ABSTRACT
The criminal justice system follows the principle that all citizens are equal before the law and that everybody has equal access to justice regardless of their ethnic or racial background. This means that it is one of the most important institutions of the state in determining the extent to which minority groups are treated equitably in British society. The main aim of this chapter is to discuss the experiences of people from minority groups as suspects, perpetrators, victims of crime and agents of criminal justice. Available evidence suggests that their experiences of criminal justice are very different from those of the white majority (cf Crow, 1987; NACRO, 1991; Fitzgerald, 1993). This chapter will provide a summary of the evidence that both criminologists and successive governments have collected to describe and explain these experiences and will give an overview of the debates that criminologists have engaged in to explain elevated offending and imprisonment rates for certain minority groups.
