Advocacy for criminal court proceedings

I was in Leeds Crown Court recently, on very short notice unfortunately. Luckily I managed to get some last minute legal advice that made me completely change the hurried approach I'd prepared and which I think is worth passing on to other advocates.

Background: I've written about this man before, in the post a different way of thinking, and although he doesn't fit into the usual categories for advocacy I think there is a clear need for supporting him. Also it seems that if he doesn't get the right support he's very likely to end up needlessly back in prison which will ruin all the positive progress he's made over the last nine months and cost the taxpayers a fortune. The other update for those who remember the original post is that I finally managed to help him into signing a tenancy agreement for a bedsit on the last Friday before Christmas, which was a huge relief for me as well as him.

Advocacy: I'll call the man T for the sake of argument. My work with T has centred around the fact that whenever he talks to professionals, mainly housing related with me until now, he never seems to be able to keep his facts straight, he is very sugestible, and he often seems to try to say what he thinks they want to hear (which quite often isn't what they actually want to hear).

When I first saw him the night before he was due in court it seemed that he had never had a chance to put his point across properly, either to the police or his solicitor. I have plenty of experience of helping him to get his facts straight, and my first approach was to help him to make a proper statement of events. This was wrong.

Not only was it wrong, according to the legal advice I got at 11pm that night, but it was so wrong that it's worth putting in bold type and writing about on this blog. The problems are:

• T had already been interviewed by the police
• although he had no solicitor at the time (a very foolish error) and he felt as if he had not been able to say clearly what happened, those interview notes constitute a legal statment before the court
• any new statement will be compared to the existing statement:
• inconsistencies may lead the court to doubt all of T's statements
  
• new evidence may be found in the statements that could incriminate him further
• statements in any supporting letter may lead to an advocate being called as a witness for the prosecution (my friend told me of a well meaning social worker that this had happened to)
  
• any suggestion that an advocate helped T to make up a believable story could lead to charges of perverting the course of justice against the advocate

I was strongly advised to delete the parts of my letter that consisted of statements of the events and to instead concentrate on explaining from a detached professional perspective why I am working with T and what his needs and vulnerabilities are.

Additionally when I met T's barrister the next day he advised me that with this particular judge my letter would be worth nothing if it didn't start with a statement of my professional qualifications and competencies to be writing the letter. The court probably places greater emphasis on traditional professional qualifications than I do, but I think that statements of the number of years experience working with this sort of client, position of responsibility within your organisation or in your work history, etc. are a good start.

Court: The other piece of advice I was given was to go to court with T and help him speak to his barrister and solicitor. This was very important as it turned out, although with such late notice I had initially been reluctant to rearrange my plans.

When the barrister first arrived and I asked if I could have a word he initially looked as if he could not possibly be interested in talking to me, but we found a small room. He told me that he would only consent to talk to me because he wasn't T's proper barrister, he was only standing in for the pleading hearing. He also seemed amused to hear that I was T's advocate (that was surely his job?) and needed an explanation of the role of an independent advocate despite the fact that he said he was a mental health specialist.

The next thing he asked me was if I had discussed the material facts of the case with T or if I had given him any advice about how to plead. I foolishly told him the truth, that I was working with T because he had communication difficulties and I had initially been asked to listen to his version of events. Luckily of course as an advocate I certainly hadn't been giving any advice, and especially not on the tricky area of pleas. He immediately told me in no uncertain terms that he felt I was compromising myself in the eyes of the court by even admitting to listening to T's story (as I was supposed to be an independent professional working on other aspects of his life). Actually I think I probably could have argued this point in court, at least I hope so, depending on the attitude of the presiding judge. It is worth knowing in advance that this is tricky ground that must be carefully negotiated however.

Finally, amongst various stories of how experienced he was as a barrister and how things had changed over the years and what he knew about breaking arms with sticks from other work that he did, he did listen to some of the things T had to say. I was able to prompt T at various times to tell the barrister what his story was about a couple of the charges, and there was a productive discussion. Not your ideal discussion, but compared to the liklihood that without my presence there probably would have been little or no discussion, well worth the time and travel. T came out of this meeting without much hope, sure in fact that the barrister was going to stitch him up, and it's hard to say really, and from an advocacy perspective this was disappointing (although probably understandable because the barrister went of on so many long tangents talking to me between my attempts to divert him to listen to T, and T couldn't really understand, or wouldn't listen, to these tangents, that the whole thing seemed much more negative to him).

The outcome: When we got into the court finally our barrister had been having a conference with the prosecution who had agreed to drop one of the charges. The barrister had been motivated enough by our communication to try a bit harder on the other counts as well and he picked out some discrepancies in the police and witness statements which the judge took a dim view of, although he gave the prosecution some leeway in gathering additional evidence. T pleaded guilty to the most minor charge and not guilty to the other. I can't help feeling that the police and/or the prosecution combined these three charges for alleged incidents that occurred on separate dates six months apart so that it was more likely to get a guilty plea for one of them, but maybe I'm not supposed to speculate in that way. My job will be to provide mitigating evidence and stress the work we are doing to get him back into society when the final sentencing is made.

The dropped charge: I think it is worth telling the story of the dropped charge, and I think that I may legitimately do so now it has been dropped. T was drinking in a park when two men walked past smoking cigarettes. He asked for a cigarette and they said they had none, but he thought they were lying and he threatened them. He says now this was drunken bravado (not in those words) and didn't mean anything, but he said he was later questioned about threatening them with a knife. This was an hour or so later when he was in a Chinese take away, and says he felt so aggrieved about being questioned about a knife that he spotted a wheel brace in the take away and made up a story about having that just so the police would investigate more properly. They promptly charged him with possession of an offensive weapon, namely the wheel brace, and as far as he can tell did no further investigation, at least not in the direction he wanted them to go in.

