Olga Heaven and Barbara Hudson

INTRODUCTION

The aim of this chapter is to explore the relationships between ‘race’, ‘ethnicity’ and ‘crime’, and we shall examine how these conflated and complex terms are used interchangeably. There is a considerable body of empirical research in the UK and elsewhere that illustrates the extent to which people from minority ethnic communities are disproportionately subject to criminal justice intervention and penal sanction, it is by situating the discussion in the plight of female foreign nationals caught in the criminal justice system of England and Wales that we can demonstrate the fractures, disharmonies and contradictions between the rule of law and practice. The first section of the chapter will examine how terms such as ‘race’, ‘ethnicity’, ‘discrimination’ and ‘crime’, are used in criminology, the ‘race’ relations industry, and in the criminal justice system. We will show that categorizing individuals according to race/ethnicity is by no means unproblematic. The next section looks at some of the penal policies that are associated with the dis proportionate imprisonment of black people. We will suggest the ways in which theory and policy interact in shaping the criminal justice system and produce discriminatory outcomes. Finally, it is by deconstruct ing the relationships between race, ethnicity and crime through the work of Hibiscus and in turn the experiences of foreign nationals, that you, the reader will begin to see how bias in the criminal justice system operates.

In particular this chapter is based on the experiences of the principal author (Olga Heaven) as Director of the Female Prisoners Welfare Project/Hibiscus, a charity that works with foreign national women prisoners. The goal of FPWP/Hibiscus is to improve the conditions of female foreign nationals who find themselves locked in the criminal justice system. Her first experience of working with foreign nationals in prison began when working as a social worker in Tower Hamlets. Many of the women she encountered led chaotic life-styles. Many had spent time in ‘care’, where itinerants, were often in poor health, suffered from some form of mental illness or substance abuse, and experienced extreme poverty. A dispro portionate number were black, mainly foreign nationals, and this became the focus of FPWP/Hibiscus’s work.

The second author (Barbara Hudson) has also been a social worker in southeast London, and has worked as a research officer for the probation service. She became involved with issues of race and criminal justice because the area probation service for whom she worked covered Broadwater Farm in Tottenham. After the disturbances there in the mid-1980s, questions of possible discrimination in the criminal justice system became urgent. Trying to face up to the issue of how it could deal with minority offenders in a genuinely non-discriminatory manner, the probation service became aware that many dearly held principles—such as cooperating with police and other agencies, demanding written evi dence from offenders alleging racist treatment in young offenders institutions—might have to be rethought.

Since FPWP/Hibiscus works mostly with women in prison, we need to understand the concept of ‘crime’ and the causal factors responsible for sending some of them to prison, in some cases for up topoverty, in all countries for which statistics are available, it is impoverished groups who fill the prisons: African/Caribbeans in the UK; African-Americans in the US, aboriginals in Australia; Lapps and Inuits in Scandinavia; guest-workers from former Yugoslavia and Turkey in Germany; Filipino workers throughout Europe and the Gulf states; the Romany in former Eastern Europe; Romany and north Africans in south ern Europe.

The US has the highest prison population in the world. More than half of the two million inmates are African-American or Hispanic; the majority are convicted for drugs offences, despite the fact that they represent less than a quarter of the population and less likely to be drug takers than whites (Tonry, 1995). The same is true, though to a lesser extent, in the UK where a disproportionate number of ethnic minority people are in prison for drugs offences, despite consistent surveys showing that young white people are more likely to be taking, or have taken drugs than non-whites. The explanations for these anomalies, and their effects on society and on the criminal justice system, will be explored in the next section.

Getting tough on crime?

In the decade between 1992 and 2001, the number of inmates in prison in England and Wales rose by 45 per cent from 45,486 to 66,403 (see Table 18.3). This was due to ‘tougher’ sentencing policies as Home Office ministers declared a ‘war on drugs’. However, Table 18.1 reveals that this increase was not uniform.

Table 18.1 Percentage increase in number of prisoners by sex and race for the years 1992-2001	% increase
All prisoners	45
All males	43
All females	141
All whites	38
All blacks	93
White males	35
Black males	89
White females	151
Black females	155
Source: prison statistics England and Wales 2001 (Cm 5743). The Stationery Office, London.

