with conflicting values and interests. (Vold et al. 1998) There is seen to be a link between power and crime, the more powerful you are, the least likely to be committing a crime, so the lower classes are discriminated here as they don’t have the same power a middle-class or upper-class businessman might have therefore they are labelled to be trouble-makers, they are treated harsher by the criminal justice system than their peers, but the lower class is seen more favourably than ethnic minorities, especially ethnic groups that have less power than them. In the 1960’s, researchers found that blacks were more severely sentenced than whites. Hagan in 1974 reviewed many of the findings supporting racial discrimination and found that studies were not allowing for the possibility that black defendants may be charged with more serious crimes than whites, and may have more serious criminal records (cited in ‘Theoretical Criminology’). Lizotte in 1978 found that blacks have been shown to receive harsher sentences because they are less likely to make bail, since they are less affluent, and this reduces their ability to provide an effective defence. Another model which discusses discrimination is the Learning model of crime. Barnard argued that poverty, urban environment and discrimination resulted in chronic arousal to the people living in inner-city houses. People living in these areas interpret a wide variety of events in such a way that they respond with a lot of aggression, even if the situation was relatively harmless to begin with, therefore the inner-city areas where the chronic arousal takes place are isolated socially from the rest of the city. Discrimination is a major factor in the police force, it has been well known, due to the media, that in Western countries police stop and search youths just because of their colour. A lot of violence has erupted due to the Negro thinking it is unjust, one prime ...
