re far more likely to be undergoing the most severe penalty available. The prisoner is most likely to have missed out on the educational system and belongs to a minority group. Wolfgang and Ferracuti applied a theory relating to an earlier study on homicide in Philadelphia (Wolfgang, 1958). A significant number of homicides that had occurred amongst lower-class people resulted from trivial events that took on great importance due to expectations on how people behave. All people were expected to behave by asserting their chance to achieve vast riches. Although all individuals are not expected to achieve this goal, it is generally accepted that they should all try. Those who didn’t were characterised as lazy. PACE (Police and criminal evidence act, 1984) is an act which sets out to help safeguard suspects from mistreatment. It should help the minority who are discriminated against, but it doesn’t seem to happen. The minority’s don’t have the expertise to plead innocence when condemned as the criminal justice system is made up of liberal, middle-class, white men who base a lot of the cases on discretion. As they are not many ethnic professionals it doesn’t seem fair, as it could be classed as bias, as the white judges (or magistrates) prefer to give the middle-class a second chance. PACE is backed by five codes of practice, the first, Code A being on stop and search. The objective basis is that it shouldn’t derive from the general characteristics, Jefferson was unconvinced by this as he thought it was a guide to reasonable suspicion. Brown (1997) found that PACE had limited impact on stop and search practise due to difficulties over the concept of reasonable suspicion, poor training, poor sanctions for breaches of rules, and lack of public awareness of stop and search powers. There is another theory, the cumulative effects theory which predicts an increase in the proportion of black peopl...