Table 18.2 Percentage increase in no of prisoner by sexand race for the years 1997-2001	% Increase
All prisoners	7.40 per cent
All males	6.6
All females	39
All whites	4.3
All blacks	21.6
White males	3
Black males	19.4
White females	35.5
Black females	50.7
Source: prison Statistics London. England and Wales (Cm 5743). The Stationary Office,

The black prison population constituted 10 per cent of the prison population, com pared to less than 2 per cent of the general population in 1992; but while their percentage of the general population remained constant, the percentage in prison rose to 13 per cent in 2001. Within the prison population the numbers of black women were more disproportionate, rising from 20 per cent of all female inmates in 1992 to 21 per cent in 2001 and 25 per cent in 2003. The male prison population (94 per cent of the total in 2001) increased by 43 per cent, females went up by 141 per cent; whites by 38 per cent, blacks (see Tables 18.1 and 18.3 for Home Office ethnic classification) by 93 per cent-white males increased by 35 per cent, black males by 89 per cent, white females by 151 per cent and black females by 155 per cent. Afro-Caribbeans (constitute less than 1.5 per cent of the general population) are, as we can see from the Tables 18.1-18.5, over-represented in the criminal justice system (see also Home Office, 2002; HM Prison Service, 2004; Hudson, 1989).

By comparing Tables 18.1 and 18.2, we can see that since New Labour came to power in 1997, the rate of imprisonment has slowed. Overall the prison population increased from 58,795 in 1997 to 66,403 in 2001, a rise of 7 per cent compared to 22 per cent for the similar five-year period under the Conservative Party. The breakdown by ‘race’ and ‘eth nic’ group shows a similar decline while the differentials remained: white male increased by 3 per cent, black male by 19 per cent, all females by 39 per cent, white females by 35 per cent, and black females by 51 per cent.

Since these figures were published (see Tables 18.1 and 18.2), there appears to have been acceleration in the numbers again: in 2003 there were 73,091 inmates, an increase of over 10 per cent in less than two years. This number is expected to rise to 91,000 by 2006 and possibly 110,000 by 2009, if the present trends continue. Since the absolute capacity of the system is for 77,500 inmates, the government will have to build new prisons (see NACRO, 2003, 2004).

Table 18.3 Population in prison by sex and ethnic group*
England and Wales 30 June
Sex of prisoner	Total		White		Black**		South Asian***		Chinese Other****
	No	%	No	%	No	%	No	%	No	%
Males and females
1992	45,486	100	37,705	81.	4,773	10	1,388	3	1,043	2
1993	44,246	100	36,855	83	5,013	11	1,356	3	926	2
1994	48,879	100	40,754	83	5,606	11	1,347	3	1,102	2
1995	51,084	100	42,207	83	5,982	12	1,497	3	1,318	3
1996	55,256	100	45,029	81	6,986	13	1,654	3	1,524	3
1997	61,467	100	50,164	82	7,585	12	1,865	3	1,795	3
1998	65,727	100	53,677	82	7,976	12	2,007	3	2,046	3
1999	64,529	100	52,377	81	7,964	12	1,929	3	2,225	3
2000	65,194	100	52,581	81	8,287	13	1,837	3	2,457	4
2001	66,403	100	52,303	79	9,223	14	1,993	3	2,835	4
Males
1992	43,950	100	36,616	83	4,464	10	4,464	3	981	2
1993	42,666	100	35,691	84	4,690	11	4,690	3	854	2
1994	47,075	100	39,399	84	5,236	11	5,236	3	1,050	2
1995	49,086	100	40,697	83	5,592	11	5,592	3	1,247	3
1996	52,951	100	43,280	82	6,538	12	6,538	3	1,441	3
1997	58,795	100	48,151	82	7,062	12	7,062	3	1,684	3
1998	62,607	100	51,304	82	7,416	12	7,416	3	1,889	3
1999	61,322	100	49,961	81	7,355	12	7,355	3	2,081	4
2000	61,839	100	50,059	81	7,644	12	7,644	3	2,304	4
2001	62,690	100	49,475	79	8,435	13	8,435	3	2,678	4
Females
1992	1,536	100	1,089	71	309	20	309	2	62	4
1993	1.580	100	1,164	74	323	20	323	1	72	5
1994	1,804	100	1,355	75	370	21	370	1	52	3
1995	1,998	100	1,510	76	390	20	390	1	71	4
1996	2,305	100	1,749	76	448	19	448	1	83	4
1997	2,672	100	2,013	75	523	20	523	1	111	4
1998	3,120	100	2,373	76	560	18	560	1	157	5
1999	3,207	100	2,418	75	609	19	609	1	144	4
2000	3,355	100	2,522	75	643	19	643	1	153	5
2001	3,713	100	2,728	73	788	21	788	1	157	4
* Prior to 1993 coding of ethnic group was similar to that used in the EC Labour Force survey, in 1993 a new ethnic classification system was adopted by prisons which is congruent with that used for the Census of population. The change in coding means that figures for 1998,1992 and 1993-96 are not directly comparable. ** Between 1988 and 1992 ethnic group classification was ‘West Indian, Guyanese, African’. *** Between 1988 and 1992 ethnic group classification was ‘Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi’. **** Between 1988 and 1992 ethnic group classification was ‘Chinese, Arab, Mixed Origin’. Source: HM Prison statistics England and Wales 2001 (Cm 5743). The Stationery Office, London