This is bizarre to me, firstly that someone would invent an incriminating story so that a more serious charge would be investigated and dropped, and secondly that the police would charge someone with possesion of an offensive weapon that belonged to a take away a mile and an hour from an alleged incident. Anyway there were enough holes in the evidence for the charge to be dropped. And in fact this is more evidence of T's different way of thinking and is just why he needs an advocate.

Christmas and Street Angels reflections

This started as a reply to Kez Lama's post on the subject, but became too long and I felt in the end it would be inappropriate to post as a comment. I also wanted to be able to post these reflections here as they were interesting to write and are relevant to this blog. It's also relevant to my earlier post about Street Angels.

It's really about professionalism in different contexts, and about trust, so it should make sense:

From an anti-capitalist and anti-christian perspective, but as someone who is dedicated to different experiences of community and sees ritual and ceremony as important parts of life, christmas is a strange time.

I had a similarly communal and voluntary experience, and I've enjoyed many christmases with various diverse groups of people over the years. This year I spent the day with Urban Space again. I really felt I spent the day with lots of old friends, and they really are friends, even though I've met most of them 'professionally' through their lack of capacity to deal with problems in their life and their involvement with local services and support groups. The great thing was its unpretentiousness. Everyone just seemed to feel free to be themselves, and happy to be together talking and having fun.

I also enjoyed being a Street Angels volunteer, meeting other volunteers, talking to people in the streets, joking about Ru and the Bishop going into Wildcats, and seeing that we clearly provided a useful service that should continue. It was interesting to be in the city centre at that time of night but not being out, as it were. I usually like to think I'm quite aware of what's going on around me when I'm out (I've had a few lapses), but wearing that huge fluorescent yellow coat, coupled with our responsibility to be observant and learn how to blend in and operate effectively still impressed a new perspective on me. I think the main observation I made was that life on Westgate is actually much more safe and enjoyable than I expected. I'm not so sure about the music policies generally, but I'm much more likely to go out in Wakefield after this experience (and avoid the hassle of travelling to Leeds).

I think my conclusion as I write this is that perhaps we should understand professionalism as a sort of stealth movement... That if we are professional enough at our work then the 'professionalism' should become invisible, disappear: whoever we are working with will feel comfortable, should see us as just another (albeit friendly) person, and feel that it's worth their while talking to us; the more familiar barriers of professionalism, often including a mixture of suits and formal clothing, jargon and other formal language, potentially multiple caveats about what we do, who we are, confidentiality and when we break it, complaints procedures, equal opportunities policies, etc., and other more personal barriers like never accepting a cup of tea, not liking dogs or being vegetarian — all these other professional barriers should disappear. Then our dislike of dogs is dealt with professionally and unobtrusively and no one even notices, we will be able to sense when it would be appropriate for our client's comfort to accept a cup of tea from them, and we will be able to slip in the necessary bits about confidentiality exactly at the right time so it's not too mechanical and can be listened to and understood... Maybe we can't get there yet, but it seems to be a reasonable direction to try to head in.

Now is the time to reflect on the experiences of Street Angels, to think about how we worked, what worked, where the gaps or problems are, and how we respond to all this and prepare to start again. I'm sure you and I are not the only people to recognise the specific role Street Angels volunteers found themselves in, and I feel there is an opportunity to capitalise (if I can use that word) on this experience by encouraging volunteers to 'blend in', to be able to give professional support when required, but to make the people they are working with feel comfortable with whatever support we're giving them.

The other thing that comes with this approach is trust. Blending in requires intuition and flexibility, and people will practice it in different ways that suit them, but trying to regulate this in formal procedures doesn't really work. I don't really see this as a big problem though, as we already have a pretty good team of reliable people and we know we can work together. There are various points for discussion, and I think the idea at this stage is to have another Sunday afternoon gathering soon where we can all share feedback and start to plan for the future. Hopefully we can find a way to build on this experience and support and develop our good practice rather than impose too many procedures and expectations that may only serve to create more unhelpful barriers before the people we're trying to work with.

I can't finish without saying something more about trust. Many people say we are living in a less and less trusting society, I don't know if this is true but it certainly seems trust is an attitude that is sorely missing. I see it in the police, who spend so much time being lied to they hardly know anything else and rarely seem able to trust people; in benefits agency and job centre plus staff who are under pressure to stamp out benefit fraud; from mental health professionals who are constantly doing risk assessments; from social workers who think advocates are going to complain and make their lives a misery; from service users who are so used to the veil of objective professionalism and the repeated disappointments over the years that anger often comes out instead of trust... the list goes on.

The sad response to the lack of trust today is often to add more layers of bureaucracy and professional and moral policing to try to cover for the lack of trust, but surely it's obvious that not trusting people breeds distrust and untrustworthiness. On the other hand trusting someone almost always helps to make them feel at ease, and the more responsibilities you trust them with the greater their chance of growing in confidence and skill. Once you trust people, management becomes a collective process of observation, feedback and analysis that provides its own safeguard and lets project coordinators identify issues and resolve them.

Hopefully Street Angels will be able to continue to capitalise on its trust in people and get back out on the streets as an effective and satisfying experience for everyone.

Street Angels in Wakefield

I was part of an interesting experiment last weekend, volunteering to be a Street Angel on their first weekend in Wakefield city centre.

As Street Angels we try to offer a safety net for people who become vulnerable, mainly around the main clubbing area at the top of Westgate, but also potentially as far as Henry Boons or Kirkgate and the bus station. We met all sorts of different people, but we expect our main focus to be people who have become vulnerable after too much alcohol. We go out on Friday and Saturday nights between 9pm and 3am in teams of three or four, and we have a base in the Westmoreland Centre that offers a safe place where people can come to get warm, have some water or a hot drink if they need it, and we hopefully work with them to make sure they can get home safely.

It was an experiment because it's the beginning of a pilot scheme that will run until New Year's Eve, that's 12 nights over the next five weeks. The project was initially proposed by the Wakefield District Partnership's Sustainability Advisory Group. Trying to show that their work wasn't all about Fairtrade and recycling, they were looking for a practical project that could make a real difference with a low investment through partnership working.

