A FAIR HEARING? ETHNIC MINORITIES IN THE CRIMINAL COURTS.

Vol. 16 No.1 (January 2006), pp.48-49

A FAIR HEARING? ETHNIC MINORITIES IN THE CRIMINAL COURTS. By Stephen Shute, Roger Hood, and Florence Seemungal. Devon, UK and Portland, OR: Willan Publishing, 2005. 232pp. Cloth. £35.00/$64.95. ISBN: 1-84392-084-0.

Reviewed by Mary Atwell, Department of Criminal Justice, Radford University. Email: matwell [at] radford.edu

It is most likely that the audience for this book in the United States will be limited. Although the subject is significant and the authors are scholars with fine credentials, the presentation of the material in the driest of monographic styles and the cost of the slim volume will probably restrict its appeal. Nonetheless, there are some points that may be of interest to the readers of the LAW AND POLITICS BOOK REVIEW.

Roger Hood, one of the researchers responsible for this work, was the author of an important report, RACE AND SENTENCING, produced in 1992. That study, carried out at the behest of the official Committee on Racial Equality, examined disparities in sentencing and had an influence on the understanding of racial bias in the criminal justice system in Great Britain. A FAIR HEARING is a follow up report that focuses on impressions about the role of race in the courts. To identify those perceptions, Hood and his colleagues interviewed more than one thousand subjects—defendants, attorneys, judges, magistrates, witnesses, and other court personnel—about whether they experienced racial bias or whether they believed such prejudice existed. The authors make a good, though brief, argument that perceptions of bias in the criminal justice system undermine the system’s effectiveness. Those who experience or believe that the institutions of justice are unfair are more likely to withdraw their support from them and less likely to feel they have the responsibility to obey or cooperate with those systems. This skepticism is even more common if the incidents of bias follow a history of prejudice and discrimination. Thus, a study of perceptions of racial injustice is justified as a way to raise public awareness and lead to necessary reforms, just as the examination of disparate sentencing did.

One early chapter is devoted to the research design and to some of the difficulties that might interfere with reaching the information sought by the study. The authors explained why they included a sample of white people along with their interviews with members of ethnic minority groups. If both whites and ethnic minorities shared perceptions of unfairness regarding the outcomes of their cases, the cause quite possibly was something other than racial bias. It seems reasonable that social and economic class would influence both outcomes and perceptions in the criminal justice system. Most American researchers tend to see race and class as intrinsically related factors. Oddly enough, the authors of A FAIR HEARING barely mention class, nor do they explain its omission from their consideration. Another thought-provoking issue raised, but just barely, is [*49] whether participants’ perceptions were concerned with procedural fairness (if they were treated with respect and whether they believed their rights were protected) or with distributive justice (whether minorities believed they were treated comparably with other defendants). The authors note these different meanings of justice, but when quoting from their respondents, they mix the two definitions together and provide no discussion of the possible contradictions between equality and fairness. To put the problem simply, often defendants are asking for cultural sensitivity while magistrates claim they practice equality by treating all who come before them “exactly the same.” Sorting out these theoretical issues that are closely related to the research questions could have been given more attention if the authors had provided a substantial review of the literature and a more thorough discussion of their findings. Although the governmental bodies that supported this work might not have required those features, a general audience of scholars would find them extremely useful.

Shute, Hood, and Seemungal conclude that the percentage of ethnic minorities who believe they had experienced racial bias in the courts was lower than expected. Judges, attorneys, and other court personnel attributed those generally positive results to a “cultural shift” in the last decade that included initiatives to make the courts more sensitive to a multi-cultural society. The final chapter addresses the future—ongoing efforts to reduce the reality and perceptions of racial discrimination in the judiciary. Suggestions include more minorities at all levels of court personnel, less formality, the use of laypersons’ language instead of “legalese,” more interpreters, and more individualized sentences. The book would have benefited from a more extensive discussion of the implications of those changes—for example, would more discretion in sentencing open the door to more prejudice? But clearly the authors’ purpose was not to provide exhaustive, or even extensive, discussions of the implications of their research. Although they analyzed their quantitative data, they simply laid out their subjects’ verbal responses with minimal comment. Any real discussion of the meaning of their work for actual policy development has been left to others.

The book includes the sixteen page interview schedule used in questioning defendants. It could serve as a model for students developing a research instrument. The questions used to interview judges, magistrates, barristers, solicitors, witnesses, and other court personnel are unaccountably omitted.

In Britain, as in the United States, racial disparities may well be the most difficult and the most critical issue facing the criminal justice system. All attempts to address those problems and to formulate policies that will reduce discrimination are valuable. But to be useful to a wider audience, Shute, Hood, and Seemungal should have gone beyond merely reporting their results and provided a larger intellectual context for their work.

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