Immigrants As Victims of Crime and Criminal Justice Discourse in Australia
| Author | Jock Collins |
| Published date | 01 January 2007 |
| DOI | 10.1177/026975800701400104 |
| Date | 01 January 2007 |
International
Review
ofVictimology.
2007,
Vol.
14,
pp.
57-79
0269-7580/07$10
© A B
Academic
Publishers
-
Printed
in
Great
Britain
IMMIGRANTS AS VICTIMS
OF
CRIME AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE
DISCOURSE IN AUSTRALIA
JOCK
COLLINS"
University
of
Technology,
Sydney,
Australia
ABSTRACT
Issues
related
to
immigrants
as
criminals
or
victims
of
crime
resonate
strongly
in
Australia
because
it
has
a
relatively
larger
and
more
diverse
immigrant
population
than
most
western
countries.
Focussing
on
Sydney,
the
aim
of
this
article
is
to
explore
a
number
of
aspects
of
immigrant
victimology
in
Australia:
immigrants
as
victims
of
crime·
as
victims
of
the
fear
of
crime;
as
victims
of
racial
abuse
and
violence
in
the
aftermath
of
the
11
ih
of
September,
2001;
and
as
victims
of
media
discourses
about
'ethnic
crime'.
To
do
this
the
article
draws
on
national
and
international
research
into
immigrant
crime
and
immigrant
victimology
and
on
two
sources
of
primacy
data:
a
Sydney
survey
of
825
youth
and
adults
(eighty
per
cent
of
whom
were
immigrant
minorities)
and
data
from
a
Hotline
established
in
Sydney
in
the
immediate
aftermath
of
9/11.
The
paper
provides
evidence
of
each
dimension
of
munigrant
victimology
and
concludes
that
there
has
been
a
disproportionate
focus
on,
and
fear
of,
immigrant
or
'ethnic'
crime
in
the
Sydney
media.
This
discourse
of
immigrant
criminality,
exacerbated
post
9/11,
appears
to
leave
little
space
for
a
more
sympathetic
discourse
about
immigrant
victims
of
crime
and
the
resulting
construction
of
immigrant
cultures
of
criminality
leads
to
policy
responses
that
ignore
issues
such
as
inequality,
unemployment,
education
and
neighbourhood
renewal.
Keywords:
discourse
analysis-
fear
of
crime-
immigrant
victims-
hate
crime
-immigrant
criminality
INTRODUCTION
Concern about crime
and
fear
of
crime appears
to
be
one
of
the characteristics
ofthe
age,
not just
in
Australia but also in all western societies. Reviewing the
crime issue
in
the
UK
and
USA,
Schneider and Kitchen
(2002:
p.
25)
state
that:
'Crime and
fear
of
crime
are
major
issues
in
British
and
American
societies that
help mould our cities
and
influence the qualities oflife
in
both
nations.'
Crime
and
fear
of
crime have increasingly been linked
to
immigration
and
immigrants.
In
recent years in Australia and Europe
the
immigrant crime
issue
has captured media headlines
and
shaped political discourses and electoral
outcomes
in
an
unprecedented
way
(Collins eta/.,
2000;
Collins, 2003).
Post
*
Professor
of
Economics,
School
of
Finance
and
Economics,
University
of
Technology,
Sydney
(UTS),
PO
Box
123,
Broadway
NSW
2007,
Australia.
58
the
11th
September
2001
attacks
on
the
twin towers ofthe
World
Trade
Centre
in
New
York,
the
12th
October
2002
Bali bombing and
the
7th
July
2005
bombings
on
London's public transport system, concern
about
immigrants as
terrorists, the
extreme
form
of
crime,
has
cemented the image
of
immigrants
as
perpetrators
of
crime in public and private discourses. This
has
reduced the
space
for
discourses about immigrants
as
victims
of
crime
at
the
very moment
that
many
immigrants, particularly those
from
the Middle East and those
of
Islamic
faith,
have
increasingly been victimised following
these
events.
But
as
Bowling
and Phillips (2002:
p.
76)
observe,
even before these events there had
been relatively little attention given
to
immigrants
as
victims
of
crime:
'Until
recently,
the 'race
and
crime' debate has been preoccupied ...
by
the question
of
whether people
from
ethnic minorities are more (or less)
likely
to commit
criminal offences than those
of
the white majority population ...
[but]
has
largely been detached from discussions about ethnic differences in the extent
and
nature
of
victimisation and
how
patterns
of
offending
and
victimisation
interrelate.'
Issues related
to
immigrants
as
criminals or victims
of
crime resonate
strongly
in
Australia because it has a relatively larger and
more
diverse
immi-
grant population -
some
23
per cent
of
the population -than most western
countries (
OECD,
1998:
p.
31
).
It is
not
surprising that the immigrant
crime
de-
bate
has been centred
on
Sydney,
Australia's largest
city,
which
takes about
40
per cent
of
Australia's annual immigration intake. Indeed, according
to
a recent
report (State
Chamber
of
Commerce (New South
Wales),
2005:
p.
9),
Sydney
has
the seventh highest proportion
of
foreign-born
of
any
city
in
the world to-
day.
Data
from
the
2001
national
census
revealed that first-generation immi-
grants accounted
for
nearly
30
per cent
of
Sydney's population
of
four
million
while another
28
per cent
of
the population was second-generation immigrants
(Burnley,
2001).
After those born
in
the
UK,
Sydney's largest immigrant
groups are those born
in
China,
New
Zealand,
Vietnam,
Lebanon,
Italy,
Hong
Kong,
India,
Greece,
Korea,
Fiji and
South
Africa, though it
is
important
to
stress
the
diversity
of
the Sydney immigrant population, with
some
180
na-
tional birthplace groups,
so
that
Sydney
truly
is
the world in
one
city (Collins
and Castillo,
1998).
Significantly,
Sydney
is
also
the
main
centre
of
Middle
Eastern immigration, with seven out
of
every ten (107,405
or
72.2%)
of
Aus-
tralia's Lebanese immigrants settling
in
Sydney (Collins,
2005:
pp.
190-92).
Sydney
is
thus a good site to explore
contempora.ry
issues
of
immigrant crimi-
nality and immigrant victimology in Australia.
The
aim
of
this article
is
to
explore a number
of
aspects
of
immigrants
as
victims
of
crime
in
Australia with a
focus
on
Sydney.
One
is
the
evidence re-
lated
to
immigrants as victims
of
crime per
se.
Another
is
the
experience
of
im-
migrants as victims
of
the foar
of
crime. This
is
important because
fear
of
crime
among
individuals often leads them
to
change their behaviour and develop
anxieties about daily life
so
that
they,
too,
become victims
of
criminal dis-
course,
particularly when that discourse constructs a
fear
of
crime that
is
dis-
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