The institutional racism of the British criminal justice system is now widely acknowledged. The police, courts and prisons continue to target and disproportionately criminalise working class, black and minority ethnic communities. Over a quarter (27%) of the overall prison population, 21,537 people, is now from minority ethnic communities, as opposed to 18% of the population as a whole.
Article 5(3) of the European Convention of Human Rights says that a detained person must be brought to trial within a reasonable time or released. Custody Time Limits were introduced under the Prosecution of Offences Act 1985 to ensure defendants did not languish in prison for extended periods of time. The general limit is currently set at six months; however this was extended between April 2020 and June 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic, when courts were closed. There is now a massive backlog of cases waiting to be heard, and 770 prisoners have been held on remand for more than two years. According to official statistics, there were 14,591 people held on remand at the end of March 2023, up from fewer than 10,000 before the pandemic. The decaying local prisons which hold most remand prisoners are the worst and most inhumane part of the entire British prison system.
Black prisoners held on remand in such conditions face a 70% longer wait time before trial compared to white prisoners, and ethnic minority prisoners generally face considerably longer periods of time on remand before trial compared to white prisoners. Figures published in The Guardian in June 2023 show the average number of days spent on remand in England and Wales by black prisoners in 2022 was 302, compared with 177 days for white remand prisoners. The percentage difference in the amount of time spent on remand by black prisoners compared with white has more than doubled since 2015, rising from a 33% disparity to 71%.
Defendants of all minority ethnic backgrounds spent considerably longer on remand than white defendants: mixed-race prisoners spent an average of 272 days, while Asian prisoners were held for an average of 262 days. And yet ethnic minority remand prisoners are far more likely to be acquitted by the court than white prisoners. A study by the Fair Trials organisation revealed that in 2021 14% of the 3,478 black prisoners held on remand were acquitted at trial. By contrast, only 8% of the 17,538 white remand prisoners were acquitted.
The government’s promise to massively increase the prison population within the next two years will significantly worsen conditions in already overcrowded Victorian age remand prisoners, and inevitably the proportion of black and minority ethnic prisoners imprisoned on remand will continue to grow. As was graphically demonstrated by the 1990 uprising at Strangeways and across the British prison system, overcrowded remand prisons can become a powder keg of protest and rebellion.
John Bowden
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 295 August/September 2023
