The Advertising Standards Authority has upheld a complaint over a job advertisement that reinforced a stereotype based on ethnicity.
The Ministry of Justice lost its appeal over its Facebook adverts aimed at recruiting prison staff because the ASA believed they promoted a “negative ethnic stereotype about black men as criminals”.
Seen in May, June and August 2022, the MoJ’s Prison Jobs scheme featured an image of a white prison officer talking to a black male prisoner, with superimposed text that stated “Become A Prison Officer. One career, many roles”. A caption accompanying the image stated: “We’re key workers, problem solvers, life changers. Join us to perform a vital role at HMP Wormwood Scrubs”.
In November 2022 the ASA agreed with a complainant that the image “was likely to cause serious offence on the grounds of race, by reinforcing negative stereotypes about black men” and banned it.
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The MoJ appealed, arguing that the public would understand that prisons in England and Wales housed officers and prisoners of multiple ethnicities.
The ministry explained that the images used in the ad campaign depicted real officers and prisoners. Its argument hinged on the idea that: “It did not therefore ‘portray’ the black prisoner as a criminal – it showed a real person who had been convicted of an offence, and it was not an inaccurate or unfair representation of the type of engagement that might have been seen between officers and prisoners,” said the ASA.
This view was rejected by the ASA in its judgment published on 3 May. It pointed out that the CAP Code (the UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing) “required marketers to ensure that ads did not contain anything that was likely to cause serious or widespread offence, with particular care to be taken to avoid causing offence on grounds of various protected characteristics, including race”.
Although the adverts depicted real people, said the ASA, it assessed it as it would have appeared to consumers, in-feed on Facebook and in isolation.
Additionally, the way the ad was shot “had the cumulative effect of emphasising the prisoner’s race, rather than his inclusion in the ad as an individual prisoner”.
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Therefore the advert had the “effect of perpetuating a negative ethnic stereotype about black men as criminals” and breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rule 4.1 (Harm and offence).
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