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Abstract

Rap music and its lyrics have been the subject of sustained use within criminal trials as evidence against defendants. This study focuses on the impact of drill music, an emerging and popular sub-genre of rap, being used as criminal evidence in the United Kingdom and as a result its impact on the discourse surrounding drill and violence. Previous psychological research has considered the racial bias and stereotyping effects on rap music being used in court settings within the United States of America, with specific focus on ‘gangsta rap’. However, this topic within the context of drill has not been investigated, due to its infancy. Therefore, a study into whether these socio-psychological factors are evident in a UK drill trial context is of importance and undertaken in this paper. A 2x2 between-subjects design was utilised to gather jurors’ perception of a defendant on trial for joint-enterprise murder, with their implied race and involvement in a drill group as independent variables. Participant awareness of drill was also controlled for and analysed. Findings showed that whilst the overall perception of personality traits regarding the implied black drill artist were not considered significantly less negative than their non-drill defendant counterparts, they were deemed significantly more likely to be a gang member, involved in criminal activity, capable of murder and guilty of the joint enterprise murder case they were being charged with, when jurors had a prior awareness of drill. No effects were found when jurors had no prior awareness of drill. The role of stereotyping within impression formation is introduced, with other social perception constructs such as implicit personality and specifically, models of attribution theory being explored in relation to the findings, with an over-arching focus on the impact this has for drill being applied as evidence in criminal trials.

Course: Criminal Justice - MSc - C2681F

Date Deposited: 2023-05-03

URI/permalink: https://library.port.ac.uk/dissert/dis14115.html