Table 18.4 Prison population: selected countries
Country	Prison population	Inmates per 100,000 population
USA	1,993,503	700
Lebanon	7,296	220
Portugal	13,106	130
England and Wales	67,056	125
Scotland	6,172	120
Spain	45,633	115
Turkey	71,860	110
Germany	79,348	95
France	46,376	80
Greece	8,343	80
Denmark	3,279	60
Northern Ireland	863	50
Source: The Times 6 December 2003.

The prison capital of the world is the USA, which, with over two million inmates, jails nearly 700 of every 100,000 of its population (see Sim, 2004). How are we to make sense of, or explain the increasing numbers of people imprisoned, and their variation in terms of gender, ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity? What policies or theories lay behind this surge in incarceration compared to Europe and the developing countries? Since both the Conservatives and New Labour seem to take their cue from the US in many areas of penal policy, it would be useful to look at how policy has developed in the USA.

The USA penal policy agenda unleashed on the criminal justice system of England and Wales

Under the influence of far-right ideologues such as Charles Murray (1990) and Richard Hernstein (1995), conservative US administrations from the time of Ronald Reagan (1981-89) to George Bush (2001—current at the time of writing) have supported earlier theories of the causes of crime such as biology, physiology and now genetics. These theories also concentrate on the individual rather than society, ignoring the influence of structural factors. It was argued that the propensity for criminal behaviour lay in a per son’s genetic make-up. If this was the case, change could only take place through medical treatment. The emphasis of current penal policy is on punishment and retribution rather than the rehabilitation of the offender. Consequently, this rise in a punitive and retributive discourses on both sides of the Atlantic from the Clinton Administration to the Labour party in the UK through to the Bush Administration justifies harsher measures against offenders.

Crime policy is not made in isolation but is part of a political conception of society, which drives economic and social policies and that mutually reinforce each other. In this chapter it is important to refer back to earlier periods of social philosophy. The role of the government has changed from an interventionist stance most clearly seen with the birth of the welfare state to a more laissez-faire approach. This is most evidently seen, with the shift of resources from social welfare, education, and public housing to the military, business subsidies, and the expansion of prisons. Criminologists have drawn on political/ social theory to explain this shift from social policy to penal policy. Highlighting crime as the problem of the times connects with people who are not suffering from unemploy ment or other social ills, and it creates demands for ever more punishment, ever more government intervention. Several criminologists have suggested that new right econom ics is the most important explanation for the war on crime policies, which are directed at the most marginalized and disadvantaged groups (this idea goes some way to explaining the differences between the USA/UK and northern European countries) (see O’Malley, 2000).

