Racist inferences and flawed data: drill rap lyrics as criminal evidence in group prosecutions

Author:

Quinn Eithne

Abstract

Drill rap lyrics are used regularly by police and prosecutors as evidence against young Black working-class defendants in UK criminal cases. Though this practice is of mounting public concern, its discursive mechanisms remain poorly understood, shrouded by the police and courts. This article exposes and explains state interpretations of drill lyrics in the preparation of serious crime cases. It considers how the state uses violent rap lyrics to build secondary liability in group prosecutions by exploiting drill’s power to invoke stereotypes and mislead the court. The author focuses on a 2020 joint enterprise murder case in London, in which she served as a rap expert, to give a concrete illustration of how the state tries to use rap lyrics of little or no relevance to incriminate. This article contends that rap-facilitated group prosecutions encapsulate processes of racist carcerality – targeting young Black people through their expressive culture – which are in need of concerted challenge and transformational change.

Funder

Arts and Humanities Research Council Leadership Fellowship

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Reference81 articles.

1. The research was conducted by Will Pritchard who wrote up some of the findings in “Behind Bars: How Rap Lyrics are Being Used to Convict Black British Men,” Guardian, June 21, 2023, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/jun/21/behind-bars-how-rap-lyrics-are-being-used-to-convict-black-british-men, supported by Economic and Social Research Council funds at the University of Manchester as part of the Prosecuting Rap project (on this project see https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/prosecuting-rap/).

2. The Youth Justice Legal Centre produced a short guide for lawyers that focuses on the problem of police officers acting as rap experts and how to challenge it. See Youth Justice Legal Centre, Fighting Racial Injustice 3: Rap and Drill (Youth Justice Legal Centre, 2022), https://yjlc.uk/sites/default/files/attachments/2022-05/YJLC_Racial-injustice_Toolkit-3%28R4%29%20final.pdf. For a more in-depth legal guide from the US that has relevance for the UK context, see J. Lerner and C. Kubrin et al. Rap on Trial Legal Guide, Version 1 (Irvine, CA: University of California, 2021), https://cpb-us-e2.wpmucdn.com/sites.uci.edu/dist/d/2220/files/2022/08/Rap-on-Trial-Legal-Guide-v1.1.pdf.

3. On police institutional racism, see L. Casey, “The Baroness Casey Review: The Standards of Behaviour and Internal Culture of the Metropolitan Police Service” (London: Metropolitan Police, 2023), https://www.met.police.uk/police-forces/metropolitan-police/areas/about-us/about-the-met/bcr/baroness-casey-review/; Police Scotland, “Police Constable Statement on Institutional Discrimination,” 2023, https://www.scotland.police.uk/what-s-happening/news/2023/may/chief-constable-statement-on-institutional-discrimination/.

4. White British suspects have the lowest rate with 69.6 per cent of cases resulting in a charge, compared with Caribbean suspects (77.5 per cent) and Mixed Heritage suspects (between 77.3 per cent and 81.3 per cent) for similar offences. Figures from Crown Prosecution Service, “CPS action to understand disproportionality in charging decisions,” February 7, 2023, https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/cps-action-understand-disproportionality-charging-decisions.

5. This article does not foreground the names of individuals (though the case and its actants are readily identifiable) because the thrust of the article is not about individuals but about structures, discourses and processes.

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