This could form the basis of a 10 mark question in the crime and deviance paper, in which case, you would have an item, which will direct you to two of the reasons mentioned below, which you must use if they are in the itme to get 10/10!
A mark scheme and some suggested answers to the above question*
8-10
Answers in this band will show good knowledge and understanding of relevant material on two reasons.
There will be two developed applications of material from the item
There will be appropriate analysis/evaluation of two reasons.
To get into this mark band you need to identify one reason, develop it, analyse it (so three good sentences of development/ analysis) and then repeat this for your second reason.
4- 7
Answers in this band will show a basic to reasonable knowledge and understanding.
There will be some successful application of material from the item.
There will be some analysis/evaluation
This means you’ve identified, developed and analysed one reason well, but not effectively developed or analysed the second reason.
1-3
Answers in this band will show limited knowledge of one or two reasons
There will be limited application of material from the item.
There will be limited or no analysis/evaluation.
You shouldn’t be down here.
Possible Criticisms
These could form the basis of any one of your two points.
Underlying patterns of offending are different…
The characteristics of offenders are different….
It’s the public that’s racist, the police just respond….
Racism is subjective, thus difficult to define
Racism is difficult to research in practice.
Example which should get you 5/10
Repeat with one of the other reasons to get 10/10
The first reason why it is doubtful that police racism explains the higher imprisonment rates of ethnic minorities is that there is some evidence that ethnic minorities might commit more crime.
Development For example, many ethnic minority groups experience higher levels of relative deprivation and marginalisation (applying left realism) which could explain actual underlying higher levels of offending.
Analysis Thus it might be these factors related to class and deprivation which explains the higher levels of policing and stop and search (and corresponding imprisonment) in minority areas rather than police racism. The police are not necessarily racist – they are just responding in an objective, rather than a racist way to really existing high crime rates in poorer areas, where ethnic minorities are more likely to live.
*Answers not endorsed by the AQA. These are my best guesses as to a safe minimum for getting full marks. NB – You may as well go with my best guess as the exemplars produced by the AQA don’t necessarily reflect the standards they mark to anyway.
A couple of interesting items in the news this week about the pros and cons of strict systems of education.
This article from the Daily Mail outlines the strict social-control policies at the The Michaela Community School (a free school) in a deprived area of north west London where pupils, on average, are doing twice as well as those in other comprehensives.
Policies include such things as children not being allowed to talk in lessons, having to walk single file in lessons and being required to do 90 minutes of homework a night.
The school models itself on the strict Tiger Parenting style adopted by Amy Chua, with teachers having extremely high expectations and having a zero tolerance approach to dissent. Parents also have to sign a detailed contract agreeing to support the school ethos.
Interestingly, selection is by lottery, and the school is oversubscribed, although liberal middle class parents are less likely to agree with the educational style.
This seems to show how a strict school ethos can really make a difference for kids from deprived backgrounds, and it also shows the advantages of Free Schools – if done well – as the methods used go against current teaching practices – but more than half of the teachers at this school aren’t qualified, as Free Schools are allowed to hire UQTs. A second article from The Guardian outlines the centrality of educational achievement and success in South Korea>
South Korea fell silent on Thursday as more than 600,000 students sat the annual college entrance exam, which could define their future in the ultra-competitive country. Success in the exam – which teenage South Koreans spend years preparing for – means a place in one of the elite colleges seen as key to a future career and even marriage prospects.
The government put in place some extraordinary measures to ensure students could focus on the examination:
Government offices, major businesses and even Seoul’s stock market opened at 10am, an hour later than usual, so as to clear the roads so that students could get to the exams on time.
Transport authorities halted all airport landings and take-offs for 30 minutes in the afternoon to coincide with the main language listening test.
Work at many construction sites was suspended and large trucks were banned from the roads near test venues
The pressure to score well in the exam has been blamed for teenage depression and suicide rates that are among the highest in the world.
To bring the two items together – maybe what makes the strictness the Michaela Community School so appealing is that it can enable students to get ahead of their peers in a more liberal education system, but if every school and family adopted this tiger-education approach, we’d just end up with more miserable and suicidal kids in the long run as everyone just spends more and more time trying to get ahead of each other.