The model was provided by the Street Angels project in Halifax, set up last year. They have provided a lot of support and information to the Wakefield pilot, including their name. Other partners include Wakefield MDC, West Yorkshire Police, Wakefield Churches Together, Wakefield Cathedral, and Urban Space, together with numerous individuals (this isn't an official blog, just my observations, so sorry to whoever I've missed out). There are already 40 volunteers and we hope to get a few more over the coming weeks.

It's an interesting project to be a part of, butI'm beginning to feel a bit like I'm writing a travel brochure... I think it gives a good background, but what happened on the night though?

Well, apparently, we saved three arrests (I think), two of which would also have meant that a police officer would have had to take the person to A&E and wait until they were discharged back to the cells - all using up valuable time they could be using on the streets. We also helped about half a dozen others. One young woman was eventually taken home by the police and her father rang us later to thank us for our help. Another man was picked up by his mother. Both of them had suffered minor cuts to their faces and were in a state where it took over half an hour to get them to shelter initially and then over an hour each before they were taken safely home. In both cases if we hadn't been able to help then the police would have ended up arresting them, something no one wants to happen.

We also seem to have made a good impression on the Nightlife Marshalls which is useful because they seem to be the main calming and managing influence on the City Centre. We in return were very impressed by them, and they also seem to have an important caring role, offering first aid and managing taxi queues as well as being able to respond rapidly to any incidents along Westgate. The Nightlife Marshalls also work very closely with the doormen who also offered us a warm welcome as we started to discover our place in the night-time economy of Wakefield.

It was a nice quiet weekend, and the rain held off until about 2am on the second night. Friday in particular gave us very little work and was a good opportunity to get a feel for the role before the hard work really sets in nearer Christmas. Starting at 9pm we do a briefing and then go to a Police briefing with the Nightlife Marshalls. We have radios linked into the CCTV system which is also used by the Police and the Nightlife Marshalls - these were used to call us to the help of various people through the weekend, and can also track people who are identified as a risk as they move through town.

The easy start on Friday was useful as on Saturday night things were much busier. We got the last woman safely in a taxi at about 3.05 and all felt as if we'd done a good night. Quite a few people stopped and talked to us and a lot of people must have seen the papers because they were recognising us and shouting out Street Angels. There was a small amount of vaguely abusive comments, 'you look like twats' being most common, but it had a fair amount of truth to it, so I could only laugh - nothing threatening.

I'm going on a bit here, but it's my blog and I'll ramble if I want to.

So to ramble on to something maybe a bit more relevant to an advocacy blog, I'm wondering about the links and differences between the experiences.

The thing that stood out for me is that rambling drunk people don't hang around for the supportive empowering approach we take such trouble to practice. I was reminded more of the mountain rescue man who once shouted questions at me to say my name, what day it was, where I was, etc, etc, insistently for ages to stop me from falling asleep. That's another story, but I did find myself suddenly being forced to give orders: Stop; You Don't Know Where You're Going; You Have To Get Some Help. I managed to get his consent to this before I commanded: Come With Us Now. It worked. I don't think I'll be changing my career though.

In fact the delicate matter of gaining consent, and not being offended at any abuse hurled at you in the process, was important on the night too. Understandably when people have just fallen down drunk, their body takes over and most of their attention is focused on calming their churning stomachs and spinning heads. They probably don't want some unknown person in a massive flourescent yellow coat to come and ask if they're ok or want a coffee. The speech that then emerges is instinctive and obscene, but usually amounts to 'leave me alone'. I personally think it's very important to leave people alone when they're in that mood. In fact things can change very quickly in situations like these, so if we come back in 5 minutes we may get a better reception, but one good thing about Street Angels is that we have time to watch and work with people. There's no need to get an instant answer as we can continue to observe from a respectful distance and offer assistance when it's more appropriate later (or call in the professionals if necessary). The extra time we have helped us out with everyone we worked with over the weekend, and it's well worth using some of it to ensure we have the proper consent and agreement of people for us to help them.

Finally, many people have asked me how I can be involved in a project which appears to be so christian in it's orientation. I'll explain more of the background to this in the last post I'll write about visctrix on 'spirituality', but for now suffice it to say that despite (or perhaps because of) having been instrumental in the setting up of three charitable organisations, I have little time for the concept of christian charity. I think there are a lot of truths in the stereotypical images of christian 'do-gooders', and I think people can do a lot of damage through naïve efforts to 'help' others. I think there are a lot of 'blame' issues in christianity and the various christian doctrines, indeed christianity can effectively be called the first blame culture, and it has been well argued that this culture of blame has insidiously affected all the institutions of today's society. I don't think the humanists have grasped the problem really, let alone solved it, but I do think that person-centred and advocacy based approaches to working with people are a positive move away from what I would characterise as the more 'doctrinal' approaches to health and social care. I'm not sure if people will be able to follow my argument, I'm aware that I'm taking many short cuts in order to explain succinctly. This sort of effort is bound to failure, but it has its own rewards. For the more philosophically minded, references that spring to mind are Nietzsche and Foucault.

My reflections are going to get too metaphysical if I'm not careful, and I will try to explain the background to these suggestions a bit more sometime soon. To get more down to earth, while we do have a wide range of volunteers, because of the partnership approach and the origins of the project in a WDP advisory group, Wakefield Churches Together got involved early on and did a lot of advertising and recruiting for volunteers. It's also true that the Halifax Street Angels is run by the YMCA and has quite strong christian roots. And there are other issues that are not really worth the bother listing.

Given this background, what have I to say to the people who have questioned my involvement with Street Angels? At the end of the day I don't mind working with any individual people. It doesn't matter to me whether they're christian, muslim, drunk, sober, paranoid schizophrenic, disabled, from Iraq, or work as a police officer or social worker. I've met great people and insufferable people in each of these groups and I'm happy to work with many of them. What I think is important is that when we're working we don't impose our views on others. I have no intention of challenging people's beliefs while I'm working on this project, and I expect that they won't put me in a similarly difficult position. I do know that despite the cheesy name, this organisation does focus on the job of being a Street Angel, and throughout the meetings there have been no references to any christian practices or beliefs, except in the context of not imposing them on others.

