Preliminary Programme

Wed 12 April
    08.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Thu 13 April
    08.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Fri 14 April
    08.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Sat 15 April
    08.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00

All days
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Friday 14 April 2023 08.30 - 10.30
G-9 CRI09 Race, Ethnicity and Criminal Justice
B32
Network: Criminal Justice Chair: Vivien Miller
Organizers: - Discussants: -
François Fenchel, Renée Brassard : Between Recognition and Imposition: the Itinerant Court of the Judicial District of Abitibi and Resistance to White Justice in Northern Quebec (1974-1995)
Created in 1974 and still in existence, the Itinerant Court of the Judicial District of Abitibi is a court of criminal, penal and civil jurisdiction, set up to serve the predominantly Cree and Inuit communities of Northern Quebec. Though the creation of the Itinerant Court was accompanied by a discourse ... (Show more)
Created in 1974 and still in existence, the Itinerant Court of the Judicial District of Abitibi is a court of criminal, penal and civil jurisdiction, set up to serve the predominantly Cree and Inuit communities of Northern Quebec. Though the creation of the Itinerant Court was accompanied by a discourse stating the necessity to adapt its practices to Aboriginal cultures in order to make them "full-fledged citizens", this effort has resulted, over the decades, in increasingly open conflicts questioning the relevance and legitimacy of the court. Faced with the imposition of foreign practices brought by a colonial framework bent on land access, the Aboriginal councils and communities increasingly demanded self-determination and the establishment of institutions over which they could have true control. Drawing on the content of the Fonds Jean-Charles Coutu, a private archive of the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) containing numerous documents on the development of the Court during its first years, the presentation will focus on different crises that highlight the consequences of the imposition of white justice in an Aboriginal context. Despite the apparent good faith of the colonial actors involved, these episodes illustrate how the policy of "recognition" that presides over the development of the Court involves the explicit denial of Aboriginal justice traditions and the ruinous application of western penal logic to social problems. The example of the Itinerant Court adds to the findings of numerous studies over the past few decades that highlight the many divergences between white institutions and Aboriginal cultures, particularly in the area of justice. (Show less)

Lizzie Seal : Portrayals of People of Colour as Criminals and Victims in the Local Press in Cardiff, 1870-1925
The local press is an important source of the substance and detail of cases that came before the lower courts and for how different social groups were portrayed. This presentation is drawn from a larger study of race, crime and justice in Cardiff, and will examine how such reporting was ... (Show more)
The local press is an important source of the substance and detail of cases that came before the lower courts and for how different social groups were portrayed. This presentation is drawn from a larger study of race, crime and justice in Cardiff, and will examine how such reporting was an important aspect of ‘making race’ in Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Crime reporting was a significant arena for portrayals of people of colour in Britain at this time in multicultural port cities such as Cardiff. The presentation will analyse how stories incorporated existing racialised stereotypes drawn from popular culture such as literature, theatre and minstrel shows to portray people of colour who came before the courts, frequently using a humorous tone. It will argue these cultural portrayals of race shored up and contributed to notions of racial hierarchy and were part of a process of making race in modern Britain. (Show less)

Heather Shore : Discrimination and Difference: Race and Ethnicity in the British Borstal System, c. 1969 to c. 1993
This paper draws on new research that aims to address a gap in our understanding of the experience, treatment, and outcomes for young minority ethnic people in the recent historical youth custody and borstal systems. Considerable attention has been paid to this issue - in 2021, the annual youth justice ... (Show more)
This paper draws on new research that aims to address a gap in our understanding of the experience, treatment, and outcomes for young minority ethnic people in the recent historical youth custody and borstal systems. Considerable attention has been paid to this issue - in 2021, the annual youth justice statistics showed that more than half the young people in custody in England and Wales are from a black, Asian or minority ethnic background (Guardian, 8th January 2021), and the Lammy Review, published in 2017, identified significant disproportionality in the youth justice system for minority ethnic groups (Lammy, 2017). However, there has been no substantial historical investigation into the experience of black and minority ethnic groups in British youth justice institutions in the later twentieth century. This paper focuses on borstal institutions (for youths aged 16-21) during the 1970s and 1980s, a period during which race relations and racial discrimination became increasingly politicised. It wasn’t until 1985, some years after the Race Relations Acts of 1965, 1968 and 1976, that statistics of the prison population by ethnic group were published (they have been published annually ever since, Smith, 1997, 126). Evidence before this period comes from a range of sources, including government policy papers and reports, race relations organisations, newspaper reports, memoirs, and oral history accounts.

Central to this presentation, is the 1981 Home Office report, Ethnic Minorities in Borstal, by Neil Fludger, based on evidence from the Young Offender Psychology Unit. The borstal study had been set up in 1974, and the report covered evidence gathered from 13,498 youths who began borstal training between 1974 and the end of 1976. This evidence was unique, as the Director of Psychological Services, P. H. Shapland, wrote in the foreword of the report, ‘For the first time as a routine, information on the ethnic origins of borstal trainees was included in these data’ (Fludger, 1991).

In this paper Fludger’s report will be used as a starting point to consider ethnicity in the youth justice system in the 1970s and 1980s. These post-war decades were marked by growing tensions in race-relations, with significant episodes of racial violence in Notting Hill in 1958, and Brixton in 1981, sparked by Metropolitan Police stop and search tactics (Hall, 1978). Rioting followed in other cities, including Liverpool (Toxteth) and Birmingham (Handsworth). The resulting inquiry led to the Scarman Report, which was published in 1981, and which found clear evidence of racial disadvantage and disproportionate use of ‘stop and search’ power by police against black people. The report highlighted what Robert Beckford (2006) has described as a ‘pathological image of black youth’ during this period. This paper will draw on the Fludger report and other evidence to start to explore the experiences of young black and ethnic minority offenders in the period and consider key questions of how discrimination and difference took shape in the borstal system. (Show less)



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