This post contains two examples of possible 4/6 mark ‘outline and explain’ questions which may come up on the AQA’s Crime and Deviance Paper 3.
Outline two structural factors which may explain differences in offending by ethnicity (4)
Two marks for each of two appropriate reasons clearly outlined or one mark for appropriate reasons partially outlined
The higher rates of single parent families in African-Caribbean households (1 mark) this might explain the higher levels of crime because absent fathers mean lack of a disciplinary figure and the fact that children from Caribbean households are more likely to join gangs (+1 mark)
Blocked opportunities in the education system for African-Caribbean children (1 mark) which means lower educational achievement, and a higher chance of being unemployed, which is correlated with higher levels of economic crime (+1 mark)
Institutional racism in the police force (1 mark) higher rates of ethnic minority crime may be a frustrated response against police oppression, as with the London riots (+1 mark)
Outline three ways in which Racism may manifest itself in the criminal justice system (6)
Two marks for each of two appropriate reasons clearly outlined or one mark for appropriate reasons partially outlined. The following would get 1 mark each, you need to add in the +1s
The police stop disproportionate amounts of black and Asian people (1 mark)
Black suspects are more likely to be sent to jail than white people (1 mark)
Ethnic minorities are more likely to have their cases thrown out of court than white people (1 mark)
Black and minority officers are under-represented (1 mark)
There is a ‘canteen culture’ of Racism in the UK police force (1 mark)
The police force fail to take race crimes against ethnic minorities seriously (1 mark)
Unfortunately, there is a considerable amount of evidence suggesting a long history of institutional racism within the Criminal Justice System. Below we are going to look at the short version, starting with the case study of Stephen Lawrence…
The list of evidence is long, but there are limitations with this evidence, and alternative ways in which it might be interpreted; you should also be able to draw on other pieces of evidence which we’ve looked at in other parts of the course which point to a broader range of factors besides police racism which explain the disproportionately high numbers of Black and Asian people being processed through the criminal justice system.
1993: The Stephen Lawrence Case and the Macpherson Enquiry (1993/1999)
In this case a gang of white youths stabbed African Caribbean teenager Stephen Lawrence to death after shouting racist abuse at him. Despite substantial evidence against the youths, the police failed to mount a successful prosecution and no one was convicted of the murder. Following sustained pressure by Lawrence’s mother, the
The Macpherson enquiry was established to look into why and six years after Lawrence’s murder in 1999 it found that the Metropolitan police were institutionally racist.
The report defined institutional racism as ‘the collective failure of an organisation to provide and appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin. It can been seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour that amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping and which disadvantage minority ethnic peoples’.
Note the following quote by John Mewing, chief constable for Derbyshire who admitted during this enquiry: “In the police service there is a distinct tendency for officers to stereotype people. Discrimination and unfairness are a result. I know because as a young police officer, I was guilty of such behaviour”
Disproportionate and Discriminatory: Reviewing the Evidence on Police Stop and Sear
Although ten years old, this is one of the major pieces of research to have reviewed police prejudice since Stephen Lawrence – Phillips and Bowling are two names you should know in relation to this topic. Below is an extract to give you an idea of how strongly they talk about the existence of police racism…This is a piece of secondary research, and is a review of all available work done into Police Racism in the UK up until 2007.
Research evidence over the past three decades has found that specific stereotypes are commonly used by police officers to classify people on the basis of their ethnic origin. Studies found that black people were believed to be prone to violent crime and drug abuse, incomprehensible, suspicious, hard to handle, naturally excitable, aggressive, lacking brainpower, troublesome and ‘tooled up’.
These findings on racial prejudice and stereotyping have not been restricted to constables, but have been found throughout the ranks. Robert Reiner’s study of Chief Constables found that race was spontaneously mentioned more often than any other social division and was frequently brought up in other contexts.
Although some chiefs discussed ethnicity without invoking negative stereotypes, most spoke prejudicially. The predominant view was to regard the presence of black people as problematic for the police.
They tended to be seen as crime-prone, disorderly, argumentative, irrational, ‘likely to be carrying drugs or dangerous implements, noisy, and responsible for the antipathy held towards them’
Research in the 1990s suggested that overt targeting was ongoing; though police officers were more reluctant to admit it.
