BLOG 3 – CLICK HERE TO CATCH UP : BLOG 1 & BLOG 2
Written By Hannah Branston
The controlling nature of retributive justice can be seen to act as a barrier to progress, maintaining injustices and failing to tackle the underlying causes of them. The system must change to combat institutional problems and the focus needs to shift to Transformative Justice – instead of excessively incarcerating minorities, shrouding the State in protection and accepting the dysfunctional fatal system of policing, we should hold people accountable for harm they cause, identify root causes of issues and tackle their perpetuation by societal and systemic change.
Chief Constable Peter Fahy’s proposal of ‘Place Based Integration’ acknowledged concerns of police culture and the internal politics of hierarchically-based organisations. He implemented ‘Place Based Integration’ and ‘Integrated Neighbourhood Teams’ in Greater Manchester which required officers to refer vulnerable people to the appropriate service instead of invoking the CJS – shifting police resources into local preventative schemes, allowing holistic, suitable responses to matters such as mental health. Transformative Justice calls for the CJS to be recognised as responsible for the violent oppression of marginalised communities, and encourages responding instead to interpersonal or community violence within more intimate community or civil systems. Fahy’s programmes intrinsically reduces unnecessary over-policing and the system had beneficial impact, shifting philosophical perceptions and ‘working directly with people and communities to understand why the traditional system is often unable to do the right things’. Afterall, ‘[i]n an advanced, prosperous country people with mental disorder should receive their care from the health services and not the police’. Despite Place Based Integration evidencing success, reducing the number of people detained by inappropriate police powers due to mental ill-health by 90%, such schemes have not been mirrored in any other UK police force. Transformation, as opposed to restoration and retribution, recognises the context of structural conditions in which violence takes place, such as poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, and other systemic forms of violence. A Transformative Justice System would have mechanisms to tackle harm, not by causing further harm through punishment from a body with embedded inequalities, but by rehabilitation, education and improved community support addressing root causes of harm-ful and harm-causing behaviour.
At BLAM, we see how the ‘double discrimination’ of Black people with mental health issues manifests against young children. Many parents struggle to gain a mental health diagnosis for their child, they feel let down by CAMHS and doctors. Even where a diagnosis has been received, we have seen children wait 10 months for an effective Education Health and Care
Plan (ECHP) when they are meant to take no more than 20 weeks to complete, and some schools fail to implement an appropriate care plan at all. These children are often neglected and excluded as their behaviour is misunderstood and mismanaged. We see children who have been in contact with CAMHS from as young as 8 years old face persistent failures from schools and the State – instead of receiving support, and consideration for struggling with the schooling structure, such children are often deemed ‘problematic’ and excluded. The exclusion to prison pipeline is well documented and goes to show another systemic failure of the State. From healthcare to schooling to policing, the system is both damaged and damaging, particularly for Black people. As such, BLAM intercepts these exclusions, acting
as a Transformative Justice mechanism fighting the multilayered oppression excluded Black children face. It is vital that people can access community-based mental health support and that our systems are addressed and improved. This is Transformative Justice’s agenda. This improvement can only happen with the re-funding of community support systems and the destruction of discriminatory assumptions embedded in State structures. Police involvement in mental health matters can be stigmatising and would be better managed with well-funded community-based experts who possess the ‘emotional intelligence and empathy to diminish the need for physical restraint’. The institutional use of surveillance, policing and imprisonment serves only white, heterosexual, cisgendered, able people and manifests systemic issues and marginalisation of Black people. Transformative Justice aims to address and confront the oppressions at the root of harm and prevent the domino effect. Such processes include political education around sexist, racist, abelist and other oppressive behaviour, sexual violence prevention work, victim-offender mediation and healing processes. These mechanisms challenge the social system that currently fights harm with harm, and create a move towards a Transformative Justice system.
BLAM UK CIC 