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Policing the Racialised Other

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Perpetual Suspects
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Abstract

This chapter offers a critical analyses of the emergence of the police through imperial linkages (Cole in Policing Across the World: Issues for the Twenty-First Century. Routledge, Abingdon, 1999). It reflects upon the impact that this has upon the policing of Black communities contemporarily, significantly with regard to over policing through stop and search and evaluates scholarly explanations. It continues in this regard, to consider the use and abuse of police force and disproportionate Black deaths in police custody. In order to situate this book within the broader field of literature, police culture as an explanation for the endurance of racism within the police service will be addressed. The chapter will conclude that the role and function of the police service is incongruous with the notion of consensual policing, particularly in regards to the policing of the racialised Other

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For more nuanced perspectives on procedural justice also see Tyler and Lind (1992). Tyler and Huo (2002), Sunshine and Tyler (2003), Tyler (2003, 2006), Kristina (2009), Murphy (2015), Barkworth and Murphy (2016).

  2. 2.

    Test based on what the ‘reasonable man’ (i.e. jury) would deem reasonable and necessary in the circumstances, see Palmer v R, [1971] AC 814; approved in R v McInnes, 55 Cr App R 551.

  3. 3.

    The aim of the inquest is to establish the facts of the death, and not to attribute blame to any individual for the death. Possible verdicts, which can apply to deaths in police custody, include: natural causes, accidental death, suicide, lawful killing, and open verdicts (where insufficient evidence prevents any other verdict). Inquest verdicts are subject to a civil burden of proof which is lower than in criminal cases and it is based on the balance of probability. However, in the case of unlawful killing or suicide verdicts the standard of proof is in line with that in the criminal courts, beyond all reasonable doubt (CPS 2017).

  4. 4.

    This was not the end of the trauma exacted upon the family of Christopher Alder. In 2011-a decade after Christopher’s body had been buried-his badly decomposing body was found in a mortuary in Hull. It was revealed that instead of burying Christopher, the family had instead buried the body of an elderly Nigerian lady-Grace Kamara. Later, in 2014, it was revealed that the police had ordered surveillance on the family and supporters at the inquest into Christopher’s death.

  5. 5.

    For further discussion of deaths in custody see Athwal and Bourne (2015).

  6. 6.

    Note age of data here based on British Crime Survey Data. Gender of those stopped and searched is not routinely recorded in police statistics.

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Long, L.J. (2018). Policing the Racialised Other. In: Perpetual Suspects. Palgrave Studies in Race, Ethnicity, Indigeneity and Criminal Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98240-3_3

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