\n<\/p>\n
A black barrister has said a security guard told him he could not park in a court\u2019s car park in London because \u201cit\u2019s not for defendants\u201d.<\/p>\n
Stephen Akinsanya, who in June was awarded an OBE for raising awareness of youth knife crime and its prevention, said the incident, at an east London court about four weeks ago, illustrated the lack of progress on racism within the criminal justice system.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cIt was a sort of reflection of what happened when I first qualified back in 1993, going into the same court, being asked by a security guard which case I was on trial in. And as a junior lawyer thinking: well, why does it have to be that I\u2019m the one on trial? Why can it not be that I\u2019m the lawyer?<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then 33 years later, pulling up in my car to park in the same court building, a security guard saying: \u2018You can\u2019t park here.\u2019 And when I said why, he said: \u2018Defendants can\u2019t park in the car park.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The barrister, who first mentioned the incident in a Criminal Bar Association podcast published this week, titled \u201cBeing Black in Criminal Justice \u2013 Is the Profession Racist?\u201d, said he could not believe that \u201cpeople are still prejudging an individual\u201d. He said that, apart from the gown, he was wearing his barrister\u2019s attire, which the security guard should have been familiar with. When he challenged the guard, \u201che was completely embarrassed\u201d and raised the barrier to allow him to park, said Akinsanya.<\/p>\n
Keir Monteith KC told the podcast: \u201cWe\u2019ve probably all experienced that situation early on and not so early on in our careers where we\u2019ve been asked to go and sit in the dock.\u201d He said others were still experiencing it but he personally was not, which he suggested was because he was a KC and known in a particular court.<\/p>\n
In 2020, the courts service apologised to two black barristers after one was mistaken for a defendant three times in a day and the other twice in a day.<\/p>\n
Akinsanya said: \u201c<\/em>I\u2019m privy to seeing how the bar has changed with a lot more people from diverse backgrounds entering the profession but there is still a perception that, if you\u2019re black, you\u2019re more likely not to be the lawyer, you\u2019re more likely to be a defendant who\u2019s attending court because you\u2019re on trial.<\/p>\n \u201cI just think: why are we still in this position in the 21st century? Which makes one think about the wider conversation we were having [on the podcast] about the lack of black judges.\u201d<\/p>\n Judicial diversity statistics published last month showed that over the past 10 years the proportion of judges who are black has barely moved, creeping up from 1.4% to 1.6%, compared with 4% of the population in England and Wales. There are 79 black judges (43 in courts and the remainder in tribunals) out of 5,337 and just one senior black court judge, Mrs Justice Margaret Obi.<\/p>\n Akinsanya said: \u201cI could speak of colleagues of mine who are 40-plus years in [the profession] who are more than capable, more than able, [who] I know have applied and have been turned down.\u201d<\/p>\n He believes there should be targets to increase representation and a body that is held accountable if they are missed.<\/p>\n Laurie Anne-Power KC told the podcast an oversight and scrutiny board was needed because \u201csomething\u2019s going wrong\u201d. She added: \u201cThe only way we can find out what is going wrong in that assessment phase of the process is to have a board that oversees every single aspect. Carry out comparisons. For example, look at the difference between applications for white applicants and black applicants \u2013 is there a difference? If there is not a difference, why is there a difference in outcome?\u201d<\/p>\n Monteith, who co-authored a 2022 report that said the judiciary was institutionally racist, criticised the \u201csecret soundings\u201d used to appoint judges, by which serving judges submit confidential assessments of a candidate\u2019s suitability. \u201cIf we\u2019re going to have a proper application of merit, then do it on what the individual brings to the interview room, not what people have in terms of chats that are never brought into the interview so the person can deal with it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A black barrister has said a security guard told him he could not park in a court\u2019s car park in London because \u201cit\u2019s not for defendants\u201d. Stephen Akinsanya, who in June was awarded an OBE for raising awareness of youth knife crime and its prevention, said the incident, at an east London court about four<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51670,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[16958,706,1495,160,24594,175,1661,121,2315],"class_list":{"0":"post-51669","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-barrister","9":"tag-black","10":"tag-car","11":"tag-court","12":"tag-defendants","13":"tag-law","14":"tag-london","15":"tag-park","16":"tag-told"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/51670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}