Jessicas Story: Racism And Injustice In The Criminal Justice System From Brazil To Britain

by Jessica Pandian

At university, I studied racism, social injustice and criminal justice in the US and Latin America. I became particularly interested in police violence in Brazil after learning the Brazilian police killed 33,000 people in the decade to 2021.

After graduating, I decided that I wanted to focus on challenging racism in the UK and Europe, as I’ve lived in the UK my whole life. I began volunteering with the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), a think-tank which examines racism in the UK and Europe from criminological, sociological and artistic perspectives. I monitored the British and Spanish press for news stories relating to racist violence, immigration and asylum, as well as deaths in the Channel crossing.

Whilst at the IRR, I noticed a spate of taser incidents involving the police in the UK. Within 6 weeks, the police had tasered three Black men, leaving one paralysed from the waist down. I interviewed families bereaved by taser violence, and scholars and activists in the field for IRR News. By speaking with the families of Adrian McDonald and Marc Cole, who both died after being tasered, I became aware of the work of INQUEST.

I joined INQUEST as a researcher to work on the deaths of Black and racialised people in prison, which culminated in a report that highlighted specific issues in their deaths, such as racial stereotyping and a refusal to accept signs of distress or vulnerability as sincere. 

Since then, I have continued in policy and research at INQUEST, with a focus on prisons, police and racism. I’ve worked with bereaved families to write submissions on people in prison on remand and indeterminate sentences to the Government’s Justice Select Committee and on police racism to the United Nations.

Things came full circle when I participated in a reunion with INQUEST of Brazilian and British people bereaved by police violence. 

We also work with other charities and grassroots organisations. Together with the legal charity JUSTICE, we created a guide for lawyers and coroners to sensitively raise and investigate the role of racism in state custody deaths.

I was also proud of our work with nine other organisations, including Liberty, Release and JENGbA, on producing a guide to non-policing solutions to serious youth violence, which broadly refers to harm inflicted on and by young people resulting in serious injury or death. It was recently awarded the Amplifying Voices award by the Sheila McKechnie Foundation for challenging the dominant narrative around serious youth violence and making clear the possibility of community-led alternatives.

This year, I have had the privilege of co-producing a documentary with Naomi Oppenheim that traces INQUEST’s evolution from a collective of bereaved families to an established charity, exposing forty years of state violence and resistance in England and Wales.

Every day, we campaign alongside families to expose the true circumstances of these deaths, hold those responsible to account, and enact meaningful change to prevent future deaths. None of this would have been possible without the support of people like you: thank you. 

We are completely independent of government and entirely reliant on grants and donations from people like you to continue our vital work. Become a regular donor today and support us and bereaved families in the fight for truth, justice and accountability.

DONATE