BRITISH JUSTICE - BLACK DEFENDANTS VERSUS ALL WHITE JURY, PROSECUTORS AND JUDGES EQUAL MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE. PART 4

However, the chances of, say Britain or America employing the 'root and branch removal option', in seeking to address the fundamental and endemic malfeasance of their criminal justice system, is probably unlikely to even happen. It is more likely that any changes are going to take place at the margins, as it were.

This could be assisted by having a criminal justice system which makes incarceration of offenders, particularly those who are of low risk of reoffending, or whose offences are not very serious, the exception, rather than the rule. Community or in-the-community 'punishment' options would become the norm, accounting for the disposal of most convictions. 

This would become the new 'root', or raison detre' of the cjs. In other words, if I might be uneconomical with words, the criminal justice system would be founded upon the new principles and objectives or outcomes which are desired of it.

We could have 'objectives or outcomes' led system, instead of one which has come to be subordinate to the physical structures by which the old and current system manifests itself. A structure and institution which cannot result in the good outcomes for which it is neither designed nor can give rise to.

In working to bring about this kind of reform, it would require the criminal justice system to make numerous changes, beginning, as I have suggested above, by replacing the underpinning principles on which it is based.

 These would include such changes as making it a prerequisite for all juries which are hearing a case against black defendants to have at least two black jurors, if practicable, from the defendant's ethnic, and, if he/she is a practising Muslim, Jew, et al, religious background. As someone who has been a juror in cases involving defendants of my ethnic and religious backgrounds, I have experienced that this can prove very helpful to the deliberations.

It would also require the issue of 'political correctness' to be addressed with jurors, in order to ensure that some jurors would not feel dis-empowered to openly and frankly debate issues such as those pertaining to gender, sexual and race equality, without fear of feeling that they might be perceived as chauvinistic, sexist, racist or misogynists. 

They should all be able to feel that they can deliberate on cases such as those involving allegations of sexual abuse, rape, violence against women, etc, in a psychological safe juror environment, without having to be on board the prevailing emotional 'band waggon', such as that pertaining poignant issues such as child abuse, and sexual abuse.


To be continued.