The need to reframe who we are

Webster (2007) argues that black offenders, who end up in the criminal justice system and prison, are disproportionately represented compared to their numbers in the population. Patel and Tyrer (2011) express the view that when race enters the ‘othering’ process, particularly within the context of crime and deviancy, it is important to consider the roots of racially charged concepts that disproportionately target minority groups such as black people. Similarly, Gabbidon and Taylor-Greene (2012) argue that the disenfranchisement of black people involved in crime is ideologically driven as a way of bolstering the carceral estate. Tonry (2011) proposes that these ‘racial disparities’ are unjustifiable and are more about the maintenance of political dominance over blacks. Tonry concludes by arguing that the visualization of black people through the media, film, and TV has created a culture that views black people as criminals and as being predisposed to anti-social behaviour. Marable (1995) also suggests that inequality for black people involved in crime is based on black male stereotypes that white society imposes via institutions, and says the wider social structure generates the type of inequality that produces subordination for black people within the criminal justice system. If the picture painted of black criminality as aggressive, nihilistic, and purely criminal enterprise embeds itself in the consciousness of society and constructs racialized typographies of people as ‘criminal’, what are the consequences for the way black offenders achieve parity?