A Home Office funded study conducted by Janet Foster and colleagues found that explicit racist language was no longer tolerated and reached the view that it is gradually disappearing. Feeling under greater scrutiny after the Lawrence Inquiry, the authors argued that, in general, officers felt less able to carry out unjustified stop and search or ‘fishing trips’ without proper grounds for searching. However, the authors point to the possibility that racist attitudes and behaviour may simply have gone ‘underground’.
Although the links are complex, racially prejudiced attitudes do affect the way in which people behave. Hall et al argue that while there is no automatic or straightforward link between racially prejudiced attitudes and language and discriminatory or differential behaviour . . . there is a consistency in the pervasive nature and expression of racial stereotypes and their influence on police expectations and behaviours.
There is clear evidence that police officers routinely use skin colour as a criterion for ‘stop and search’ based on stereotyping and over-generalisations about the involvement of black people in crime. Evidence of this was apparent even when being observed by Home Office researchers. Furthermore, the use of colour as a criterion is particularly marked in relation to ‘stop and search’ for drug offences.
2011 – Court room observations of sentencing following the London Riots
Lee Jasper argues that in this instance, there was clear evidence of racial bias in sentencing. A summary of his blog post
The London riots have attracted exceptional media and political coverage, but as the rebuilding work gets underway and the media coverage dies down… the rancid stench of judicial racism begins to fill the air.
I have witnessed this first hand having spent three days at inner London Crown Court observing case after case being tried in the immediate aftermath of the riots. What I saw shocked me to the core: it reminded me of the chaotic ad hoc justice of the Wild West. Black offenders rights were dismissed, bail applications routinely refused for first time offenders and disproportionate sentences handed out down by an almost all white judiciary. It was carnage.
The Guardian reports that “the difference in racial sentencing between courts was considerable. Haringey magistrates court, which dealt with many of the Tottenham riot cases, sentenced – before the summer disturbances – 11 of the 54 black defendants it dealt with for public disorder or weapons offences to prison, as compared to 5 of 73 white defendants. While West London magistrates court sentenced 17 of 107 black defendants to jail, versus 21 of 237 who were white – meaning at that court black defendants were 79% more likely to be jailed.”
2013 – A review of Stop and Search stats by The Equality and Human Rights Commission has argued that the Police use their powers disproportionately…
According to this BBC summary (2013) The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said in some areas black people were 29 times more likely to be stopped and searched. The commission said the disproportion between different ethnic groups remained “stubbornly high”.
The highest “disproportionality” ratios were found in the following places:
· In Dorset black people were 11.7 times more likely than white people to be stopped
· In West Mercia, Asian people were 3.4 times more likely than white people to be stopped
· In Warwickshire, people of mixed race were 4.4 times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched.
The report also looked at the use of Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act under which police can stop and search someone for weapons, without suspicion that the individual is involved in wrongdoing, providing that a senior officer has a reasonable belief that violence had or is about to occur.
Under section 60, In the West Midlands, black people were 29 times more likely than white people to be targeted and Asian people were six times more likely than white people to be targeted
EHRC chief executive Mark Hammond said “the overall disproportionality in the use of the powers against black, Asian and mixed race people remains stubbornly high.”
Both Paul Gilroy and Stuart Hall argue that crime statistics are socially constructed and these statistics do not reflect underlying differences in crime rates. They argue instead that the variations in stop and search and imprisonment rates by ethnicity are mostly explained by differences in stop and search rates of ethnic groups which means a higher proportion of black and Asian criminals are caught and prosecuted compared to white criminals
Look at the statistical evidence below, to what extent does the evidence support Gilroy’s and Hall’s views?
Self-report studies
Self-report studies ask people to disclose details of crimes they committed but not necessarily been caught doing or convicted of. Graham and Bowling (1995) Found that blacks (43%) and whites (44%) had similar and almost identical rates of crime, but Asians actually had lower rates (Indians- 30%, Pakistanis-28% and Bangladeshi-13%).
Sharp and Budd (2005) noted that the 2003 offending, crime and justice survey of 12,000 people found that whites and mixed ethnicity were more likely to say they had committed a crime, followed by blacks (28%) and Asians (21%).
