History of race, crime, and justice in the UK since 1939

Over the last thirty years, a series of government reports have highlighted on-going inequality in the treatment of racial minorities within the British criminal justice system. Recent research by the Department of Justice found that black Britons are seven times more likely to be subjected to stop and search procedures than whites. They are 3.3 times more likely to be arrested than whites and make up 25% of the British prison population. In August 2013, the think-tank Release issued a report into the enforcement of drug legislation within minority communities. It found “the policing and prosecutions of drug possession offences in England and Wales is unduly focused on black and minority communities….The drug laws in the United Kingdom are a major driver in the disproportionality that exists in our criminal justice system in relation to the black community.”

This project offers the opportunity to explore the historic roots of these contemporary challenges. Much of the current literature in this area emphasises the role of government policy and legislation in tackling complaints of racial discrimination within policing, sentencing, and the prison system. This studentship aims to drive forward a research agenda that balances this top-down approach with an emphasis upon uncovering the history of black community engagement with the criminal justice system at a grassroots level. In doing so, it asserts the need to uncover the long history of racism within the British criminal justice system and the way in which notions of race and criminality have intersected within mainstream British society over the course of the last seventy years.