Policy & Reform

4WardEver UK

The case for non-means tested legal aid (address the imbalance)

Legal Time for justicesource: 4Front Project
published: 4 August 2020

There have been 1750 deaths in police custody or following police contact in England and Wales since 1990. The police have never been held accountable for these killings. In recent months, there has rightly been increasing scrutiny on policing and the violence and racism embedded within the institution.

But what is often missing from public discourse is an awareness of the experience of bereaved families who not only have to deal with the trauma of losing a loved one; but who are also then subject to unjust legal proceedings – the cost of which, many have to pay for themselves.

Inquests are the primary way for families to find out what happened to a loved one. They are falsely presented as an objective way to establish the “facts” when someone dies while in the “care” of the state. This includes in police custody, prisons, immigration detention settings and mental health settings.

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4WardEver UK

The prison industrial complex & immigration detention in the UK

Woman in Detentionsource: London Immigration
published: 22 July 2020

In the UK, there is often a perception amongst the public that racism is not as prevalent an issue as it is in the US and that it is simply a case of a ‘few bad apples’. Yet, as Black Lives Matter protests have erupted across the globe following the murder of George Floyd in the US by Minneapolis police detective Derek Chauvin, the UK’s overt and covert racism has come to a head.

Systemic Racism in the UK
Systemic racism describes the way in which racism is rooted within the very structures of our society. It is evident throughout the foundations of our institutions; criminal justice, health care, employment, housing, income and education to name but a few.

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Tippa Naphtali

Taser trauma: an increasingly British phenomenon

Taser Gunsource: IRR News
published: 16 July 2020

An IRR News researcher speaks to scholars and campaigners across the country about the disproportionate use of Tasers on over-policed BME communities, as the IOPC announces an inquiry into widespread police discrimination.

On 4 May in Haringey, the police tasered Jordan Walker-Brown, a then 23-year-old black man they were trying to detain as he jumped over a wall, leaving him paralysed from the waist down. Just two days later, a video circulated showing the police tasering another black man, Desmond Ziggy Mombeyarara, in front of his young son in Greater Manchester, who distressingly screams ‘Daddy’ whilst watching his father fall to the ground.

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