taking to people who say Maori and Pasifika’ commit more crime, it’s there in the statistics. I’m not racist, it’s just a fact. Firstly, these people have no real idea of the limitations on these statistics. For one, it is only crime that is reported and recorded correctly by police that make the statistics. More police presence in the poorer areas that are type cast as more prone to crime will in fact have more recorded crime as more police are present to catch it. It also mainly deals with visible crime such as theft, assault etc. White collar crime, environmental crime are crimes that are less visible and harder to detect. Also when the arresting officer notes down the ethnicity of the offender, they typically do it based on how the person looks. If a Maori who is arrested for example identifies equally with another ethnicity, chances are they will still get put down as Maori. This sort of ties into institutional racism a bit in the sense that the police have the power to influence official statistics based on how they personally see who the alleged offender identifies with. The other thing is that both Maori and Pasifika peoples have a much younger population that of Europeans in NZ. If this was controlled for it would be interesting to see how the results would change as crime is mostly committed by people under the age of 30. If you have populations who predominately fit in this category it is not surprising that they feature more in arrest reports. Crime is more a youth/young person issue as opposed to a Maori and Pasifika peoples' issue.

Maori and Pasifika peoples' are more likely to be sent to prison than whites. Are less likely to receive home detention than whites for the same offence. It is being aware of this and the above that not only shows the institutional racism in this country but to better understand and interpret the information that is feed to us by the media and the police.

No one seems to challenge the white collar crime that can be argued is more harmful as it trickles down and effects everyone.