New Labour arresting the problem

The questions of policing, discrimination in the criminal justice system raised in the Scarman Report entered the political arena in mid-1990s. The focus this time was the murder of Stephen Lawrence, an eighteen year-old black man stabbed to death whilst waiting for a bus on 22 April 1993. In response to the then Home Secretary, Jack Straw, set up the Mcpherson Commission in 1998. The report found that the criminal justice system and, by implication, other aspects of British society, was ‘institutionally racist’, which according to Dr Robin Oakley, ‘can influence police service delivery…. not solely through the deliberate actions of a small number of bigoted individuals, but through a more systematic tendency that could unconsciously influence police performance generally’ (Macpherson, 1999; Chapter 6, section 6.31). When Labour came to government in May 1997, the prison population was 60,131. Previously it took four decades (1954-94) for the prison population to rise by 25,000. On 5 March 2004, there were 4,549 women in prison, an increase of 151 per cent in the last ten years (Prison Reform Trust, 2004, 3). Over the last year, prison over crowding has been at its highest level and there are some prisons, which are not only overcrowded, but have also exceeded their safe maximum capacity. Out of the 138 prisons in England and Wales, 85 were overcrowded. England and Wales has the highest imprisonment rate in the European Union and women’s prisons rank among the worst in the country (ibid.). Over a quarter of this number are from ethnic minorities, including many foreign nationals who have been given long ‘deterrent’ sentences for smuggling drugs. The policies of the subsequent Home Secretary, David Blunkett, of longer, mandatory sentences, and the abolition of the right to jury trials for some categories of crimes, are opposed by the judicial establishment, as they watch the numbers of prisoners spiralling out of control (The Times, 6 August 2003).

The Labour government did, however, commission a major report into sentencing policy, the Halliday Report, which laid the framework for the Criminal Justice Act 2003.

Its recommendations, however, continued the trend evident from the mid-1990s of emphasizing persistence, redefining proportionality in sentencing from ‘proportionality of punishments to the seriousness of the current offence’, to ‘proportionality to serious­ness of offence plus record’ (see www.homeoffice.gov.uk/docs/halliday.html).

Under this Labour government, there has been a re-emergence of rehabilitation, under the Home Office’s ‘what works’ programme. All persons under sentence, whether in prison or in the community, are to be offered courses and treatments designed to help them refrain from re-offending. While this is an improvement on the previous Conservative government’s emphasis on incarceration with little thought to rehabilitation, there are some causes for concern. First of all, the programmes are based on crime patterns, motivations and causes associated with the male criminal majority: special female programmes do exist, but they deal with stereotypical female ‘needs’ rather than being rooted in the circumstances surrounding female offending.

Moreover, assessment of offenders for the programmes and for suitability for com munity rather than prison sentences (custody-minus rather than custody-plus, as the new sentencing terminology puts it), or for early release still include the racially correlated risk-of-reoffending factors first used in the USA.

Home Office ministers, and the government more generally, express commitment to eradicating discrimination in criminal justice. Ethnic monitoring, inspections and race/ gender awareness training have been introduced in all criminal justice agencies, and yet the figures of over-representation of black offenders—particularly black female offenders—in prison continues. Whatever the penal policy in fashion (rehabilitation, just deserts, incapacitation, risk management), it is the poor, especially the poor from ethnic minorities, who are at the hard end of penal policies. There has been a shift in the nature of discrimination from direct to indirect, that is, from discrimination based blatantly on gender and/or race prejudice to discrimination which results from policies which are intended to be gender/race neutral in fact disproportionately affecting certain groups. It is the embedding of this form of indirect discrimination in the routines and processes of criminal justice which is only just beginning to be acknowledged as institutional racism.

The tabloid press: creating moral panics

Hall et al., in the book, Policing the Crisis: Mugging the State and Law and Order(1978) criticize what they saw as the exaggerated and racist reporting of black criminality in the British tabloids. In taking the example of the dramatic increase in ‘mugging’ in the 1970s, Hall et al., suggested that official crime figures were used as political cannon fodder during times of economic crisis to justify a failing capitalist economy. In this way, a myth or illusion of black street crime was created to act as a scapegoat, to draw the public’s attention away from the real social problems of the time. A more recent moral panic was witnessed with public reaction over the Bulger case (1993), the Soham Murders (2002) and the death of Sarah Payne (see Chapter 12). Vigilante groups formed and in some incidents paediatri cians were attacked because people confused the word paediatrician with paedophile.