I volunteered to be a Street Angel for two reasons. I've spent a lot of time out in the night-time economy over the years (and I've got quite a lot of time in me yet), and together with a few communication skills and a dose of common sense I think I can offer some support to the project. And I have been lucky enough to be hearing about the project since soon after its inception, and I think it will be a breath of fresh air for Wakefield and that it should hopefully inspire other people to find simple practical low cost initiatives that can really make a difference without the need to invest so heavily in capital and bureaucracy.

[Update 9/1/07 here.]

Police issues resolved

I had a positive meeting with representatives of the Police on Friday, together with key members of the Advocacy Action Committee. This stems from a post I wrote on this blog on 14 April which was removed shortly thereafter and replaced with this note.

Amongst other things this note says that the Police were threatening legal action, and it is now necessary to provide some clarification and closure to this issue. It was my intention to republish the post at this point as the information it contained is still valid (see below for how). For a variety of reasons however I have decided to just write a summary of events.

Four days after I started this blog I received an email about a young Kurdish man who came to a youth group in some distress saying he'd just spent the night in a police cell, he didn't know why, and he thought the officers had been racist. This was a reply from a colleague to a request I'd sent out for things to write about. I published the email with some identifying information removed and some background information to put in in context, then I emailed various key people working for the Police, the Asylum Team, the Community Cohesion Advisory Group of the local strategic partnership, and others. On the first working day I received two emails from a police officer which I published in a comment to the original post, with some disparaging remarks about their investigation.

On 20 April, two days later, a senior police officer contacted one of the Advocacy Action committee members and said they were very unhappy with the allegations contained in the post, and in particular with the fact that I'd named an individual officer. They additionally felt that the blog could be a risk to community safety, and requested for it to be removed and for an apology. This was done immediately, together with a number of other changes to clarify that the blog was my personal work and was not a project of Advocacy Action's.

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I just want to make some remarks at this point on the four areas of continuing relevance, community safety, complaints, and finally racism.

Continuing relevance
The Police have investigated the original story, and they are convinced that the allegations were unfounded. They can't find any evidence of an arrest or custody, and in fact the cells in the Police Station we identified were taken out of service years ago. There were also other discrepancies in the story, although it is true that the man's door was broken down in the course of an unconnected investigation.

I still have a different perspective on this issue, as do the other people who have spoken to the Kurdish man (he hasn't wanted to speak to the Police). I won't go into the objective details (see my post Protecting vulnerable people from objectivity) because I'm interested in a more person centred or community focused approach.

Firstly the man was upset when he arrived early at the youth group, and he was clearly upset about the police. This may not be a legal issue, and it may not be an issue for a formal complaint, but he is still upset about the police, and from a person-centered perspective this is an issue that deserves some attention. It's also important that he wasn't trying to gain anything from telling his story, apart from some kind of catharsis probably. He never wanted to make a complaint (I stressed this in the original post). He was simply upset and he told the youth workers what happened to help him calm down.

From a community perspective there are also important issues. I have heard that there have been several similar incidents already in the last few months, and not only the Kurdish community, but also the professionals who work with them are talking about this. Several other people have also come up to me from the English community and told me about similar things that have happened to them, and one person told me that when they tried to complain the police had no record of their detention. This is all circumstantial, and can't be verified, and I'm sorry if the police are upset for a moment about me writing this, but this is what the community are saying, to each other at least. This is not an insignificant issue, for the community or the police, but it seems to me that the lack of corroborable evidence makes it difficult for the police's systems and approaches to deal with.

Community Safety
As I have already mentioned, the police were concerned that the content of the blog could have an impact on community safety within and around the local Kurdish population. I listened to the police's concerns on Friday and I don't want to detract from them, but from the perspective of this blog devoted to ethics and communication this is another opportunity to explore and think about why I disagree with them.

The first thing I said was that I've been trying to encourage people in the refugee and asylum seeking community (and others) to complain if they have a grievance for years, almost completely without success. The reasons people don't want to complain are quite worrying really, certainly disempowering, and do lead to an already vulnerable group of people becoming even more vulnerable in some ways.

Basically people just don't want to rock the boat, they don't want to challenge authority in a way that might cause them more problems. People think that if they complain they might be beaten up, evicted from their properties, or even deported from the UK. I remember one story of illegal working came to light after a man asked for the £20 pounds he was owed for his 10hr shift, only to be beaten so badly and kicked down the stairs that he had to be hospitalised: in the face of this kind of threat which illegal immigrant is going to complain? Another occasion a man went with his brother-in-law (who is incidentally a Home Office registered interpreter based in another part of the country) to report a racist assault, but when his details didn't come up on the computer he was taken into custody for 5 hours while his immigration stutus was checked: the assault was never reported.

The other reason is that this is already what they expected pretty much. This is how they expect to be treated by the police, and it's much better than their own coutries where summary beatings are carried out with rifle butts. England generally is much better in many ways, or at least it's where they want to be at the moment, so they will work for £2 an hour, they will turn their backs on low level racism, they will accept the various trials that come their way. There is a mixed story here: many people like working with refugees because of their strength and humour in the face of adversity - some of them are role models for us all. On the other hand why should people suffer unnecessarily, especially when there are laws and social expectations of good practice that are meant to protect them?

Even today with my more distant relationship to the refugee community I hear quite a lot of stories going round. And the reaction of the community to this story of being detained overnight by the police? People aren't exactly indifferent, but they're not very impressed either, it doesn't seem like a surprising or serious matter to them.

I think this is the real community safety issue, and I'm sorry but I can't see anyone who might threaten community safety taking the time to read through this blog (although I wish they would, they might change their ways). How can we address these issues? The first thing has got to be being able to talk about what's going on, or to read about it, and certainly to think about it. There are lots of organisations who are actively working towards making our communities safer places to live, but this story, and this blog, suggests that there are some continuing issues that need to be looked at in a different way if we are going to effectively deal with them.

