The Criminalization of "Black Deprivation" in the United Kingdom.

The article is based on the observation of a number of drug trafficking cases before a London Crown Court by the author. She is concerned to study how the court is established as a site where racial imageries and divisions are reproduced and raises questions as to how courtroom discourse may affect a jury's decision‐making regarding a defendant's conviction or acquittal. She argues that comparable conditions of black and white defendants that are supposedly congruent with socioeconomic deprivation were discursively constructed in their criminal link to a drug offence only in cases involving black defendants. She documents the academic, popular and state linkage of race and deprivation in the post‐1945 period and then applies these insights to her study of the discursive construction of race and deprivation in drug trials. She shows how the socioeconomic factor became relevant in prosecution attempts to justify a drug trafficking allegation by locating the alleged proceeds within the defendant's socioeconomic circumstances in a racialized fashion. She provides extracts from a number of cases showing these processes in operation, including a shared understanding between judges and the prosecution. “Those judges show an awareness and knowledge of the purported connection between black people and crime, including the widespread notion that black involvement in criminal activities emanates from their peripheral socioeconomic position.” She concludes that the courtroom encompasses racial imageries as part of legal discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]