Changes in the Social Construct of Criminality Among the Immigrants in the United Kingdom (From Immigrant Delinquency: Social Construction of Deviant Behaviour and Criminality of Immigrants in Europe, P 103-131, 1996, compiled by Salvatore Palidda)

• NCJ Number: 172688
• Author(s): B Agozino
• Date Published: 1996
• Length: 29 pages
• Sale Source: Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities
• Language: English
• Country: Belgium

Annotation

This analysis of problems experienced by immigrants in the criminal justice system in the United Kingdom concludes that the combination of criminalization and racialization of immigration results from a process of focusing on differences for the purpose of exclusion, with inclusion being only partially selective along race, class, and gender lines.

Abstract

The relationship between criminality and immigration is too easily reduced to the criminality or otherwise of individual immigrants or the victimization of immigrants by individual offenders. In contrast, the available information overwhelmingly indicates what might be termed institutionalized crimes against marginalized or excluded groups that are often victimized and criminalized collectively. However, most criminologists and victimologists still focus on what the criminal justice system does to the individual offender or on the fate of the individual victim. Nevertheless, the data indicate the immigrant is the typical criminalized person rather than the typical criminal. The immigrant is also the model of the innocent being victimized as a member of a demonized category and not a typical example of the individual offender being punished. 70 references (Author abstract modified)