An advertising campaign run by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) featuring a white prison officer and a black prisoner has been banned for perpetuating negative stereotypes linking race with criminal activity.
The Facebook ad promoting jobs at HMP Wormwood Scrubs in London featured a prison officer talking to an inmate wearing an afro comb in his hair, alongside the caption: “We’re key workers, problem solvers, life changers.”
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), which said that the ad displayed an “imbalanced power dynamic” between the men, received a complaint that it perpetuated negative stereotypes relating to black men and criminal activity that was likely to cause serious offence.
The MoJ said the ad featured a real-life prison officer and inmate, and as such argued it was not an “inaccurate or unfair representation of the type of engagement that might have been seen between officers and prisoners”.
None of the other images used in the wider ad campaign showed white prison officers alongside ethnic minority prisoners, the MoJ said.
The MoJ added that England and Wales had 117 prisons with 21,000 officers and about 80,000 prisoners, which meant there would be many instances of prison staff and inmates of different ethnicities interacting.
The ASA said that the UK marketing code states that particular care must be taken to avoid causing offence on various grounds of “protected characteristics” such as race.
“We understood that there was a negative stereotype based on the association between black men and criminal activity,” the ASA said. “The inmate wore an afro pick comb in his hair – a tool we understood was uniquely associated with black culture.”
The ad watchdog said that the campaign referenced the white prison officer as being a “problem solver” and “life changer”, while the black prisoner was “depicted as a criminal”.
“It showed an imbalanced power dynamic with a smiling white prison officer and a black, institutionalised prisoner,” said the ASA, which banned the ad from being used again. “We considered that the ad’s focus on the positive qualities of the white prison officer and negative casting of the black prisoner was likely to be seen as perpetuating a negative racial stereotype. We concluded that the ad was likely to cause serious offence on the grounds of race by reinforcing negative stereotypes about black men.”