By labelling mugging as a crime of young, black males (see Hall, 1978) the mass media constructed the image of the archetypical mugger, the black male. There are three key positions when studying the relationship, if any, between ‘race’, ethnicity and crime. The idea espoused by Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy of the neo-Marxist Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, argues that higher levels of criminality amongst the British Black population are ‘mythical’, the illusion being created as the result of distorted media attention. The second position also connected with Gilroy, goes further to suggest that the above population do not commit more crime, but that the supposed level of criminality is the effect of selective police practices arising from ‘police racism’. Third, the New Left Realist perspective argues that the anti-colonial political struggle, media exaggeration and police racism may all exist, but this does not adequately explain the over representation of certain groups in official figures and in prison. Instead, it is the increased levels of marginalization experienced by this group that can explain their use of crime as a response to their situation.

In most cases of murder, both victim and perpetrator are from the same race and ethnic group. But in the majority of murders committed by white against white, race or ethnicity fails to be an issue. When Afro-Caribbeans commit murder, however, especially with guns, it becomes a sensational issue of black-on-black crime. When certain crimes become racialized, political pressure builds to target the offending community, rather than the individual perpetrator. Thus, stereotyping or stigmatizing means that all members of a particular group or type of people are assumed to be guilty. One of the reasons for the failure of the police to solve the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993 was that the police assumed that it was gang related, because he was young, black and male. The stereotypes of the young African/Caribbean male as criminal are so strong that it was initially taken for granted that Stephen Lawrence must have been part of the trouble, not an innocent victim.

The absence of racialized discourse for certain crimes is illustrated in the portrayal of paedophilia, which is almost exclusively a crime of white males (Chapter 12). The tab loids never identified them as such, and this is not fixed in the minds of the public. Public hatred and suspicion may be directed at all paedophiles, and suspected paedophiles, but this label is not attached to all white men, or all white men living in the same neighbour hood as a convicted paedophile, in the way that the label ‘mugger’ is applied to young black men. Similarly, the labels joy riding, serial killing, arson, corporate manslaughter, football hooliganism, racial violence, and professional assassination do not attach to white males, although their perpetrators are almost exclusively from this group.

FPWP/HIBISCUS: A case study in the social construction of crime
This section focuses on the role of Hibiscus in its work with female foreign nationals who find themselves locked in the criminal justice system of England and Wales. At present there are over 3,000 Jamaicans in UK prisons, most of them for attempting to import drugs (Heaven, 1996). In 2002, 20 per cent of women in prison were foreign nationals; the majority, 60 per cent, had West Indian Nationalities (Prison Reform Trust, 2004: 10). Jamaica is a Caribbean island which had a population of 2.7 million in 2002 (http:// www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook). If these prisoners were in their own country, Jamaica would then have one of the highest prison populations (120 per 100,000) in the world. Male Jamaicans constitute less than 5 per cent of the total UK prison population, but 600 Jamaican women constitute 15 per cent of the 4,000 inmates in women’s prisons here. Table 18.5 shows that Jamaican women in prison for drugs offences increased from

Table 18.5 Number of Jamaican and Nigerian women in UK prisons for the years 1990-2003
Year	Nigerian	Jamaican
1990	83	30
1991	66	42
1992	70	43
1993	62	54
1994	59	56
1996 (JUN)	20	40
1996 (Dec)	16	52
2001	16	329
2003*		800
Source: crown Copyright. Data provided by the Research, Development and Statistics Directorate of the Home Office. * Figures at the time writing were not available.

30 in 1990 to 800, which is an increase of almost 2000 per cent. These numbers explain to some extent the record rise in the female population to over 4,000. Table 18.5 also shows that the number of Nigerian couriers peaked at 83 in 1990, and declined steadily to 16 in 2001.

For over twenty years Olga Heaven has worked with the Prison Service to address the needs of female foreign nationals in prison in the UK and the following section will outline who foreign nationals are, where they come from and what happens to them once in prison. As a result of the war on drugs policy, the government responded with ‘tough’ measures (Heaven, 1996; Hood, 1992). Lord Lane, the Lord Chief Justice in 1986, introduced the idea of long, ‘deterrent’ sentences, based on the quantity and purity of drugs, disallowing any inclusion of mitigating circumstances to be used as a defence (see McKoy, 1991). The effect of this new policy has led to longer sentences in the UK and under the Nigerian law, it is possible for couriers who had completed their sentence in the UK to be punished and imprisoned again.

