Northumbria Journals
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A Critical Assessment of the Black Lives Matter Movement in the United Kingdom
No full textThe death of George Floyd in May 2020 in the United States of America (USA) generated protests across the world, fronted by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. The BLM movement cast the killing of Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin as emblematic of the criminal justice system’s (CJS) long history of racism. Whilst the core message that Black Lives Matter is indisputable, noble and a worthy rallying call, little scholarly attention has been given to the movement’s underlying philosophy and aims, particularly in relation to the CJS in Britain. This article explicates Britain’s BLM movement by considering four core themes – (a) critical race theory and British social science, (b) the policing of black people in Britain, (c) the omission of social class from the analyses of BLM scholars and activists in Britain and, (d) the aims of Britain’s BLM movement. It suggests that the BLM movement potentially offers a flawed understanding of racism within the CJS. The paper also critiques and problematizes BLM’s use of the terms ‘white privilege and ‘whiteness’. It closes with a critical discussion of the movement’s aims, including defunding and abolishing the police, suggesting that critical engagement with both CRT and BLM should form a core part of criminological debate
Queer Histories and the Politics of Policing, Emma K Russell [Routledge, 2020, 162pp, £120 (hardback)]: Review
No full textBook Review - Queer Histories and the Politics of Policing, Emma K Russell [Routledge, 2020, 162pp, £120 (hardback)
Substituted Decision Making and Coercion: The Socially Accepted Problem in Psychiatric Practice and a CRPD-Based Response to Them
Get PDFPsychiatry has a long tradition of enforcing ‘care’ within mental health settings, through formal and informal coercion, often with little regard to decision-making capacity. Despite scant evidence for the effectiveness of coercive interventions and the wide variation in their application, indicating structural as opposed to health-driven reasons for use, coercive practices continue to be routinely used internationally. This is notwithstanding the recovery model of care that is endorsed on a national public policy level in many countries. Further, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and its Committee make plain that the use of practices of coercion for those who experience disability, including people who experience psychosocial disability, are unacceptable and in breach of their and other international conventions. The CRPD is interpreted as demanding an end to coercion, primarily through substitute decision-making being replaced with supported decision-making. This critical analysis examines the development of coercive practices in psychiatry, how they have become embedded as both common and socially acceptable, and approaches that may help to reduce their use in light of the CRPD. Models of care where changes have been successful in reducing substitute decision-making and promoting supported decision-making are highlighted to challenge some of the inertia to change
The Post-Covid Future of the Environmental Crisis Industry and its Implications for Green Criminology and Zemiology
Get PDFSmith and Brisman (2020) have argued that our social and cultural orientation toward environmental crises is influenced by the existence of an ‘Environmental Crisis Industry’ (ECI hereafter) that favours environmental ‘solutions’ that are palatable to state corporate interests and the global consumer classes ahead of systemic change. This article, however, argues that the ECI is evolving in the context of political-economic and geopolitical changes that have emerged as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, and is becoming increasingly focused on renewable energy and the shoring up supply and control over the minerals and natural resources crucial to the energy transition. These, however, are not without their own harms. While green criminology has spent a great deal of time considering the harms and consequences of failing to seriously tackle climate change, it has scarcely considered the potential harms that could emerge if the ECI decided to seriously pursue zero-carbon targets. As the ECI gets more serious, this article considers these potential harms and the implications this has for criminologists and zemiologists interested in climate change and environmental harm
Not as Straight-Forward as that It’s Just ‘An Added Fuss’ – Untangling How Indian Psychiatrists Construe Domestic Human Rights Legislation
Get PDFAfter its ratification of the 2006 United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (UNCRPD), the Indian government proceeded to work through a list of laws from various fields – employment, housing, healthcare, personal status – that would need to be amended to guarantee the rights in the UNCRPD. Regarding the healthcare of persons with mental illness, the law-drafters deemed it insufficient to merely amend the existing law and proceeded to draft a new, innovative mental healthcare law. When the Mental Healthcare Act (MHA) was passed in 2017, responses were strongly polarised: On the one hand, it was lauded for staying true to the vision of the UNCRPD (Duffy & Kelly, 2019), while on the other hand, especially psychiatrists heavily criticised that they anticipated the law would adversely affect their ability to treat patient