Victim surveys
The British Crime Survey indicated that 44 per cent of victims were able to say something about the offender who was involved in offences against them. Among these, 85 per cent of offenders were said by victims to be ‘white’, 5 per cent ‘black’, 3 per cent ‘Asian’ and 4 per cent ‘mixed’. However, these stats are only for the minority of ‘contact’ offences and very few people have any idea who was involved in the most common offences such as vehicle crime and burglary. Therefore, in the vast majority of offences no reliable information is available from victims about the ethnicity of the criminal.
Prosecution and trial
The Crown Prosecution service (CPS) is responsible for deciding whether a crime or arrest should be prosecuted in court. They base it on whether there is any real chance of the prosecution succeeding and whether it is better for the public that they are prosecuted.
Ethnic minority cases are more likely to be dropped than whites, and blacks and Asians are less likely to be found guilty than whites. Bowling and Phillips (2002) argue that this is because there is never enough evidence to prosecute as it is mainly based on racist stereotyping. In 2006/7 60% of whites were found guilty, against only 52% of blacks, and 44% of Asians.
When cases go ahead members of ethnic minorities are more likely to elect for Crown Court trail rather than magistrates (even through Crown Courts can hand out more severe punishments), potentially because of a mistrust of magistrates.
Sentencing and prison
Jail sentences are more likely to be given to Blacks (68%) compared to Whites (55%) or Asians (59%), whereas Whites and Asians were more likely to receive community services. But this could be due to the seriousness of some ones offence of previous convictions.
Hood (1992) found that even when the seriousness of an offence and previous convictions were taken into account Black men were 5x more likely to be jailed and given a sentence which is 3 months (Asians 9 months) longer than whites.
Below I summarise pp52-3 of Collins’ Sociology AQA A-Level Year 2 Student Book (Chapman, Holborn, Moore and Aiken.) This is their take on what they call ‘Paul Gilroy’s Anti Racist Theory of Crime’ – Interestingly Prof. Gilroy commented on the post saying this is a shallow, oversimplified travesty of what he wrote.
Gilroy’s Anti-Racist Theory of Crime
Gilroy describes a ‘myth of black criminality’ and attributed statistical differences in recorded criminality between ethnic groups as being due to police stereotyping and racist labelling .
Gilroy also argued that crime amongst Black British ethnic groups was a legacy of the struggle against White dominance in former colonies such as Jamaica. When early migrants came to Britain they faced discrimination and hostility, and drew upon the tradition of anticolonial struggle to develop cultures of resistance against White-dominated authorities and police forces.
While Left Realists such as Lea and Young argued that ome criminal acts such as rioting could involve protest against marginalisation, but Paul Gilroy goes much further, seeing most crime by Black ethnic groups as essentially political and as part of the general resistance to White Rule.
Evaluations of Gilroy’s Anti-Racism Theory
This theory is criticised by Lea and Young (1984) on several grounds:
– First generation immigrants were actually very law-abiding citizens and as such did not resist against the colony of Britain and were less likely to pass this anti-colonial stance to their kids.
– Most crime is against other people of the same ethnic group and so cannot be seen as resistance to racism.
– Like critical criminologists, Lea and Young criticise Gilroy for romanticising the criminals as somehow revolutionary.
– Asian crimes rates are similar or lower than whites, which would mean the police were only racist towards blacks, which is unlikely.
– Most crime is reported to police not uncovered by them so it is difficult to suggest racism within the police itself.
Neo-Marxism draws on aspects of Marxist and Interactionist theory in order to explain the criminalisation of ethnic minorities by the media and the state.
The classic study from this perspective is Stuart Hall’s Policing the Crisis (1979) in which he examined the moral panic that developed over the crime of mugging in the 1970s. Despite sensationalist newspaper reports that claimed there was an increase in mugging, particularly among young black men in London, Hall’s own research showed that it was actually growing more slowly than in the previous decade.
Hall argued that a moral panic over black criminality at the time created a diversion away from the wider economic crisis – ‘black youths out of control’ being the headlines rather than ‘Capitalism in Crisis’ – hence the title of the book ‘Policing the Crisis’ (of Capitalism).
Hall broke his analysis down into several stages – focusing firstly on how Capitalism caused crime, and then on how the media, state and the police responded to this, and finally on the further reaction of the criminalised black youth:
A major economic recession in the mid-1970s increased unemployment and lead to wider civil unrest – such as mass strikes.
