Still 'Policing the crisis?': Black and mixed-'race' experiences of policing in West Yorkshire.

Black people in Britain have historically been over policed and under protected. Legislative and policy intervention in the past three decades has not brought about any significant change and, as evidenced by the post-August 2011 riots research, those racialized as Black still have low levels of confidence in the police. Contemporarily, most of what is understood in the field has emerged from statistical analyses of survey and statistical data on stop and search. Qualitative understanding is limited to the experiences of young people across Black and other ethnic minority groups. Within the existing research there is scant attention given to the racializing processes which shape police encounters.

This research, grounded in a Critical Race framework, seeks to prioritise the stories and counter- stories of those marginalised by racializing processes. Based on semi structured interviews with twenty individuals who identified as Black or Black and white mixed-‘race’ the emerging counter-stories enable an understanding of ‘race’ and processes of racialization in police/citizen contact. This thesis examines both police initiated and citizen initiated contact and analyses ‘race’ contextually as it intersects with class, gender and Black masculinities.

It illuminates how the whiteness of the police institution and processes of institutional racialization and racism, evident within contemporary policing practices, shapes police encounters. Further, it proposes that an activist agenda which makes racism visible can contribute to disrupting power structures and surviving racist affects.