Do you think there’s 2 tier policing in the uk?

Well, getting rid of juries wills solve everything. Or so I am told ...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2m808kml0o

I wrote my dissertation on systemic racism in the criminal justice system, admittedly 25 years plus ago. Can’t imagine much has changed.

So yes, black people are more likely to be stopped than white people, they’re more likely to be searched, they’re more likely to be arrested, they’re less likely to be cautioned and more likely to be charged, they’re less likely to get bail, on average they get harsher sentences…..all for comparable crimes.

it has a snowball effect but ultimately yes there’s a two tier criminal justice system which starts with policing.

My son is a white working class teen (aged 19)- wears sportswear, Nike & all that. His friends are similar. They’ve had very very little interaction with the police ever (in terms of stop & search etc) except when he was about 13 and was an idiot on a couple of instances (so it was deserved). I have zero doubt had he/they been black they would’ve been targeted throughout the years by police.

So black is synonymous with working class for you, even when they are driving an expensive car? And I personally have a problem with your assumption that the working class are more likely to commit a crime than the middle class. It strikes me that the major consumers of cocaine are more likely to be middle class and the dealers are unlikely to be poor

But how many middle class young women are drug dealers or carry knives? Not many! Whereas young working class boys are far more likely to do both. Thus why they are searched more often.

Which isn't to say they are worse people or they don't have reasons -perhaps the young middle class woman is lucky enough to feel like she can go out and about without needing protection - although see endemic of vawg to see if that is actually true.

The point of stop and searches is to find illegal items. What a waste of time if every 8th search was of a pensioner just to make it "fair."

This is from twenty years ago but I knew some teenagers of Caribbean ancestry who were the loveliest, most considerate and well-spoken young men and were stopped by the police everytime they went out in the evening. That sort of treatment would turn less grounded young men into anti-social problems

No. Get off twitter.

If any of us had lied to a court and caused innocent people to go to jail and lose their entire savings, we'd have been banged up so quickly our heads would spin.

How long has it been since it was proved the Post Office knowingly did just that ? And how many people have been held accountable in a court of law for it ?

If you can answer those two questions, then the rest of this thread isn't really needed.

No I don’t.

On the freedom to protest point earlier in the thread. Police often prevent or arrest counter protestors especially if they're likely to be a flashpoint, which is often their intention. They separate footy fans, if there's an organised counter protest they separate them. Their whole mission is generally to not have to wade in and fight, so they allow damage to property etc and just film it and then go and knock on people's doors on Monday morning. The way that frequently super aggressive right wing protests are met with greater force is an act of necessity, not politics, because they actively set out to fight the police, and they've got a lot of experience doing it. Then when they get a kicking and arrested they whinge and invoke this mythical group that are able to fight the police with impunity

Plenty of right wing protests go off entirely without incident, it just depends on the extent it's been organised by footy casuals who like fighting

@Seymour5 I can't comment on every case, all I will say is that Lucy pled guilty so it's quicker. There is a massive backlog across cases so if Ricky Jones is going to trial (he clearly hasn't pled guilty) and thus a judge has given him bail conditions, deeming him safe enough till his trial I'm assuming. Not very familiar with his case, but loads of people are waiting for their trail date. Depending on the alleged offences, some will get bail, some not.

Also like I said in an earlier post, we can never, unless we're involved in the case know the whole circumstances and as the court of appeal deemed Lucy's sentence just, there's nothing else to say. Both the sentences of Joseph Haythorne (again not familiar) will fall into the appropriate sentencing guidelines and they may have had more charges than each other, as well as other factors which the judge always considers both mitigating and aggravating factors. All sentences even for the same charge can be different - judges use situational judgement, it's why we can't just replace them with a robot that doesn't consider circumstances but just gives x crime y number of years. Judges also don't just sentence custodially, there will always be other elements e.g community work, anger management classes etc. So yes sentences differ, sometimes widely, that's the system working, it's not just for them.