Capitalism faced a ‘legitimation crisis’ – it appeared not to be working – government needed a scapegoat to divert attention away from the failing Capitalist system.
Fortunately (for the Capitalist Class and the government) the recession also lead to further social and economic marginalization of black youth which lead to an increase in street robbery.
The media picked up on these street robberies, creating a ‘moral panic’.
The government responded to this by putting more police in areas with increasing crime rates.
This lead to higher arrest rates which the media of course reported.
The end consequence of all of this is that the public’s attention is firmly focused on the problem of black criminality, rather than the deeper problems of the capitalist system which both causes crime in the first place and then further criminalises certain people (young, black and working class).
Evaluations
Stuart Hall seems to contradict himself – On one hand he claims that black crime is exaggerated; on the other hand he states that crime is bound to rise because of factors such as unemployment. If crime rates do rise, then it isn’t a moral panic but a real event.
The association between criminality and black youth has continued since the economic crisis of the 1970s, so it’s not clear that this is the ultimate cause of the ‘moral panic’.
Left Realists, Lea and Young suggest that ethnic minorities are disadvantaged in comparison with other groups in society, and this is especially true for young black males who have much higher levels of unemployment. In comparison with their peers from other ethnic groups, they are much less likely to be successful in the labour market and so suffer lower wages and thus higher levels of relative deprivation.
Young ethnic minority males are also more likely to experience marginalisation because they are under-represented at the highest levels of society, in government, political parties and trades unions for example.
Lea and young argue it would be surprising if there were not higher crime levels among those groups which experienced higher levels of deprivation and marginalisation.
Evaluating Left Realism
Read through the following two items, you should be able to find at least two reasons why Left Realism may be inadequate to explain the higher rates of offending by Black and Asian people.
Item A: Statistics on ethnicity and relative deprivation
Some ethnic minority groups experience higher levels of poverty than white people. According to the Labour Force Survey 2004/05 20% of White British households are in income poverty compared to 25% of Indian, 30% of Black Caribbean, 45% of Black African, 55% of Pakistani and 65% of Bangladeshi households.
In terms of social class, 42% of White British students are from homes in the top two social classes, compared to 37% of Black Caribbean, 36% of Black African, 29% of Indian, 19% of Pakistani and only 9% of Bangladeshi students.
This recent report seems to offer broad support for Left Realism, but also suggests there are other factors which need to be taken into account in order to explain variations in patterns of offending by ethnicity…
Data gaps prevent us from building a comprehensive picture of young black people’s overrepresentation in the criminal justice system. However, the evidence we received suggests young black people are overrepresented as suspects for certain crimes such as robbery, drugs offences and—in some areas—firearms offences. Young black people are also more likely to be victims of violent crimes.
Some of our witnesses were concerned that the media distorts perceptions of young black people’s involvement in crime. Research commissioned by this Committee contradicted this view, indicating that most members of the public reject stereotyping as regards young black people’s involvement in crime.
Social exclusion is a key underlying cause of overrepresentation. Eighty per cent of Black African and Black Caribbean communities live in Neighbourhood Renewal Fund areas. Deprivation directly fuels involvement in some types of offence—such as acquisitive crime—and also has an important impact on educational achievement and the profile of the neighbourhood young people will live in. The level of school exclusions appears to be directly related to educational underachievement and both are linked to involvement in the criminal justice system. Witnesses also emphasised factors within black communities which help exacerbate disadvantage and fuel involvement in the criminal justice system.
They drew attention to a lack of father involvement and to other parenting issues. In the perceived absence of alternative routes to success, some young people also actively choose to emulate negative and violent lifestyles popularised in music and film. Criminal justice system factors play an important role in promoting overrepresentation.
There is some evidence to support allegations of direct or indirect discrimination in policing and the youth justice system. However, the perception as well as the reality of discrimination has an impact. Lack of confidence in the criminal justice system may mean some young black people take the law into their own hands or carry weapons in an attempt to distribute justice and ensure their own personal safety.
Some Sociologists have suggested that cultural differences, especially differences in family life, may be responsible for underlying differences in offending between ethnic groups.
