Race, Jail v Bail

 Another book by Colin Bobb-Semple  has just been published. This book is based on materials included in the author's Degree Research Study submitted for the Master of Arts, Criminal Justice, Brunel University, in 1993, and in his presentation "Race, Bail, Sentencing, and Human Rights in England and Wales" at a Conference on RACE held in 2008 at Monmouth University, New Jersey, USA. Statistics of Police Stop and Search activities in England and Wales show that Black people were Stopped and Searched 7 TIMES MORE than White people in 2009/10 and were Arrested over 3 TIMES MORE than White people, in relation to their proportions in the general population (Ministry of Justice, 2010 http://www.justice.gov.uk/statistics/criminal-justice/race). Rev. Jesse Jackson is reported to have stated that Britain's moral authority was damaged by the government's failure to stop the police discriminating against ethnic minorities (The Guardian, Sunday 17 October 2010 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/17/jesse-jackson-stop-and-search). The prison statistics show that in 2010, the Black ethnic group comprised 13.7% of the prison population in England and Wales, over 5 TIMES the proportion (2.7%) of Black people in the general population; Two of the questions posed by the author are:- - What is the explanation for the disproportionate numbers of Black people in custody? - Does discrimination in the criminal justice process account for the high figures? Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010 imposes an Equality Duty on public authorities. The author discusses:- * comparisons with the USA's very high rates of incarceration of African-Americans, particularly in the Southern States where there was Segregation; * the findings of the court observation in the Degree Research Study; * "Institutional Racism" first defined in 1967 by Stokely Carmichael & Dr. Charles V. Hamilton in the USA, and found by the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Report (1999) to exist in the police force and in other institutions in England and Wales; * the roots of "Institutional Racism" in the Trans-Atlantic trafficking in enslaved Africans for three and a half centuries, Social Darwinism, Criminal Anthropology, Lombroso's theories, Colonialism, and the "Colour Bar" in England in the 1940's-60's; * the racial attacks on Black people in Nottingham and Notting Hill, London in 1958 and the murder of Kelso Cochrane in London in 1959; * the themes raised in interviews in the degree study on bail applications, i.e. the concepts of "Fear", "Otherness", “Alienness”, the “Image” and the “Black Stranger Syndrome”; and * concludes by making some recommendations - R.E.M.E.D.Y. - for addressing Racial Equality issues and improving the criminal justice process.

 

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The author was born in Guyana (then British Guiana), South America and has resided in England since the age of fourteen. He attained a Bachelor’s Degree in Law, Master’s Degrees in Law and in Criminal Justice, and is qualified to practise as a lawyer/attorney in three jurisdictions. He practised as a solicitor in England for several years and lectured on the Bar Course at the Inns of Court School of Law, Gray’s Inn, London, for twenty years. He was a member of the Race Relations Sub-Committee of the National Council for Civil Liberties in the 1970’s, and a member of the Race Relations Committee and the Equality Policy Sub-Committee of the Bar Council of England and Wales for seven years. He was a member of the Board of Visitors (prison monitors) at HM Prison, Wormwood Scrubs, for six years. He has published extensively in the fields of Criminal Justice, Racial Equality, Legal History and Human Rights. He has special interests in researching the Ancient Egyptian source of Greek, Roman, European and English Law, and the legal history of African enslavement, Emancipation, the African Holocaust and the Movement for Reparations. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Black Solicitors Network in the UK in 2007 for his accomplishments in legal practice and in legal education.