NCJ Number
113297
Journal
International Journal of the Sociology of Law Volume: 16 Issue: 3 Dated: (August 1988) Pages: 295-313
Date Published
1988
Length
19 pages
Annotation
This article draws on major trials and the academic literature to examine the rhetoric of the 'rule of law' against the experience of blacks in the British criminal justice system.
Abstract
An examination of civil disturbance trials, bail and remand, sentencing, jury composition, probation, and criminal justice treatment of black victims of racial violence indicates that the law has not been color blind, but has been a means through which blacks have been subjected to a process of criminalization. Throughout the 1970's and 1980's, activists pointed to the growing number of blacks in prisons, borstals, and detention centers and the racist treatment of blacks in prisons, but there was little interest in the issue outside the black community. Similarly there was little attempt to monitor criminal justice treatment of those arrested and charged following the urban disturbances of 1981 and 1985. More recently the interaction between race and law has been approached in terms of greater 'sensitivity' toward black people and greater understanding of their lifestyles and cultures, usually combined with equal opportunity employment policies. Such an approach, however, ignores the central question of racism -- the institutional practices of society based on unequal social, economic, and power relations -- and the fundamental issue of the political economy of black labor. When black labor was no longer needed, the presence of black people was defined as a problem for which controls were needed. These controls took the form of immigration laws and a police response that saw blacks as a law and order problem that needed to be controlled and punished. 2 notes and 31 references.