Statement: APPEAL stands with protestors calling out police brutality and structural racism following George Floyd’s death
We have watched the news coming from the USA in horror. We have witnessed the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man gunned down by two white men while he was out jogging. Ahmaud was killed in February, yet the two men were only charged with murder months later, after the video was released to the public. We have witnessed the killing of Breonna Taylor, asleep at home when she was shot eight times in a late-night police raid for narcotics. No drugs were found in her apartment. We have witnessed the killing of George Floyd, watched while a white police officer in Minneapolis, now charged with murder, knelt on his neck for 9 minutes until he died, calling out for his dead mother. America is in the throes of its outrage, with protests against police brutality erupting across the nation. So, what have these stories coming out in the USA got to do with us?
At APPEAL, we fight miscarriages of justice and demand reform of the broken criminal justice system in England and Wales. This mission is impossible to tackle without a clear acknowledgment of how race intersects with our justice system. Britain is also a structurally racist society.
Racism and inequality exist at every stage of criminal justice. Only 1.2% of police officers in the UK are Black, only 3.2% of the Bar is Black, only 1.1% of QC’s are Black, only 30 of 2,769 court judges are Black and only 3.7% of magistrates are Black. If you are Black you are nine times more likely to be stopped and searched than a white person. Black men are three times as likely to be arrested as white men, and Black women are twice as likely to be arrested as white women. Bias is rife. Right now, APPEAL represents two Black men, convicted in two separate murder cases, despite eyewitnesses describing the culprits as white.
At APPEAL, our staff have experience of working in the US. Some of our team have fought the racist death penalty in the deep South. Others have worked for a radical public defender’s office in the Bronx, dealing with police brutality cases regularly. Another has advised domestic abuse victims in Boston. We know intimately how broken the US system is. So, trust us when we say ours is also shot through with racism.
Miscarriages of justice, including those caused by systemic racism, don’t just happen in the US. They happen in Britain too, but we are less able to confront and accept the inequities that lead to wrongful conviction here. Society treats racism like America’s problem and not a plague we delivered and left on their shores. The Lammy Review highlighted that our justice system isn’t open and accountable, making it difficult even to fully examine the impact of race.
We at APPEAL stand in solidarity with the protestors worldwide who are marching against police brutality and racism. True solidarity means white people giving up space and power, (re)educating themselves, and working through discomfort to truly understand privilege and structural oppression.
And we know outrage is insufficient. Outrage must turn into action.
Hold police accountable for the use of excessive force. End Stop and Search. Diversify the police, the Bar and the judiciary. Listen to the stories of those who have been oppressed and marginalised by systemic racism and learn from them. Recognise and call out the race-affected decisions made by those in power in the justice system; from suspect arrest and charging decisions, to targeting young Black men in joint enterprise prosecutions, to discriminatory sentencing remarks – it must all be challenged. We need to hold those in power to account for the violence and injustice inflicted on those with darker skin.
As long as our criminal justice system remains in denial about its structural racism, there will be no justice, there will be no peace.
