Over the past 30 years, the prison population has almost doubled, with police having more powers (e.g. Section 60s, surveillance tech and injunctions) and more weapons (e.g. guns, tasers and spithoods) than ever before.
Black people are disproportionately on the receiving end of stops, searches, arrests and excessive force. Racialised minorities make up a quarter of incarcerated people and Black Britons make up 12% of adult prisoners and more than 20% of children in custody, despite making up 3% of the population. Therefore, Britain locks up Black people at the same rate as the US locks up Black Americans. Like the US, expanding police and prison power has brought no improvements to public safety or harm reduction.
The police and prison system are beyond reform – we need an alternative system to keep our communities safe. Imprisoned people are more likely to have experienced domestic violence, homelessness, unemployment, school exclusion, additional educational needs, mental health problems, problematic drug use, poverty, debt and precarious immigration status. As Angela Davis said, ‘prisons do not disappear social problems, they disappear people’.
We need social responses to social problems, not an ever-expanding, racist police and prison system. We need funding for transformative justice and the services that actually keep us safe like domestic violence refuges, violence prevention initiatives, youth services and call for a bold transformation of health and social care, education, housing, employment and immigration reform.
We need increased funding for working class communities to end the cycle of entrenched poverty and criminalisation.
We organise for:
- An immediate end to prison and police expansion
- Immediate dismissal of any police officer who is discriminatory, corrupt or uses excessive force.
- An end to ‘Prevent’, the ‘war on terror’ and the surveillance and criminalisation of Muslim communities
- An end to the incarceration of children, including in so-called ‘secure schools’
- An end to the Joint Enterprise doctrine
- An end to the ‘war on gangs’ including the gangs databases and gang injunctions
- An end to police surveillance and data-collection technologies (e.g. facial recognition and digital comms monitoring).
- An end the arming of police (e.g. tasers, spithoods and firearms)
- An end to police officers stationed in schools
- Funding of council housing, health and community-led social care, specialist domestic and sexual violence services, employment and community organisations/services for the most vulnerable people in society, particularly in Black communities.