At the end of June Keir Starmer said of Black Lives Matter protesters in an interview: “Nobody should be saying anything about defunding the police.” At the same time, the UK government announced four new prisons. Olympic athlete Bianca Williams has said she felt like “being black is a crime” after she was stopped and handcuffed by police while driving in London. And last week it emerged that the Met police carried out 22,000 stop-and-searches on young Black men during lockdown.

Some campaigners, especially in the US, are talking about defunding the police. But what does that actually mean? Should campaigners be calling for it in the UK? And do police and prisons really keep us safe?

In this episode Ayeisha is joined by Dr. Adam Elliot-Cooper, research associate in sociology at the University of Greenwich and board member of the Monitoring Group.

References:

Read "Are Prisons Obsolete?" by Angela Y. Davis https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/angela-y-davis-are-prisons-obsolete

Find out more about Black Visions Collective https://www.blackvisionsmn.org/

Read the report "Race and Racism in English Secondary Schools" by Dr Remi Joseph-Salisbury https://www.runnymedetrust.org/projects-and-publications/education/racism-in-secondary-schools.html

Find out more about United Family and Friends Campaign https://uffcampaign.org/

Visit Community Actions on Prison Expansion's website for more info https://cape-campaign.org/

Go to https://movementforjustice.co.uk/ for more on Movement for Justice

You can learn more about JENGbA's work at https://jointenterprise.co/

Cradle Community are fundraising for healing and transformative justice work in the UK. If you donate, you can get an abolitionist package including their new zine "how to be an abolitionist today". More info here https://www.instagram.com/p/CCa1VtVhZXK/?igshid=hgtrn7bhwlc4

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Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone.

Music by Podington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence.

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The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org