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In this section, we address issues relating to race, ethnicity and social work practice with people who sexually harm others. We noted earlier in this chapter that the language we use constructs how we understand the issues. The terms ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ carry a wide range of assumptions and values, most of which vary according to who is using the term. The word ‘race’ is historically rooted in an essentialist, biological viewpoint that considers humanity to comprise of a number of ‘races’ defined, primarily, by skin colour and physiognomy. Within the term, which has had currency in Europe since the 18th century, there is an explicit hierarchy, with white people at the top and black people at the bottom (Phillips, 2012, p 35). In the US, Davis (1981, pp 94–5) cites the 1918 work of American scholar Dr Winfield Collins, which accepts this hierarchy as a given and highlights what he considers to be the essential (racial) nature of the ‘negro’ as an inability to control his sexuality and to tell the truth. Davis and others (eg Collins, 1991) argue that these white ‘myths’ have provided the justification for harsh racist criminal justice policies and practice. Thus, ‘race’ is a socio-biological construct that was used to provide ostensible justification for a (white) social hierarchy based on skin colour.

Interestingly, using the folk devil and moral panic framework, we can see that the white media construction of the black rapist as threatening white women and children led to the moral panic that was used to justify the oppression of black men – of the 455 men executed in the US between 1930 and 1967 on the basis of rape convictions, 405 of them were black (Davis, 1981, p 172). Although she did not use the moral panic framework, Davis (1981, p 199) unflinchingly describes the ideological impact of this ‘folk devil’ in creating a particular form of knowledge about sex crimes and sex offenders:

The myth of the Black rapist continues to carry out the insidious work of racist ideology. It must bear a good portion of the responsibility for the failure of the anti-rape theorists to seek the identity of the enormous numbers of anonymous rapists who remain unreported, untried and unconvicted. As long as their analyses focus on accused rapists who are reported and arrested, thus on only a fraction of the rapes committed, Black men – and other men of colour – will inevitably be viewed as the villains responsible for the current epidemic of sexual violence. The anonymity surrounding the vast majority of rapes is consequently treated as a statistical detail – or else a mystery whose meaning is inaccessible.

Racially constructed sex offender ‘folk devils’ continue to feature in popular discourse. In Australia, early this century, there was a spate of rapes committed by ‘Lebanese’ gangs; media reportage highlighted ethnicity and faith (Islam). Two issues were emphasised: the failure of national immigration policies and the likelihood that rape was culturally acceptable to the racial group committing the crimes (Warner, 2004; Humphrey, 2007). In the UK, there are similar racial sexual ‘folk devils’. Following a series of convictions of groups of South Asian men for sexual offences against white children, the South Asian sex offender is being portrayed in terms that emphasise ‘South Asian’ race and ignore similar white offenders (Cockbain, 2013; Gill and Harrison, 2015). Racially based accounts of sex crimes are misleading and generally serve other ideological purposes. At extremes, racist groups use racially presented data to further their own toxic agendas (see, eg, British National Party, 2013).

Ashley-Montagu (1942), writing at the time of Second World War Nazi racism, was one of the first commentators to recognise the dangerous implications of the term ‘race’, and it was he who suggested using the alternative phrase ‘ethnic group’. Phillips (2012, p 37) offers this definition of ethnicity: ‘a self-ascribed collectivity with origins sharing symbolic attributes relating to culture, ancestry, religion, nationality, territory and language’. She further notes that the concept does not have the implicit hierarchies of the word ‘race’. However, we recognise that ascribing a race or an ethnicity to a person, or group of persons, is a dynamic process involving the person giving the name, and the person, or persons, receiving (or refusing) the name (Phillips, 2010).