Complaints
No complaint was made in this case: neither the Kurdish man, the Police, nor I made a formal complaint. I've already said that Complaints are great, but the practice of them often is not, so in many ways I'm glad.

The Police do have a statutory complaints procedure providing initially for a local resolution of minor complaints, or through the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) for more serious matters.

I've been lucky to have been able to do quite a lot of thinking about complaints over the last nine months, and lucky that it's been in the context of a multi-agency group writing a code of practice. In the light of this experience, and knowing the issues with making complaints under other statutory procedures including that for Social Services and the NHS, I can't help thinking that the proper police procedure is still inadequate in some ways and for some situations.

The main problem is the unwelcoming bureaucracy: if we are going to encourage people to feel that complaints are great, we need to be more open and encouraging about the process, and we need to be going out of our way to support people to make more complaints. This system isn't very encouraging though, and as with many complaints procedures it is tiring and difficult for the complainants.

I also can't help thinking that while the police are very good at investigating crimes, the process of investigating a complaint is quite different, as are the potential outcomes and methods of redress for upheld complaints. I feel that the police culture and experience of investigating crimes is actually a barrier to the sympathetic handling of complaints. It would be interesting to do some research about this perhaps.

Racism
Racism is a very emotive word, and probably not something to put in a headline on a blog. Since these events I have written some thoughts about Racism and discrimination. Racism is a very important issue for me, and I have many friends who experience it at different levels. At the same time however I don't think we should be too upset by it - we need to talk about it and work against it and concentrate on moving on.

The Macpherson Report on the Stephen Lawrence Enquiry provides one positive step in this direction (see here for background), with this definition:

A racist incident is any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person.

This definition takes us in two directions which is not all without problems, but while it opens up many more incidents to be counted officially as racist (a relief to the victims), it also takes the focus away from the perpetrator of an incident and away from the criminal law, placing it instead on perceptions and feelings.

In this way we can see that someone may act in a way that they think is positive, but which others may percieve as racist. The Macpherson definition allows a debate to go on around these borderline examples without undue pressure being exerted on those who would previously have been considered 'alleged criminals'. The analogy I tend to draw is with that state of 'marital bliss' where the loving husband (it can work in all sorts of combinations) offers help to his wife: he is just being nice; she thinks he's being patronising (or, why can't he offer to do some of the dirty jobs, or what's his ulterior motive, or...). The point is in this common situation between people who know each other well there can be and quite often are quite different interpretations placed on people's actions.

At least one of the officers on Friday was upset at my implication that police officers could act in a racist way without knowing it. This was seen as a slur on those officers' professional practice, but actually it was meant as a softener, a reminder that even if I agreed with the Kurdish man that police actions had been racist, it was those actions that were the problem, not the individual officers. It was also an indication that there was a learning opportunity here and I wasn't simply going to throw allegations around.

Conclusion
At the end of the meeting we discussed some ways that Advocacy Action could work with the police in future. Obviously I promised not to publish individual officers' names on my blog (although anyone is welcome to publish my name as I work in the community).

More positively we did think about some of the experiences with the police that the community are talking about, and how we can address these issues in a more proactive way.

We thought about developing some simple guidance for young refugees or asylum seekers who may have dealings with the police.

We agreed to pick up the phone more, talk to each other about any issues that come to our attention.

Some hopefully this debate will continue in more practical ways, and I am certainly feeling positive about this outcome.

Rather they convict me than abase myself

I spent some time with Shaun today going over some things in more detail and trying to work out a strategy. It's a good thing I have advocacy experience, or what he said would have been difficult to deal with. [For background see More Police Racism and Undressed, humiliated and lied to.]

I'll get to what I mean by this by the end of this post, but first the details and the strategy.

The first detail to suddenly jump out at me was the date he was stopped. The 5 January: just two days after he was last in Court (because the police failed to record that he had produced his documents) and just three days after I wrote him a supporting letter pointing out his good character and reliability at producing his documents on all the other occasions...

The next detail was that the receipt he was given for the stop and search. I knew he was given a fixed penalty notice for a faulty brake light, but this receipt that he was given at the same time tells another story. It says he was spotted outside the 'Latzian Club' [sic] 'drug dealing' (he was actually getting a take-away from Cantor's Fish Shop a few doors down). They then followed him all the way from Chapeltown Road, through Little London, to Clay Pit Lane near the City Centre. Then they stopped and searched him and the car and wrote 'the car smelled very strongly of cannabis' (not true, just an excuse). It was only after all this following, searching and making up a story that they finally brought up the brake light issue.

Shaun and others wonder whether it's legal to stop someone for one reason and then slap a fine on them for something else? If a Police Officer decides to search you for any reason other than suspected terrorism, they have to explain why they're searching you first. There's a list of potential reasons on the back of the receipt. They said it was to look for drugs, not a faulty brake light (which isn't a reason). Shaun also wonders if it's legal to immediately give someone a penalty notice for something so minor - isn't the usual procedure to tell you to get it fixed?

The third detail that seems key to any defence is that Shaun is an extremely cautious driver. Because he gets stopped so often and he knows the Police could pick on any minor issue to justify stopping him, he literally checks his car once or twice a week. I've been frustrated before when we've been on our way somewhere and he's stopping yet again to do basic maintenance like checking the tyres and topping up the washer water. With all these stops and checks and producers, and all the care Shaun takes, this brake light was a very unlucky event. I can't see how he could do any more than he already does to ensure his car is always roadworthy.

Anyway, our defence is building up, but on Thursday I got some pro bono legal advice from my kind and distinguished friend Ruth Bundey that confirmed some nagging doubts of mine and kind of put a dampener on things.