Single Parent Families are more common among African-Caribbean Families, which may be related to higher rates of crime
In 2007 Almost half the black children in Britain were being raised by single parents. Forty-eight per cent of black Caribbean families had one parent, as did 36 per cent of black African households.
Rates of teenage motherhood are also significantly higher among young black women and despite constituting only 3 per cent of the population aged 15 – 17, they accounted for 9 per cent of all abortions given to women under the age of 18.
The higher rates of single parenthood in Black-Caribbean families may lead to boys from this group being more likely to offend because of the lack of a male role-model to provide guidance and keep them in check.
However, there is a lot of evidence to suggest that British Caribbean single parents are far from isolated, and not even really ‘single’ at all. Research by Geoffrey Driver in the 1980s revealed that Caribbean single mothers are often well-connected to other people in their communities, so not necessarily isolated. Networks existed within neighbours to provide informal help with childcare and school runs. Other research has also found that family connections to brothers and sisters (uncles and aunts) are strong in British Caribbean communities, while Tracey Reynolds (2002) points out that many single Caribbean mothers are in a long term relationship with a man who doesn’t live with them, but visits every day and plays an active role in childcare.
In contrast, Asian families tend to be more stable, which might explain the lower rates of offending within Asian communities. Marriage is still seen as a key milestone in Brit-Asian life. A UK National Statistics report says the highest proportions of married couples under pension age, with or without children, are in Asian households. Over half of Bangladeshi (54%), Indian (53%) and Pakistani (51%) households contained a married couple, compared with 37% of those headed by a White British person.
However, there is a dark-side to Asian family life, and that comes in the number of Forced Marriages associated with Asian communities. One report from 2008 suggests that there are up to 3000 third and fourth generation Asian women who are subjected to forced marriages in the UK. This crime will of course be practically invisible in the official statistics.
The culture of anti-school black masculinity may also be related to higher rates of black criminality
Tony Sewell (1997) observed that Black Caribbean boys may experience considerable pressure by their peers to adopt the norms of an ‘urban’ or ‘street’ subculture. More importance is given to unruly behaviour with teachers and antagonistic behaviour with other students than to high achievement or effort to succeed, particularly at secondary school.
Sewell (2003) argued that “black boys today have real opportunities but they are failing to grasp them. I talk to middle class, black parents who tell me they literally have to fight to keep their boys on task. These are boys from well-resourced homes, they go to the better state schools and yet they are performing below their potential. A black male today faces anti-school peer pressure that dominates our schools. Ask your son about it if you need some enlightenment. A head teacher told me how one student was jumped outside of his school: he was beaten and his attackers took his mobile phone, his trainers, his jacket and his cap. In our inner cities, black male youth culture has moved from a community of safety and brotherhood to one of fear of each other.”
Evaluating the Role of Cultural Factors
There are limitations with cultural explanations of differences in offending
Firstly, these theories might be accused of explaining crimes by drawing on crude stereotypes – there are significant cultural variations within Black and Asian ethnic groups, and official statics only collect very basic stats on ethnicity (literally just recording whether people are Black or Asian) thus there is no real way to evaluate the above theories.
Secondly, it is difficult to separate out cultural from material factors such as unemployment and poverty, which are emphasised by Left Realists.
Thirdly, these theories don’t take into account the fact that underlying differences in crime rates may be a response to blocked opportunities which are in turn caused by structural racism in wider society.
Fourthly, these theories do not consider the fact that that the statistics might be a social construction and exaggerate the true extent of Black and Asian criminality. Critical criminologists, for example, argue that the over-representation of minority groups in the criminal justice system is because they are more likely to be criminalised by agents of social control.
In this blog post I summarise Dambisa Moyo’s views on the problems with Aid as a strategy for development – she is talking about Official Development Aid rather than Emergency relief aid.
I’m mainly drawing from her writing at the end of chapter 3 and the whole of chapter 4 – and I offer up a few criticisms all the way through – before you read this through – please note my main criticism of Moyo’s work –
The main criticism I have of Moyo is that she uses statistics that show correlations between a high level of aid receipts and poor economic growth and then attempts to imply causality (aid causing poor growth) by using emotive, highly selective, anecdotal and even hypothetical (she invents a country – Dongo) ‘evidence’ to back up her case.