In this book, we use the terminologies of the sources we cite. When describing racial or ethnic dynamics, we are mindful of the implications of such terminology. For example, we recognise that in most ‘Western’2 countries, the dominant racial group is white; in the UK, a collective term for people not encompassed by the term ‘white’ is ‘black and minority ethnic’ (BME). This is a crude racial term, clustering together a diverse range of people solely by skin colour. It is, however, a term that has been used in government publications when discussing the discriminatory effects of government policies (Aspinall, 2002). Aspinall (2002) describes BME as ‘panethnic terminology’, and suggests that such terms are useful in that they can be used to identify discriminatory practices towards groups who share one characteristic (their skin is not white). However, it also carries an assumption that whiteness is a homogeneous category, and this is clearly not the case (Phillips, 2010). In this book, we use panethnic terminology when discussing issues relating to discrimination – recognising that some white groups (eg Irish people) may also be subject to discriminatory practice. When referring to particular ethnicities or cultural practices, we endeavour to be specific.

An area where ‘racial monitoring’ is helpful is in identifying the involvement of BME people in the processes of criminal justice. It appears that they are less involved in reporting sex crimes (eg Gilligan and Akhtar, 2006), that more alleged offenders plead ‘not guilty’ before the courts (Robinson, 2011) and that there is an under-representation of BME offenders on prison-based sex offender programmes (Cowburn and Lavis, 2009). There is low usage by BME communities of the Violent and Sex Offender Register (Kemshall and Weaver, 2012). Very few BME sex offenders are involved in the community-based initiative Circles of Support and Accountability (Cowburn et al, 2015). In attempting to understand this phenomenon, and considering the implications for social work practice, we must look at both racial and ethnic issues. Racial issues establish a foundation for BME mistrust of criminal justice systems. BME groups across the white Western world are over-represented as offenders in criminal justice systems and as prisoners (Gabbidon, 2010; Institute of Race Relations, 2015); such over-representation leads to suspicion that the criminal justice system does not operate equitably.

However, mistrust may only play a part in the disengagement of BME communities from criminal justice provision. In relation to BME people reporting crimes (to white authorities), there are suggestions that to do so would be a betrayal of the ethnic community. Andrew Norfolk (a journalist employed by the UK newspaper The Times), in his evidence to a House of Commons inquiry, stated that young Asian men had told him that they would not report community members who they knew to be sexually harming others (Great Britain, 2013, para 114). Droisen (1989) makes similar observations in relation to ethnicity and community betrayal.

Apart from mistrust and community loyalty, there are questions about the cultural appropriateness of the therapy programmes for sex offenders, not least because they operate from a Western understanding of the individual that ignores the cultural power of family and community commitments (Owusu-Bempah and Howitt, 2000; Cowburn et al, 2008). Moreover, the programmes are delivered in group format, and the management of both racial and ethnic dynamics is a serious challenge for programme providers (Doel and Kelly, 2014, pp 121–3). Also, BME sex offenders have expressed concerns about white group leaders’ abilities to manage therapeutic groups in ways that ensure their safety and show knowledge and sensitivity to their cultures (Patel and Lord, 2001).

Anti-racist social work has a long history (eg Dominelli, 1988), and has adopted a range of theoretical perspectives concerning race and ethnicity. Recent inquiry reports into the sexual exploitation of young people point to social worker fears of being considered racist (Jay, 2014; Bedford, 2015; Casey, 2015). These fears, the reports suggest, inhibit white workers’ attempts to protect vulnerable children. It is not within the scope of this book to explore fully the practice of anti-racist social work, but we recognise its complexity and its relevance to social work with sex offenders. Many years ago, Ahmad (1992) and Robinson (1995) recognised the importance of (white) workers being confident in addressing issues related to diversity, particularly when challenging people of different ethnicities. Components of confidence are self-knowledge, awareness of values, ongoing professional knowledge (Bhatti-Sinclair, 2011) and an ability to engage with both the intellectual and emotional aspects of social work practice. By the end of this book, we hope that readers’ confidence in working with all sex offenders will have developed, and that their professional confidence will have grown.