The fact is that the light wasn't working at the time Shaun was stopped. Shaun has not denied this, just said that he is very cautious and that the police are simply victimising him for an unlucky coincidence (if it had been a day or two later he would have spotted and fixed the broken light anyway).

Unfortunately the language of the Courts and the language of Shaun differ here. Shaun says he's not guilty because the broken light wasn't the real issue: the real issue is that at that point the police were looking for any excuse to justify their failed stop and search. It seems that the Court will say that this is not a valid defence: it doesn't challenge the material basis of the charge, that the light was faulty.

There are two strategies at this point. Firstly write to the CPS on Monday and try to persuade them that this prosecution is not in the public interest (it will cost more than any fine Shaun receives, and it cannot make him any more careful about his car). This is ok with Shaun, letter to be posted Monday.

The second strategy, if this fails, is to plead guilty on 7 June. That is, to agree that at 18.30 on 5 January the brake light was faulty. Then there is an opportunity to detail the mitigating circumstances (the caution, the many times the lights have been ok, the fact that he was stopped for another reason, etc.). If we do a good job of this mitigation then at the very least the fine will be minimised, and there is a chance the penalty could be waived (I don't know the proper legal terminology here, but Shaun may not have to pay any fine).

This is not ok. This is the interesting bit.

'Plead guilty? But I'm not guilty. I'm not willing to say I'm guilty for something I don't believe in. It's not about the fine - they're abusing me enough already and any fine would just be a continuation and a confirmation of this abuse. I don't care about a fine.

'I want to stand up and say what I believe in. I don't feel I'm guilty, and I think I've got enough evidence to persuade the Court to dismiss the charges.'

So we come to a third strategy. I'd like to call this the brave and principled strategy, although I suspect you readers may like to categorise it in other ways...

Luckily, both as an advocate and as a friend I respect Shaun's right to decide how he wants to defend himself. I also understand that by following his own path, with the support of myself and other friends, Shaun will gain in self-respect even if he loses in dollars. We have agreed to write a statement together for the Court, outlining his defence and helping to ensure that Shaun can say what he wants to say as coherently and effectively as possible.

I just hope we get a sympathetic magistrate.

We just need a little humour...

Cheer up guys, it's not all bad...

Undressed, humiliated and lied to

This is what happened when I went to Leeds Magistrate's Court with Shaun last Wednesday, as promised.

First the court official asked Shaun 'is your headwear for religious reasons?' Shaun said yes and that was ok, but this was just the first of four instances of what I think should be described as violence towards us from the court. I'll describe the others and then explain what I mean.

The second thing was that Shaun was given a 'Statement of means' form to fill in. This had to be completed before Shaun could go before the court, and it was an offence not to provide the information (a note said 'see the other side for details' but the other side was blank). This form was not only difficult to fill in on the spot with no warning, but it had no relevance to the hearing.

Thirdly as we were entering the court I was directed to go to the back of the room. I thought at this point that I should say I had come to speak to the court. The court official went to check this with the magistrate, came back and said I should still wait at the back until I was called to speak. This was a lie, and it led directly to the final piece of violence.

Finally, Shaun was before the judge/magistrate. He was told the charge (faulty brake light), asked whether he understood this (yes), and asked whether he pleaded guilty or not guilty (not guilty). Shaun asked if he could explain what happened and he was allowed to speak for about 2 or 3 minutes. The judge/magistrate didn't seem very interested, said that this wasn't a trial, asked the CPS representative if they wished to pursue the case (yes), and that was that.

At that point I offered to assist the court. Remember I had informed the judge that I had come to speak before I entered the room, and I had been effectively told that I would have an opportunity. In fact the judge reacted with more violence to my offer of help: he shouted at me, said I was abusing his court and if I wasn't careful I would be removed from the court or even worse.

Violence
I said I would explain what I meant by violence and why it was important to think of these four experiences in terms of violence. I would define violence as any use of power to restrict movement or action. There are lots of reasons and precedents for this definition which I won't go into for now, but we can see that it covers things like assault (because after we are assaulted we hurt and our movement is restricted), as well as a wide range of other types of violence. One area familiar to many people which opens up the definition of violence in this way is domestic violence, and here are a couple of quick links 1 | 2.

Let's go back to the headwear example that I started with. Shaun was ok, but imagine another young man coming to the court. He may not look very smart to the court officials in their suits, but the chances are he's made some sort of personal effort to look his best and to prepare himself mentally and physically. For many people these days looking good includes wearing a hat. Many young men in particular habitually wear hats. So much so that the hat becomes a part of their identity.

Then, just before they go into this scary room full of officials who have the power to change their lives, they have to remove their hat. Tradition or something says that wearing a hat before the court is a mark of disrespect, so you have to remove it. And now your 'hat hair' is looking stupid, you're feeling stupid, you can feel your head and your hair and the fact that you're not wearing your hat. Effectively the court has dictated that you feel humiliated before you even start. There is a very close correspondence here with the domestic violence situation of a man denying a woman the possibility of wearing clothes that she feels comfortable in. Both victims of domestic violence and victims of court violence feel less able to act, less able to speak out, less able to defend themselves. They suffer. But what pains me even more is that justice and liberty also suffers.

This violence can be seen again in the case of Ronelle. Legal procedures have taken place, she has been unble to speak out, and an admin error nearly caused her to be imprisoned, have her baby taken into care, give the two of them a record that will last for the next 18 years or more, make it more difficult for them to find work and support themselves to live and grow as a family. This is violence by any other name. We need to recognise this, and as advocates we are in a position to do something about it.

Racism and discrimination

These weren't subjects that I initially planned to write about here, but the way things have happened I need to say more.

Racism is a serious issue, but it needs to be seen in the context of wider discriminatory practices. One example of discrimination among many is the dalits of India (also known as the untouchables). A quarter of India's population is dalit, but they are systematically abused by many people (including the police, the judiciary, landlords and businesspeople) according to this Human Rights Watch report (see especially chapter VIII: The Criminalisation of Social Activism).

