Research group: The Justice Project: Sites of Resistance
Exposing discriminatory policies and punishment in our criminal justice system and campaigning for change.
Summary
About our research
We believe that constructs of ‘crime’ and the process of criminalisation should be subject to both public debate and academic and political challenge.
Responses to ‘crime’ are disproportionately experienced. Our research acknowledges how the processes, policies and punishments of the criminal justice system reinforce patriarchy, class stigma and racism in our society.
Our group has a keen interest in the discriminatory use of joint enterprise. This is where a person can be guilty by association of crimes they did not directly commit.
We work with organisations led by prisoners and families affected by joint enterprise, legal practitioners and parliamentarians. We call for change in the use of these convictions, including through this short film on joint enterprise.
Our researchers are involved in examining and challenging the harms of other contemporary policing and punishment strategies. This includes:
- the impact of the Proceeds of Crime legislation on defendants and their families
- the racialised harms inherent in data driven policing, new surveillance technologies and emerging police powers such as the COVID-19 legislation
- the gendered processes of criminalisation and how the power to punish targets some girls and young women
We host and speak at international events. Our guests have included Robert King and Albert Woodfox from the Angloa 3, who spent decades in solitary confinement.
Recently we spoke at the the Institute for Contemporary Arts globally recognised War Inna Babylon exhibition.
Our research takes a deliberately interventionist approach. We seek to produce knowledge that resists the harms of criminalisation. And we aim to raise awareness of injustices and force change in criminal justice policy and practice.
Selected projects
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Selected publications
- Harris, S, Joseph-Salisbury, R, Williams, P and White, L (2021) A threat to public safety: policing, racism and the Covid-19 pandemic London: Institute for Race Relations
- Clarke, B and Chadwick, K (2020) Stories of Injustice: The criminalisation of women convicted under joint enterprise
- Clarke, B and Williams, P (2020) (Re)producing Guilt in Suspect Communities: An analysis of the centrality of negative racialisation in joint enterprise prosecution narratives International Journal of Criminal Justice and Social Democracy, 9(3), pp 116-129
- Fletcher, C (2020) Social value or social harm? The impact of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 upon the defendant and their families, in Benson, K, King, C and Walker, C (eds) Assets, Crime and the State. Oxon: Routledge, pp 79-93
- Fletcher, C (2020) Double Punishment - The Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (POCA): A Qualitative Examination of the Post-Conviction Confiscation Punishment in England and Wales Manchester Metropolitan University
- Williams, P and Kind, E (2019) Data-driven policing: The Hardwiring of Discriminatory Policing Practices across Europe Open Society Justice Initiative and European Network Against Racism
- Williams, P and Clarke, B (2018) The Black Criminal Other as an Object of Social Control Social Sciences, 7(11) pp 234
- Clarke, B and Chadwick, K (2018) From ‘troubled’ women, to failing institutions: The necessary narrative shift for the decarceration of women post-Corston in Moore, L, Scraton, P, and Wahidin, A (eds) Women’s Imprisonment and the Case for Abolition Critical Reflections on Corston Ten Years On. Routledge
- Williams, P (2018) Being Matrixed: The (over) Policing of Gang Suspects in London London: StopWatch Charity
- Williams, P and Clarke, B (2018) Disrupting the single story: Collective punishments, myth-making and the criminalisation of racialised communities. In Poynting, S, Bhatia, M and Tufail, W (eds) Racism, Crime and Media. Palgrave
- Clarke, B, Chadwick, K and Williams, P (2017) Critical Social Research as a ‘site of resistance’: reflections on relationships, power and positionality Justice, Power and Resistance, 1(2), pp 461-82
- Williams, P and Clarke, B (2016) Dangerous Associations: Joint enterprise, Gangs and Racism London: Centre for Crime and Justice Studies
Organisations we work with
Inquest
Institute of Race Relations
JENGBA
Contact
Contact us
You can contact individual members of the team through their staff profiles.
For general enquiries, please contact group leads Becky Clarke or Dr Patrick Williams, or project lead Dr Kathryn Chadwick.