The mule

According to the tabloid stereotype, the ‘mule’ is a young, sophisticated, beautiful woman who deals in large quantities of heroin and cocaine to fund a jet-set lifestyle. The reality unearthed by FPWP is far more mundane. In reality the courier is poorly educated, from the lowest socioeconomic group, in her late twenties to mid-thirties, a single mother of two to three children and living in absolute poverty. In many cases women come from the slums of Jamaica or Columbia, from the cities of countries in economic crisis. It is these women who find themselves locked in the UK prison system. Many of the women Hibiscus has encountered claimed they were tricked or forced into carrying drugs, and others were driven by desperation and poverty. The Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 distinguished between the possession of drugs and trafficking drugs. The law stipulates that trafficking in a Class A drug carries a maximum penalty of fourteen years, while possession of a Class B drug carries a maximum of seven years. Sentencing is based on the weight and the purity of the drug. For example: a quantity of 500g at 100 per cent purity attracts a sentence of ten years and 1kg a length of between 10 and 14 years.

One in ten passengers on some flights from Jamaica are couriers holding small quan tities of drugs. This view supports anecdotal evidence that some women now in prison are used as decoys to divert attention from middle class couriers carrying larger quantities of cocaine. When these decoys are caught, these women have no way of coping with the situation. These women arrive in the UK without appropriate clothing for the British climate, far from their children and unaware of their rights. They find themselves com peting for survival in an alien and hostile prison culture, where the food and language is different and even basic cosmetics for skin and haircare are in some prisons unavailable or far too costly.

Ninety per cent of female foreign nationals are first offenders who had never been in the UK before, and are sole providers for several dependent children. They become victims of a sentencing policy which refuses to take their circumstances into account. Sentencing a man to prison punishes one person, while a woman’s sentence must be multiplied by the children she has left behind. In prison the women suffer constant anxiety about their children, left behind without a family or a state to care for them. Furthermore, without a structure of care many of the children are thrown out of squalid rented accommodation onto the streets. In some cases, family members are shot or recruited into the drug trafficking trade. These are just some of the effects of imprisoning a female foreign national for an average of ten years.

Hibiscus is an independent charity founded in 1991. We have offices in London, Lagos and in Kingston. The primary functions are to locate and inform dependent children and other family members of the woman’s situation. This helps to ensure that contact with the prisoners and their family are maintained. Moreover, our role is to inform and advise the women of their rights, provide interpreters, counselling, social, legal and welfare assistance. Advocacy is central to our role. It is through media interviews, participating in documentaries, campaigning and writing a chapter such as this that the charity attempts to raise awareness of the plight of female foreign nationals. It is by informing and advizing government policy, the female prison estate and educating public opinion about the nature and conditions that lead women into this type of crime that we can begin to address the needs of female foreign nationals.

In 1991, Hibiscus and the BBC produced a highly successful documentary entitled Mules. The 30-minute documentary provided a graphic display of the poverty faced by Nigerian women in their own country and the social conditions and experiences endured whist imprisoned at HMP Holloway. Audiences in the UK were horrified to see the level of social deprivation that foreign nationals faced as they found themselves in British gaols. Moreover, this documentary had a huge impact on dispelling myths about women drug couriers both in the UK and in Nigeria, while at the same time exposing the flaws in the ‘deterrent’ policy discussed earlier on in the chapter.

In Nigeria the impact was even more dramatic: the High Commission in London taped the programme and sent it to Lagos where it was shown on prime-time national TV. Like the British tabloids, they had created the Mule as a woman driven by money rather than a women driven by desperation. Faced with the images of dilapidated houses and malnourished children that were left behind, the Nigerian public demanded that the government should tackle this social problem.

The transmission of the documentary in Nigeria showed potential Mules the reality of prison life in the UK. Dealers could no longer convince them that they would not be caught, or that they would be deported on the same flight that they came in on. The pool of couriers dried up; the numbers arrested or imprisoned began to fall, and there is anecdotal evidence that Nigerian drug dealers shifted attention to other West African countries and to South Africa.

As the Jamaican numbers approached crisis proportions, Hibiscus, with the assistance of the UK High Commission organized a conference in Kingston in September 2001, to address the issues and find solutions to the problem. Experts, professionals, charities and others involved with the operational needs of the Criminal Justice System and the wel fare of prisoners in both countries gathered to share ideas on what could be done to reverse this growing trend.

