... as criminal or deviant. Becker claims, "Once a person is labelled criminal or deviant, they begin to act in ways that confirm the label in the form of self-fulfilling prophecies." The picture presented by the official statistics on crime and ethnic minorities consists of a concentration of criminality amongst certain sections of young males. This is known as disproportionate representation. It is particularly young black males who are over-represented as negative stereotypes held by the police force pathologise black culture and lead to a biased law enforcement. Black peoples criminalities are often help them to become scapegoats in society and the media helps this by distortorting black crime which can lead to moral panics and a therefore need for more police, which in turn makes black people feel like they are under surveillance. Steven Box (1981) compared the official criminal statistics to victim surveys. He rejects the view presented in ...

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