Victims of crime in Britain

Abstract

As they entered Britain during the 1940s and 1950s, people from the Caribbean and the Asian subcontinent were faced with limited opportunities in employment, housing and many other institutional spheres. In part, this was because most of them arrived without the necessary financial capital or work skills to secure a different, more beneficial niche in the labour market, one that would lead from non-manual employment to the enjoyment of wider financial and other benefits afforded by skilled or professional work. Their settlement was confined to inner city areas where they were disadvantaged by the lack of opportunities to gain better employment, good standard housing, and so on. This continued as their children grew up within British society. Structures of social inequality within our society then shaped, and to some extent continue to have an effect on, the lives of people from these minority ethnic groups, including the experience of being a victim of crime (Brown, 1992).