Prosecuting Rap: Criminal Justice and UK Black Youth Expressive Culture

在英格兰和威尔士的刑事司法系统中，黑人、亚洲人和少数民族（BAME）的比例过高。虽然他们占人口的14%，但他们占成年囚犯的25%，在18岁以下被拘留者中占41%，这一比例令人震惊。这些数据促使特蕾莎·梅（Theresa May）委托对刑事司法系统中种族歧视人群的待遇和结果进行审查，由此产生的备受瞩目的拉米报告（2017年）揭示了警务和起诉程序缺乏审查，导致不公平的结果，特别是对种族歧视青年。拉米的发现后来被联合国（2018年）和国际特赦组织（2018年）的报告放大，这两份报告都表明，英国针对年轻黑人男性的警务和起诉行为违反了人权法。一个可能导致这些差异的未被充分审视的领域是，警察和检察官如何利用黑人青年的表达文化作为证据来支持他们的刑事案件。自21世纪初Grime进入伦敦以来，英国说唱变得非常受欢迎，产生了Dizzee Rascal、Wiley和Stormzy等家喻户晓的名字。许多年轻人模仿这些说唱明星，创作说唱诗，制作业余视频，并在数字平台上免费发布。然而，如果这些年轻人被怀疑参与帮派或犯罪，警方就会越来越多地搜查他们的手机和卧室，寻找说唱歌词，并在网上搜索视频，以帮助立案。说唱是一种狡猾的表达和娱乐形式，检察官应该非常谨慎地使用。因为制作说唱音乐的年轻人往往是贫穷的黑人，所以危险在于，说唱音乐会以煽动性的方式为控方服务，证实白人占多数的法官和陪审员对年轻黑人男性的刻板印象。初步调查结果表明，说唱作为定罪的有力途径，即使有时在缺乏常规证据的情况下也是如此。毫无疑问，某些类型的说唱音乐很容易被刑事司法系统使用。一些Grime和大多数Drill的说唱都摆出一种威胁的姿态，声称“保持真实”，并包括暴力的“坏人”主题。这种音乐可能令人不安（事实上，德雷尔的意图之一就是挑衅）。但歌词绝不是简单的自传体和现实主义。相反，它将自传的元素与黑人民间传说、工人阶级青年的异化、男子气概和商业模式结合在一起，在更广泛的流行文化背景下为年轻人运作，其中暴力和犯罪主题无处不在（例如暴力游戏文化、动作和黑帮电影等）。将说唱文化引入法律案件通常不会受到辩护律师的反对。在这些案件中，被告很少在自己的审判中被传唤出庭。因此，王室对说唱的使用通常不会受到审查或质疑。当说唱被用于严重犯罪和联合企业案件时，这一点尤其令人担忧，包括强制无期徒刑的谋杀审判。这个项目将带来大卫·拉米报告中所呼吁的对说唱文化的法律使用的必要审查，以帮助确保更公平的审判。它将：促进关于说唱的丰富的跨学科争论的发展，以加强理解；为辩护律师提供支持，编写一本手册，说明如何对说唱证据提出异议；指导新的学者辩护专家，他们可以仔细审查这种法律用途；与媒体和公众合作，提高认识；与倡导团体合作，与政策制定者沟通，挑战起诉说唱趋势和更广泛的黑人青年犯罪化。

Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) people are heavily overrepresented in the criminal justice system of England and Wales. While they make up 14% of the population, they represent 25% of adult prisoners and an alarming 41% of under 18s in custody. These figures led Theresa May to commission a review into the treatment and outcomes of BAME people in the criminal justice system and the resulting high-profile Lammy Report (2017) revealed a lack of scrutiny in policing and prosecution processes that is fostering unfair outcomes, especially for BAME youth. Lammy's findings have since been amplified by reports from the UN (2018) and Amnesty International (2018), which both suggest that UK policing and prosecuting practices toward young black men are contravening human rights laws. One under-scrutinized area that may be feeding into these disparities is how police and prosecutors are using black youth expressive culture as evidence to shore up their criminal cases. Since the arrival of Grime in the early 2000s in London, UK rap has become hugely popular, producing household-names like Dizzee Rascal, Wiley and Stormzy. Many young people emulate these rap stars by composing rap verse and making amateur videos which they post on digital platforms for free. However, if these young people fall under suspicion of gang involvement or a crime, the police have increasingly come to search their phones and bedrooms for rap lyrics and trawl the internet for videos to help build a case against them. Rap is a slippery form of expression and entertainment that should be used with extreme caution by prosecutors. Because the young people who make rap are often poor and black, the danger is that rap music works in inflammatory ways for the prosecution, confirming stereotypical ideas for majority-white judge and jurors about young black men. Preliminary findings suggest that rap can work powerfully as a pathway to conviction, even sometimes in cases in which there is a shortage of conventional evidence.Some types of rap music are no doubt vulnerable to such use by the criminal justice system. Some Grime and most Drill rap strikes a menacing pose, claims to 'keep it real', and includes violent 'badman' themes. This music can be disturbing (indeed, one of Drill's intentions is to provoke). But the lyrics are by no means simply autobiographical and realist. Instead, it combines elements of autobiography with black folklore, working-class youth alienation, macho swagger, and commercial formula, operating in a broader pop-culture landscape for young men in which violent and criminal themes are pervasive (e.g. violent gaming culture, action and gangster films, etc.).The introduction of rap culture into legal cases typically goes uncontested by defence counsels. Defendants in these cases are very rarely called to the stand in their own trials. Therefore, the use of rap by the Crown is not normally scrutinized or contested. This is especially worrying when rap is used in serious crime and joint enterprise cases, including murder trials that carry mandatory life sentences.This project will bring the kind of much-needed scrutiny called for in David Lammy's report to the legal use of rap culture in order to help ensure fairer trials. It will: foster the development of rich, interdisciplinary arguments about rap to enhance understanding; support defence counsels by developing a handbook on how rap evidence can be contested; coach new scholar-defence experts who can scrutinize this legal use; engage with the media and public to raise awareness; and work with advocacy groups to communicate with policymakers and challenge prosecuting rap trends and the wider criminalization of black youth.