Why women oppose the Police, Crime, Sentencing & Courts Bill

Police commit crimes and cover up with impunity.

• South Yorkshire Police, among others, were responsible for the unlawful killing of 96 fans at Hillsborough, tampering with police statements, and collusion with the media in blaming the victims.
• Victims’ families are furious that despite decades of campaigning against this “orchestrated cover-up” no police were punished for their crimes.
• South Yorkshire was also responsible for violence and false charges against striking miners at Orgreave.
• Fitting up and blacklisting trade union organisers like the actor Ricky Tomlinson, finally exonerated decades later.
• The Metropolitan Police are under the leadership of Cressida Dick who oversaw the execution of Jean Charles De Menezes and the coverup that followed. Instead of being held accountable and sacked, she was promoted to be the first woman Met Commissioner. She denies that her force is racist, sexist or corrupt.
• The police deceived women in environmental and justice movements they were sent to spy on, sleeping with them, even having children. They spied on bereaved families, such as the family of Stephen Lawrence, Ricky Reel and many other campaigners.
• Instead of waiting for the Undercover Policing Inquiry to conclude, as many demanded, the government rushed through the Spy Cops Bill, with even more sweeping powers of impunity and therefore more and worse abuse of women.

Police racism and discrimination against people with disabilities.

• Black people are stopped and searched by police nine times more often than white people, and 35% more often under section 60 where no reason is required. Asian people are 5 times more likely to be stopped for drugs.
• People suffering mental ill-health – particularly people of colour – are indiscriminately tasered. Women have been tasered by police before being sectioned in psychiatric hospital. People taken into police custody are twice as likely to die if they are Black and in mental distress.
• Disabled campaigners are assaulted and spied on by police and reported to the Department of Work and Pensions, threatening their benefits, as admitted by Greater Manchester and Lancashire forces re anti-frackers.
• The StopSIM campaign opposes an NHS scheme devised by a policeman where people in mental distress who are “high users” A&E can be turned away, denying them medical attention and making it more likely they will be dealt with by police.

The Tory ‘hostile environment’ which the police are called to enforce.

• Officers implement Home Office immigration raids – we remember Joy Gardener and others killed or injured during such raids.
• Women with limited immigration status are denied ‘recourse to public funds’ making them vulnerable to abuse and exploitation. Police routinely report immigrant victims to the Home Office so many cannot come forward even in an emergency. Mothers whose immigration status depends on remaining with a violent partner fear their children will be taken from them and they could be deported if they speak out.
• The Home Secretary’s New Immigration Plan and Bill aims to deny immigrants ever getting settled status. Victims of rape or other violence who are immigrant or seeking asylum are already routinely disbelieved and deported to the unsafe country they fled.

Government policies that increase poverty & violence.

• Denying women housing and other resources prevents us from leaving violent men.
• Mothers and young people are driven into ‘survival sex’ or drugs, and criminalised for poverty. Even ex-head of Merseyside police said if given £5 billion to tackle crime, he would spend 80% on cutting poverty and deprivation.

On the pretext of ‘preventing serious crime’ the Police Bill would:

• Remove the right to protest by criminalising protests which are ‘noisy’, ‘annoying’, cause ‘obstruction’, ‘trespass’ and ‘nuisance’. Penalties include fines or prison for organisers; up to 10 years in prison for damaging a memorial.
• Further criminalise Gypsy, Roma & Travellers who stop in unauthorised places, and on other pretexts.
• Bring in new Serious Violent Crime Reduction Orders – civil injunctions leading to curfews and more stop and search powers without suspicion or reason. Questioning officers’ reasons for the search is a fast track to criminalisation, bypassing any court.
• Legally oblige public sector workers to inform on the public, working with the police to predict crime, including those in healthcare, schools and youth services. This extends the discredited racist Prevent programme. Police are already and increasingly embedded in schools and mental health services.
• Lengthen sentences, and move the automatic release date from half-way through a sentence to two-thirds.
• Whole life sentences for children. Shockingly, the UK has one of lowest ages in the world at which children are considered ‘criminally responsible’ and can be tried and imprisoned (10 years). We are horrified that the Bill would increase the criminalisation of children and without even considering evidence of widespread abuse by guards in juvenile secure units, secure children’s homes and detention centres. This attack on children is an attack on mothers, who will bear the pain and worry of caring for children being treated brutally by the criminal justice system.