Lived-Experience Leaders at the Frontline of the Criminal Justice System
Just over a year ago, we shared a story of the mistreatment of one of our course trainers at the hands of biassed police officers in London. Around the same time, we wrote about Sarah Everard’s murder and sought the voices of our Black womxn, non-binary and LGBTQ+ community within the My Moon Landing initiative to understand their experiences of the criminal justice system. They recounted instances of the police committing wrongful house raids, arrests, assaults and being stopped without a valid reason - highlighting a real disconnect and fractured relationship with the police. As a result of these upsetting incidents, the My Moon Landing members described living in a hyper-vigilant state, where they are intensely afraid of interacting with the UK’s police force.
Since the brutal murder of George Floyd in 2020, the criminal justice system in the UK received a lot of scrutiny for racial bias, resulting in the London government releasing an action plan to increase transparency and accountability. Three years on, news reports are still littered with headlines from across the country as citizens recount their negative experiences of their local law enforcement’s racist ways.
Statistics on the Government-run website, Ethnicity Facts and Figures, show that between April 2020 and March 2021 in England and Wales “there were 7.5 stop and searches for every 1,000 white people, compared with 52.6 for every 1,000 Black people". That Black people make up 14% of the UK population, means this statistic is even worse than it sounds, and it already sounds terrible. New figures should be released in May 2023 for April 2021 to May 2022 and unfortunately, we are not optimistic that there will be any improvement.
Global Majority-led organisations are working in a myriad of ways to tackle the highly complex issue of systemic racism in the criminal justice system, and they are tired. Racial Justice organisations like our own, and in particular those working deeply within the criminal justice space, need support if they are to sustain their work. Global Majority leaders of social enterprises and charities frequently suffer burnout, loneliness and isolation, find themselves vulnerable to scrutiny and are often disregarded for the latest trending cause. We cannot let this happen in a system where the stakes are so high, not when they are the driving force behind many of the interventions that work to combat racial bias in the police force.
The work needed is broad and requires people with lived experience of the hardship and challenges Black people have historically and continually experienced within the justice system. This work is often in the form of advocating for rights, supplying data and real-life case studies, releasing articles and working with journalists, podcasters, and writers to ensure this challenge doesn’t fall out of the spotlight.
The imbalance of stop and searches, the aggressive attitude often taken by police officers towards young Black men and boys, and the hyper-surveillance of racialised migrants and refugees, belong to a much longer list of policing issues that erode the Black community’s sense of safety. These issues need leadership, a deep knowledge of the prejudice experienced, and the tools to counteract countless years of an oppressive and mismanaged system.
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