Crime and Law enforcement (Do the UK police discriminate against Essay

Crime and Law enforcement (Do the UK police discriminate against ethnic minority groups) - Essay Example belonging in ethnic minority groups would not be regarded as acceptable especially in countries, like the United Kingdom, where the protection of equality among all the people in the country is one of the governmental priorities. In order to understand and evaluate the behaviour of British police towards the ethnic minority groups, it would be necessary to refer primarily to the general context of these groups within the national territory (percentage of population, main activities and involvement in criminal actions and so on). The existing legislation related with these groups should be also mentioned ensuring that the principle of equality is applied on all the aspects of life of people with the particular origin. It should be noticed that a major problem regarding the evaluation of the British police practices towards the people of ethnic minority groups is the fact that no recent data are available in relation with the presence of these people in the British population. Probably because a long process is required for the retrieval of the relevant info, the last available data on the percentages of ethnic minority groups in various aspects of British life refer to 2004. A series of photos people of ethnic/ minority groups in Britain is presented in the Appendix section (Figures 2-4). The presence of ethnic minority groups can be characterized as limited. In fact, in accordance with the most recent evaluation of the origin of people living in UK (in 2001) it was estimated that ‘92.1 per cent of the UK population described themselves as white (though not necessarily British); the remaining 7 per cent  (4.6 million) belonged to non-white ethnic minority groups’ (ESRC, 2007, online report). However, in the years that followed it would be normally expected that this percentage has been differentiated – the percentage of ethnic minority groups in UK is expected to having been increased. In the percentage mentioned above the level of Asian people is rather