Author: Craig Paterson

In 2018, the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice @ SHU began a project that reviewed existing support for victims of hate crimes and incidents in South Yorkshire. At the beginning of the project, South Yorkshire was experiencing unprecedented levels of protest, violence and harassment from Far Right groups who, in turn, were responding to the revelations of organised child sexual exploitation in Rotherham and other surrounding areas. The publication of the Jay Report in 2014 brought to light the systematic exploitation of young girls by mainly Muslim men in Rotherham and the failure of local authorities to investigate these crimes. The abuse and failure to investigate by local statutory agencies led to a prolonged period of Far Right protest in Rotherham and associated rises in hate crime, extremism and terrorism. Local attempts to address these issues were not helped by a UK government which was pursuing a ‘hostile environment‘ policy against all people in the UK who did not have the automatic right to remain the country.

The following piece of student work captures what this hostile environment looked like, the hate crime it produced, and what has been done in South Yorkshire to address this. MA Applied Human Rights students Kyle Hudson is now a Prevent Officer for Derby City Council and is about to start his PhD at the University of Leeds which reviews the impact of the Prevent policy upon communities. During his time at SHU, Kyle looked at the impact of hate crime in Rotherham and across South Yorkshire and reviewed the responses from the police to these challenges as well as a national NGO, Tell MAMA, which supports victims of anti-Muslim hate. You can read our recent publication on this topic here. The publication is part of a twenty year review of the impact of the 1999 MacPherson Report.

“… it was happening in broad daylight, and all I thought was why are they (the police) not doing anything?”

A range of thoughts came rushing through my mind. I finished up the last of my meal, looked over to my friend and asked, “how can they be doing this so openly without any concern?”. She responded, “they don’t actually care, they don’t want to help communities, instead they just leave them to fail and at the end of the day they need someone to blame”.

This snippet of a conversation above was between me and a friend, just as we were finishing up our meal in a restaurant, I saw a young man come into the restaurant and pass a small package over in return for some cash. The previous week I saw something very similar happening openly in the street.

These experiences have made me think and question, who’s role is it to deal with situations like those mentioned above? Is it the police, is it communities themselves or is it the role of schools, youth groups and policing community teams to prevent these situations becoming normalised.

The dominant view of policing in society is that it is used to control those that are deviant in order to exert social control and maintain order for society to function. However, this view is simplistic, in relation to the situation above. If someone called the police, they probably would not come out quickly as it is not an emergency. However, in a conversation with my friend, I remember her mentioning, “ you wouldn’t call the police, because that person will in some way, or another find out it was you and probably threaten you and your family. You keep your head down and do whatever you’re doing …. It’s a bad idea getting involved in other people’s business”.

Society is not only controlled by the explicit norms and values that surround us, but also those hidden values that are unspoken of. However, I just thought if drugs are being dealt in the street in shops, in restaurants so openly, what are the police not doing anything? Surely it is simple; they’re breaking the law, so it needs to be enforced? But these thoughts took me back to my friends’ words; “they don’t actually care, they don’t want to help communities, instead they just leave them to fail and at the end of the day they need someone to blame”.

At this point I think it’s worth pointing out, they young man that came into the restaurant with the package was black and he was dealing to some young Asian males. Not only do they have the barrier of age and social class, but most importantly race/ethnicity. The rate of stop and search of young black and south Asian males is significantly higher than any other group in society. Therefore, although the police are seen to be fair, equal and operate on the principles of social justice, their practice does not reflect this. The extent of police brutality and injustice against Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) people is waded across social media; Instagram, twitter, Facebook. However, these injustices often fail to make it onto mainstream media platforms allowing these views to perpetuate and become ingrained within police practice and society. This does not only occur in the UK on a micro scale, but it is reflected globally.

So, this raises the question, why are the police not doing anything? Although it’s a very cynical view, one that helps understand the situation has been developed from the realms of Marxism. Dealing has been happening like this openly, on the streets and in shops for years, it is not something new. However, the police response suggests, the issues is not being dealt with because injustice and inequality in needed for society to function. Essentially the young men will continue to deal drugs, become dependent on drugs and others around them will adopt the same habits. It will not only affect the physical health of these young people, but there mental health as well, leading communities to become entrenched in poverty and become weaker which will eventually result in them being able to be easily controlled and allow inequality to permeate within these communities.

Although this view may be seen to be quite strong, unfortunately it is the sad reality. I have briefly looked at the inequality and injustice faced by BME  communities from policing practice, however, this suggests the racism that operates is structural. Essentially in order to remove racism and inequality in policing the first step is for those that are being oppressed and in justice is being used against is to acknowledge that this is not correct. This is the first step to dismantling the structural barriers that allow racism to operate on a societal level which will eventually break down all other forms of inequality and oppression.

Inevitably, society will always be unjust however individuals working within the police, within communities, advocacy, schools, healthcare etc all have a collective responsibility to be working together, incorporating socially just practices in their work, as essentially these are all the different organs of the state and like the human body if one does not work or fails it has a detrimental impact.