I say ‘imply causality’ because she never actually uses the word ‘cause’ – but the reader is left with the impression that this is what she is driving at. The end result for the less well informed reader is that they are stuck with a number of ‘easy to understand memorable case studies’ which imply that aid causes poverty – even though Moyo never actually says as much.
Anyway, here is my interpretation of the criticisms Moyo makes about the role of aid in development and a few criticisms that some people might make of Moyo’s work.
Criticism 1 – Aid does not bring about economic growth
At the end of chapter 3 – Aid is not working, Moyo starts to outline her basic criticism of Aid – This basic criticism being that aid has not effectively promote economic growth in Africa – Over 1 trillion dollars has been pumped into Africa over the past 60 years and there is little to show for it. In fact, according to Moyo, aid is malignant, it is the problem!
Moyo explains this through the following hypothetical example
‘There’s a mosquito net maker in Africa. He manufactures around 500 nets a week. He employs 10 people, who each have to support upwards of 15 relatives. However hard they work, they cannot make enough nets to combat the malaria-carrying mosquito.
Enter vociferous Hollywood movie star who rallies the masses, and goads Western governments to collect and send 100, 000 mosquito nets to the affected region, at a cost of $1 million, the nets arrive, the nets are distributed and a good deed is done.
With the market flooded with foreign nets, however, our mosquito net maker is promptly out of business. His ten workers can no longer support their dependents.
Now think of what happens 5 years down the line when the mosquito nets are torn and beyond repair, we have now mosquito nets, and no local industry to build any more. The long term effect of the ‘aid injection’ has been to decimate the local economy and make the local population dependent on foreign aid from abroad.’
Backing this up with some stats, Moyo goes on to point out that ‘even the most cursory look at the data suggests that as aid has increased over time, Africa’s growth has decreased with an accompanying higher incidence of poverty. Over the past thirty years, the most aid-dependent countries have exhibited growth rates averaging minus 0.2 % per annum.
Moyo also argues that a direct consequence of aid-driven interventions has been a dramatic descent into poverty – citing Zambia as an example, and the fact that when aid flows were at their peak between 1970 and 1998 – poverty in Africa rose to a staggering 66%.
The problem Moyo has here is that she fails to present sufficient evidence to make her case – it’s well known that the later part of the period above was a time of global economic slowdown compared to the previous 20 years, which itself could play a major role in Africa’s poverty, as could be the case with the debt crisis. One could also simply cite Botswana and Ghana as case studies of aid-recipient countries that have grown to counter her one example of Zambia.
Criticism 2 – Aid Encourages Corruption, which in turn retards growth
Unlike the previous section, Moyo does use a reasonable amount of statistical (drawn mainly from Transparency International) and case study evidence in this section…
According to Moyo – If the world has one image of African statesmen, it is one of rank corruption on a stupendous scale. One of the best examples of this is Mobutu, who is estimated to have looted Zaire to the tune of $5 billion. He is also famous for leasing Concorde to fly his daughter to her wedding in the Ivory Coast shortly after negotiating a lucrative aid deal with Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.
Having provided a couple more examples of ‘classic African Dictators’, Moyo then cites that classic statement made in n 2004 by the British envoy to Kenya, Sir Edward Clay, who complained about rampant corruption in the country, commenting that Kenya’s corrupt ministers were ‘eating like gluttons’ and vomiting on the shoes of foreign donors. In February 2005 (prodded to make a public apology), he apologised, saying he was sorry for the ‘moderation’ of his language, for underestimating the scale of the looting and for failing to speak out earlier.
Moyo further argues that at least 25% of World Bank Aid is misused. One of the worst examples is in Uganda in the 1990s – where it is estimated that only 20% of government spending on education actually made it to local primary schools.
According to Moyo, while it is not the only cause ‘aid is one of the greatest aides to corruption’ – arguing (Actually it might be more accurate to say ‘asserting’ given the lack of evidence in this section of her book) that ‘with aid’s help, corruption fosters corruption, nations quickly descend into a vicious cycle of aid’.
However, Moyo now drifts from the data and starts implying causality by asserting that growth cannot occur in an environment where corruption is rife, citing the following (un-evidenced) reasons (among others).