This is not racism, although it is very close structurally to racism. This is the legacy of more than 3000 years of religious and intra-racial segregation, discrimination and abuse. So much so that many Indian people (those in the caste system as well as some dalits) cannot even see the discrimination. And those who dare to speak out are likely to suffer.

It is very often the case that people who suffer discrimination of whatever sort also end up having difficulty communicating their problems. I'm not just talking about the dalits here, but about people in the UK with learning disabilities or mental health problems, working class people, people with few formal educational achievements, poor people, children, old people, people from minority religious groups, ill or disabled people, people who are not heterosexual, or people from minority ethnic communities. For a whole range of reasons these groups of people are more likely to suffer from discrimination, and are less likely to have their problems listened to or seriously addressed.

I am fortunate in many ways. I don't belong to any of these groups. I have a strong voice. I have been able to help some people to speak out and get results.

Ironically when I was working for Social Services & Health, a role where it is important to be particularly aware and careful of potential political implications of everything you do, I got the message that seior management did want advocates to challenge their staff and services. They recognised that there were inevitably people who were not receiving the services they were entitled to, and that these people often didn't have the resources to make effective challenges on their own.

Now that I am helping the Wakefield Children and Young People's Strategic Partnership to develop a Code of Practice for Children's Complaints, there are clear messages being developed about the importance of complaining for children and organisations alike.

Racism is a small element of this wider picture, and I take it as seriously as I do everything else. It is as wrong for a police officer to stop and search a car driver for the colour of their skin as it is for a doctor to not spend extra time making sure they can hear what a woman with a speech impediment is trying to say to them.

The police are doing well in some ways. Following the Lawrence inquiry they have a good definition of racism:

Recommendation 12 of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Report states that the definition of a racist incident should be:

"any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or by any other person"

Source: Crime Reduction Toolkits

This is good because it depends on the perceptions or feelings of people, rather than objective and independent evidence which is often difficult to obtain. It has problems becasue it's hard to understand in some ways, especially if you're immersed in the legal system. It is also problematic because we can accept that an incident is racist, but feel that every other point about it makes it impossible to act on (someone wrote 'packey' [sic] on your car, but there are no witnesses and no leads). There is also a good report from Civitas (pdf) that questions the value of the Macpherson definition of 'institutional racism'.

In my quiet advocate's way, I want to work with the police on facing these real issues. They come from the stories of actual people, and they cannot be resolved through traditional policing methods which rely on objective evidence that can be judged in court.

'Quiet?' I hear some of my readers asking... I think I have been writing in a quiet way. Maybe not the headlines: I wanted people to read, but perhaps in retrospect the headlines prevented them from paying proper attention to what they were reading. But the stories themselves are quiet: a young man is quietly taken into custody, records quietly fail to appear, he quietly declines to complain, Shaun and I quietly try to speak in court and are quietly ushered out, Ronelle quietly says 'I used to think the Police were here to help us, but now... now I don't know... I don't think they're very helpful really'.

For years I've been hearing complaints about the police, and usually I'm left trying to help people address problems they can do something about, maintaining the quiet.

These stories remain a quiet protest, a quiet call to action, because I am not shouting about the deaths in police custody, I'm not shouting about the weapons the UK police have issued that international law bans armies from using (CS Gas is a chemical weapon banned under the Geneva Convention), I'm not shouting about the discriminatory record of local police forces around the UK (this report has already been quoted, there's the MacPherson report, Racism still blights police despite post-Lawrence improvements, Police 'frozen solid' in addressing racism, report finds, and many others).

The stories I hear are usually too quiet to get anywhere, but I write them here because I think these quiet and relatively uncontroversial stories are the place to start to make positive changes.

I'm not shouting, and when the original story that started all this (for this blog at least) is republished with the relevant follow up, when the current fuss has died down, I am still hopeful that most people will be thankful that the issues are being raised in this simple way.

A family's freedom - £45!

It never rains, but it pours. I will write about my experiences in the Magistrates Court earlier today, but you'll have to wait a bit.

This morning two officers knocked on my friend Ronelle's door. They said there was a court order, and if she didn't pay £45 straight away they would have to take her into custody. Then they asked if there was anyone who could look after Ronelle's five month old daughter Shara. At the moment, on the spot, Ronelle couldn't think of anyone. She had no money at all. I know she has been short of food recently. Her husband is desparately trying to find some money that's promised to him in London.

My phone was off (I was in a hospital), so Ronelle rang my friend Alison. Ronelle and Alison have met because Alison is a bountiful distributor of things in the community (amongst other talents). She is an insatiable collector, knows many people who give things to her, and passes them on to good homes without a second thought. I've know Samuel and Ronelle for almost four years now, but in the last year things have been very difficult and they needed to know someone like Alison. Unfortunately Alison is also disabled and poor herself.

But faced with the prospect of a mother being sent to prison and her baby being taken into care if you can't find £45 to help, what option do you have? Just before I went to Court I got a message from Alison. She couldn't afford to have this money out of her account for more than 24hrs. After court I had no option but to reimburse Alison. I've just got back from trying to console and reassure Ronelle. Fortunately Shara is keeping her in cheerful company.

£45? The system is prepared to lock a woman up and take her baby into care for non-payment of a £45 fine? How much will this cost? It costs £3125 per month to keep someone in prison (source: Rethinking Crime and Punishment, a strategic initiative of the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation). Recent research suggests it costs £633 per week to provide foster care in England, with a funding shortfall of £615.7million across England in 2005/6 (source: British Association for Adopting and Fostering, BAAF). This doesn't include the ongoing damage to family life. It doesn't include the fact that Ronelle would then have a criminal record and would probably find it more difficult to get work, even doing the minimum wage care work she aspires to. And it doesn't include the costs of the Court proceedings and Police time.

What's all this for? A couple of years ago the teenage Ronelle, fresh from Namibia, agreed to have a car registered in her name. The car was sold, but there was some problem with the registration documents. There was a parking fine. The new owner ignored it and Court letters were sent to Ronelle's old address so she never received them. They caught up with her finally when she was 8 1/2 months pregnant, very ill, and unable to attend Court. I sent a message to Court, but so much was happening at the time it all got swamped and forgotten about.