Also stats show that BAME individuals receive longer sentences and more custodail sentences. BAME men on average spend 33.1 months in prison (Black and Asian), for white men it's 21.5. So Black and Asian men are spending 54% longer often for the same offence in 2022/23. Cases like the one below where black youth are criminalised for music are still happening. This poor boy lost 3 years in prison, because of a music video and him being falsely identified in it.
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2025/may/01/ade-adedeji-manchester-release-conviction-quashed-drill-music-video

@TheLivelyViper Ricky Jones was on film, inciting a crowd to ‘slash the throats of the rioters’. He’s still on bail. Joseph Haythorne tweeted ‘burn any hotel with the scruffy bastards in it’. He got 15 months.

Yes but in criminal always circumstances matter - so that same tweet when there aren't riots across the country and people actually targeting immigrant's homes will receive a less sentence. What she did was ignited violence and whilst it will always be a criminal offence when people are engaging in that behaviour, her message is only going to encourage it more = higher sentence. This is because it will be an aggravating factor in sentencing.

Similarly, if there was a serial killer going around for weeks, then a tweet etc encouraging further stabbings or instructions on how to make an explosive whilst there's a string of attacks. Your sentence will be more severe because of the circumstances in which you incited violence, when the chances of it being acted on were higher. That's how the law works in England and Wales. So you cannot compare it to similar offences done in isolation.

There are a fair number of police forces in the US that are in large proportion black, have black leadership, and in cities with black civic leadership.

I don't believe there is actually a lot of difference in the policing in those cities, I'm not sure the issue is mainly about the attitudes of the police.

Compare what she wrote, in a tweet, to the real life threats made to the teacher in Batley who had to go into hiding, and may still be in hiding, because of a lesson he gave about free speech. None of those who threatened him and his family were even arrested, far less sent to prison.

Suspended Labour councillor, Ricky Jones called for protestors ‘throats to be cut’ after the Southport murders. He was arrested in August last year, and is still on bail awaiting trial.

I didn’t like what she wrote, but I think her sentencing, and treatment in prison is disproportionate to the way others have been dealt with.

Have just seen the video of the lad arrested at pride. People on the opposite side of that debate have been acting threateningly and violently at events like LWS in full view of the police for years without being arrested. So yes, in my view there is the "good cop tier" of policing for people whose views align with orgs like the college of policing and the "bad cop tier" for their opponents.

I know it’s not going to be that the police are racist but does anyone have any clue what the OP is actually referring to

Use Google.

So why wasn’t the ethnicity of the Rotherham rapists and groomers even recorded in some cases? For fear of appearing discriminatory.

Two tier works both ways now.

Tbh I agree in the majority of cases there is simply not enough policing at all , even in the most serious of cases. I don’t know what the stats are around groups most commonly linked to the most serious crimes… knife crime, drugs and related offences, armed robberies, rape… but whatever they are I think our policing should reflect them.

Two-tier policing certainly exists, as many PPs have pointed out - the police are institutionally racist and sexist, and this is borne out in the statistics (whether it be deaths in custody, who gets tasered, whose complaints aren't taken seriously or properly investigated etc).

In the case of protesting - something which the OP says they're interested in - it's striking how different groups are treated by the State, eg
Palestine Action being 'proscribed' for doing exactly what lots of other anti-arms-trade protestors have done over the years - taking direct action against military hardware to prevent it being used to commit genocide/ illegal warfare
The huge sentences handed down to members of some peaceful protest groups (like Extinction Rebellion or Just Stop Oil), for causing the same kind of disruption to traffic as other groups of demonstrators (eg all those men driving tractors through London)

The law is absolute, so if you break a law you will be dealt with accordingly, if the CPS decide there is enough evidence to prove you broke that law and they can be assured of a conviction. Waste of valuable resources if not.

Two tier policing occurs when bias and societal pressures are at play when it comes to stop and search/arrest, but once at that point there is actually a fairly robust process the Police have to follow.

Most laws can be changed if people are really bothered by them, start a campaign, put the hours in !

A young white woman is also not likely to be involved in gang related crime, or drug crime or knife crime or carrying a firearm.

its not rocket science.

I would bet my house that you don't believe Lucy Connolly should be in jail do you?