Since the Conference in 2001, there has been a huge publicity campaign in Jamaica supported by the media and government officials to spread the message that carrying drugs or acting as Mule is not the road out of poverty. This publicity campaign has led togovernment-based training programmes on a local level but has also led to the use of sniffer dogs and scan machines at airports. In addition, both governments have intro duced legislation to seize the assets of dealers. After these measures were introduced, just one Jamaican courier was arrested in the UK over a period of months compared to three a day previously. But our work is still unfinished as thousands of foreign nationals choke the prison system. The 3,000 Jamaicans in the UK prison system, costs the tax payer over £150 million per year. Hibiscus has therefore much the following recommendations:

(a)  amnesty for less serious offenders of good behaviour coming to the end of their sentences;

(b)  parole and reduced time for those serving longer sentences;

(c)  an arrangement with the Jamaican government to let offenders serve part of their sentences in their country or to supervise released prisoners on parole;

(d)  a system of cash incentives for those of good behaviour who make the fullest use of educational and employment opportunities in prison;

(e)  the Jamaican and the UK government to collaborate on a prison building programme in Jamaica.

CONCLUSION

This chapter has examined how theory, ideology, rhetoric, politics and the media have combined to influence the policies that have resulted in foreign national women being over-represented in prisons in the UK. Moreover, we have shown that ‘race’, ‘ethnicity’ and ‘crime’ are social constructs that vary from society to society, within societies and over time. Earlier theorists concentrated on genetic ‘defects’, physical characteristics, on ‘blood’, inherited characteristics, ‘race’ or national origin as the causes of crime. More modern theories have looked to structural causes in society, such as deprivation, unemployment, and inequality. Foreign national women prisoners are over-represented amongst ethnic racial minorities and the work of Hibiscus has brought to the fore of prison policy in various countries the plight of foreign nationals. It is only through advocacy and challenging outmoded typifications of feminin ity and ethnicity, that we can address the inhumanity, ineffectiveness and counter-productivity of a ‘deterrent’ policy that suffuses penal policy today. Furthermore, it is an indictment of the English criminal justice system that justice and equality before the law as highlighted here and in other parts of the book are so unevenly distributed.

GUIDE TO FURTHER READING

Bowling, B. and Phillips, C. (2002), Racism, Crime and Justice, Harlow: Longman Criminology Series.

This is a lucid presentation of the relations between racism and crime as they develop and interact in the Criminal Justice System. The critical analyses of ‘race’, ‘ethnicity’, ‘prejudice’ and ‘discrimination’, and how they affect the social constructions of ‘crime’ are particularly valuable, especially when placed in their historical contexts.

Cohen, P. (ed), New Ethnicities, Old Racisms (1999), London: Zed Books.

This book analyses these concepts from a post-modern perspective which rejects essentialist notions of race and ethnicity. This edited collection shows how a post-modernist account explains how identities develop, within the context of cultural transformation in modern Britain.

Green, P. (ed), Drug Couriers (1996), Quartet Books: London.

This collection is part of the Howard League Handbooks series. It combines the work of scholars and practitioners who reject the popular prejudices and stereotypes propagated by the media and politicians. By fostering a more objective and rational explanation of the problem it gives policy makers the opportunity to be truly ‘tough on the causes of crime’.

Ramsbotham, P. Prisongate (2003), Simon and Schuster: London.

The book by Her Majesty’s former Chief inspector of Prisons is a severe indictment of the policies of successive

governments which fail in their statutory duties to care for their imprisoned population.

Tonry, M. Malign Neglect (1996), Oxford University Press: New York, Oxford.

The book examines how certain policies develop that would appeal to middle-class voters. Under Presidents Reagan, Clinton and Bush, certain policies had the effect of increasing numbers of young black males in prison, whilst the actual crime rate remained constant. He addresses the nature of policy making, hidden agendas and whether male Afro-Americans are expedient to the voting system as reflected in the execution of certain policies.