So here we have it: after a minor admin error a couple of years ago I have paid £45 to save a family.

What more can I say? What a ridiculous situation.

More police racism

This is my friend Shaun (on the left) with Maxi Jazz from the dance group Faithless. I doubt I'll get such a nice photo this Wednesday – I'm going to Court to be a character witness for him. He appears to be in Court because he's black (and allegedly because a brake light on his car wasn't working).

First of all, I've also been stopped because my brake light wasn't working. I was also breathalised at the same time. It was quite a nice experience really - I'd never been stopped by the police in 12 years of driving and I was interested to see what would happen. They were friendly and polite, the breathaliser was green, they asked me to fix my brake light, they didn't ask for any information about my driving license, MOT or insurance, and that was that. I haven't been stopped since that incident 2 or 3 years ago despite my car being quite old and beaten up.

Shaun is not so lucky. In the last three months he has been stopped by the police on average once a week. Every time they stop him he is given a producer, which means an hour of his time the next day. He is often searched. He has lots of shocking stories. I should point out at this point that he is a musician, performer, dancer, and youth worker. I met him in 1997 when I was more involved in Unity Day and he was working for Pyramid of Arts and setting up Breakers Unify. He's a quiet and unassuming man, but he has a lot of respect from a lot of people and he gets a lot done in the community.

I want to mention some of the stories. I think it's bad enough that he is stopped every week as he is going about doing his community work, but the stories of what happens when he is stopped are much worse.

One time he was stopped in Leeds City Centre in front of loads of people and his whole car was searched for about 30 mins. A take-away meal was emptied out of its packaging onto the passenger seat and left there, and all the while a woman police officer was telling Shaun to 'calm down' and in his words 'grabbing me by the elbow' - as he was calmly trying to say the search was unnecessary. Shaun is such a calm person he wasn't in much danger, but he felt like the woman was trying to provoke him, her partner tipping his food out on his car seat was trying to provoke him, and the fact that this search was carried out in front of a crowd of people was also provocative. Of course they didn't find anything - and of course he was given a producer. This is extreme because it happened in the city centre and his food was searched, but in every other way it is what always happens, including the apparent attempts to provoke.

One time he got away without being given a producer, but it wasn't that cool. Shortly after he was pulled over a second police car arrived, blue lights flashing - it appeared the original officers had called for back-up, fearing this black man might be dangerous. One officer, getting out of the back-up car looked over at Shaun and recognised him ('Aren't you that youth worker?') They still followed procedure and searched him, presumably 'just in case', but he didn't have to go to the police station the next day.

Another time he was recognised again. The officer asked 'Didn't I stop you a couple of weeks ago?' Shaun: 'Yes, you gave me a producer and everything was ok.' The officer: 'Well, these documents could still be false so I'm going to have to give you another producer.' This was last year, back in the time when he used to always carry his documents around with him because he was stopped so often. But what's the point if you're not going to be believed anyway? Another officer said that 75% of the criminals they caught were black, so it's not surprising Shaun was being stopped.

They also used to claim that he had no insurance. He would show them his insurance certificate - and they still wouldn't believe him! They would say they had called the insurance company and they had no record of him. But he is and always has been insured - you have to be if you're stopped by the police every week.

Earlier this year Shaun was in court for failing to produce his documents. In fact he had produced his documents, but the police had failed to record that he had produced them. He went to Court with a pile of producers, counted them up in front of the magistrate, pointed out that he had always produced and everything had always been in order, and within 10 minutes the case was dismissed.

Since then he has been trying to collect evidence. He has a video recording of him going into the police station and the desk officer saying 'Not you again. I'm not even going to look at your documents - I know they're ok.'

But here we are in Court again...

• This is a terrible waste of public money...
• A waste of the Court's time...
• A waste of Police time...
• Most importantly, it can only be described as police harassment, and is a terrible way for anyone to have to live their life.

Surely a stop can be put to this. Can't the Police see from their records that this car has been stopped (several times) already and everything is in order? Shouldn't a quick check of the registration number on the police computer say 'do not stop this person again'? Can the Court be of some help to identify this misjustice and ensure it doesn't continue?

We'll have to see on Wednesday. I'll let you know.

Follow-ups: Undressed, humiliated and lied to (about our experience in Court, and about state violence), and Rather they convict me than abase myself (about our preparations for the next hearing). Also see my comments on Racism and discrimination which do relate. (This update, 15 May).

Racist police actions

Update, Monday 15 January 2007

This is a very old post but people are still finding it through Google searches and it needs an update. A group of people working with the council supported a Kurdish youth group. Something happened to one of the young people and issues were raised on this blog. A lot of positive work was done as a result - threats of legal action by the police have a tendency to motivate a blogger! By June the issues with the police were resolved (do look at this post).

The situations described are now well in the past. Readers of this blog are advised to click on the title (Advocacy Blog) and concentrate on more recent posts.

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Update, Thursday 20 April, 11:50 PM

This post has been temporarily removed while the Advocacy Action Committee considers threats of potential legal action by West Yorkshire Police.

Please see the Disclaimer for further information about the relationship between this blog and Advocacy Action.

There have been some positive discussions today about how to move forward on the issues that have been raised, and it has always been my intention to move forward positively. I would like to stress that I have never suggested that any individual officers are racist - the post refers to racist actions. (Just as I believe in my work with vulnerable people we cannot call any individual 'stupid', but we all do stupid things occasionally.)

There was one particular officer who was identified personally in a comment I attached to the original post. I have heard today that this officer was upset about being identified in this way and felt that they were thereby associated with the alleged racist actions. I am sorry for any upset caused by this misunderstanding, and can clearly say that after several years of working with this officer the thought would never cross my mind that they were themselves racist.

There will be further updates after due deliberation on the issues.