Corruption leads to worse development projects – corrupt government officials award contracts to those who collude in corruption rather than the best people for the job. This results in lower-quality infrastructure projects.
Foreign companies will not invest in countries where corrupt officials might siphon off investment money for themselves rather than actually investing that money in the country’s future.
Aid is corrosive in that it encourages exceptionally talented people to become unprincipled – putting their efforts into attracting and siphoning off aid rather than focusing on being good politicians or entrepreneurs.
Criticism 3 – Aid Corrupts Civil Society
Dambisa Moyo: Spreader of Neoliberal Hegemony?
OFFERING NO CONCRETE EXAMPLES OR EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT HER POINT, in this section Moyo asserts that Africa needs a middle class which trusts each other in order for development to occur. The problems is that in an aid environment, governments are more interested in lining their own pockets rather than encouraging entrepreneurs, meaning that the middle class cannot expand until it reaches that ‘critical mass’ which leads to sustained growth.
Criticism 4 – Aid undermines social capital
ONCE AGAIN OFFERING NO CONCRETE EXAMPLES OR EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT HER POINT, here Moyo argues that… In an aid dependent environment, there is no need for you to trust your neighbour and no need for your neighbour to trust you… Foreign aid weakens social capital by thwarting accountability mechanisms, encouraging rent-seeking behaviour, siphoning off scarce talent from employment positions and removing pressures to reform inefficient policies and institutions.
On the above two points it is also worth noting that these criticisms are really just fusions of the previous two criticisms of aid – that it prevents economic growth and breeds corruption.
Criticism 5 – Aid and Civil War
Moyo points out that there are three fundamental truths about conflicts today: they are mostly born out of competition for control of resources; they are predominantly a feature of poorer economies; and they are increasingly internal conflicts.
She then goes on to say that ‘this is why foreign aid foments conflict. The prospect of seizing power and gaining access to unlimited aid wealth is irresistible’. Unlike in the previous two sections, here she offers up one example to support her argument (Sierra Leone) before reminding us that aid also causes conflict more indirectly by reducing the prospects for economic growth.
The Economic Limitations of Aid
Having outlined five downsides of aid, Moyo then outlines its economic limitations – suggesting that there are four – once again lacking examples
Aid reduces savings and investment – assertion, no examples
Aid can be inflationary – assertion no examples
Aid chokes off the export sector (Dutch Disease) – cites unreferenced IMF studies
Aid causes bottlenecks due to low absorption capacity – Uses Uganda as an example
Aid and Aid Dependency
The end result of all the above is that aid leads to Aid Dependency – to the extent that aid makes up 13% of the average African country’s GDP. According to Moyo, this throws up the following problems
It makes Africans lazy
It leads to low tax revenues (no need to tax the citizenry if money is flooding in from outside!)
Citing Boone (1996) – it leads to bloated inefficient public sectors.
Finally, it leads to Western donors being able to call the shots.
In the final section of the chapter, Moyo pays homage to Peter Bauer, and briefly mentions that both William Easterly and Paul Collier disagree with the ‘one size fits all’ aid approach to development – before introducing the next sections of the book which are devoted to explaining why Africa should adopt free market (encouraging FDI/ Issuing bonds etc.) rather than aid driven solutions to underdevelopment.
Criticisms of Moyo
Really, I’d just like to go back to what I said at the beginning and say that…
The main criticism I have of Moyo is that she uses statistics that show correlations between a high level of aid receipts and poor economic growth and then attempts to imply causality (aid causing poor growth) by using emotive, highly selective, anecdotal and even hypothetical (she invents a country – Dongo) ‘evidence’ to back up her assertions.
I say ‘imply causality’ because she never actually uses the word ‘cause’ – but the reader is left with the impression that this is what she is driving at. The end result for the less well informed reader is that they are stuck with a number of ‘easy to understand memorable case studies’ that imply aid causes poverty – even though Moyo never actually says as much – possibly because she might think that, really, there is insufficient evidence to make the case which she alludes to.
One has to reflect on why Moyo is so selective – I think it unlikely that an Oxford and Harvard Graduate has failed to read widely enough for this to be innocent – Especially when the author has 8 years at Goldman Sachs under her belt….so could it be that this is simply an overt attempt to promote a neoliberal anti aid agenda?