WEB LINKS

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds

Is a useful website to find statistics on almost every aspect of the criminal justice system. The site includes     lections on community policy, crime reduction, criminal justice, drugs prevention, immigration and nationality, race equality and diversity. An important report pertinent to this chapter is the report titled Statistics on Race and The Criminal Justice System (2002).

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/census2001

The National Census is the most complete source of information about the population that we have.

http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk

Liberty is an independent human rights organization which works to defend and extend rights and freedoms

in England and Wales.

http://fpwphibiscus.mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/index.jhtml

Hibiscus is an independent organization that campaigns and provides advice for the families of foreign

national women who are in prison in England and wales.

http://www.womeninprison.org.uk

Women in Prison is a charitable organization that campaigns and provides advice for women who are in

prison and who are on release.

REFERENCES

Carmichael S. and Hamilton c.v. (1968) Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America. London: Penguin.

Cashmore, E. (1996) Dictionary of Race and Ethnic Relations (4th edn). London: Routledge.

Cohen, R (ed) (1999) New Ethnicities, Old Racisms. London: zed Books.

Croall, H. (1998) Crime and Society in Britain: An introduction. London: Longman.

Green P. (eds) (1996) Drug Couriers: The Construction of a Public Enemy in Drug couriers: A New Perspective. London: Quartet Books.

Hall, S. (ed) (1997) Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage.

Hall, S., Clarke, J., Critcher, C. Jefferson, T. and Roberts, B. (1978) Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order. London: Macmillan.

Heaven, 0. (1996) ‘Hibiscus: working with Nigerian women’ in R Green (ed) Drug Couriers: A New Perspective. London:

Quartet. Herrnstein, R.j. (1995) ‘Criminogenic Traits, in J.Q. Wilson and J. Petersillia (eds), Crime. San Francisco, CA: ICS Press. Herrnstein, R.j. and Murray, c. (1994) The Bell Curve: intelligence and Class structure in American Life. New York and

London: Free Press. HM Prison Service (July 2004) Foreign Nationals. London: Home Office. Hood, R. (1992) Race and Sentencing. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Home Office (2002) Prison Statistics England Wales 2001, Cm 5743. London: Home Office. Hudson, B. (1989) ‘Discrimination and Disparity: The influence of Race on Sentencing’. New Community, 16,1:23-34.

Macpherson, w. (1999) The Stephen Lawrence inquiry, of an inquiry by Sir William Macpherson of Cluny. Advised by Tom Cook, The Right Reverend Dr John Sentamu and Dr Richard Stone. Cm 4262-1. London: Home Office.

Malik, K. (1996) The Meaning of Race. London: Macmillan.

McKoy, A.w. (1991) The Politics of Heroin. New York: Lawrence Hill.

Miles, R. (1989) Racism. London: Routledge.

Murray, C. (1990) The Emerging British Underclass. London: institute for Economic Affairs.

NACRO (2003) Race and Prisons: Where are we now? London: NACRO.

NACRO (2004) Barriers to Equality—Challenges in tracking black and minority ethnic people through the criminal justice system. London.

O’Malley, P. (ed) (2000) Crime and the Risk Society. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Phillips, C. and Bowling, B. (2002) ‘Racism, ethnicity, crime, and criminal justice’ in M. Maguire etal. (ed) The Oxford Handbook of Criminology. Oxford: Oxford university Press.

Prison Reform Trust (2004) Many Forgotten Prisoners—The Plight of Foreign National Prisoners in England and Wales.

Prison Statistics England and Wales 2001, Cm 5743. London: The Stationery office.

Ramsbotham, D. (2003) Phsongate. London: Simon and Schuster.

Rowe, M. (2004) Policing, Race and Racism, Cullompton: Willan Publishing.

Sim, J. (2004) ‘Thinking about imprisonment’ in j. Muncie and D. Wilson (ed) Student Handbook of Criminal Justice and

Criminology. London: Cavendish. Solomos, J. and Back, L. (1994) Race, Politics and Social Change. London: Routledge. Solomos, J. (1993) Race and Racism in Contemporary Britain. London: Macmillan. The Times, 6 September (2003) ‘Prison Crisis as Foreign inmates Soar’. The Times, 3 September (2003) ‘imprisoned in the iron Cage of vengeance’. Tonry, M. (1995) Malign Neglect: Race, Crime and Punishment in America. New York: Oxford University Press.