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The Long Shadow: Intergenerational Racialised Policing of Black Britons
Event details
This paper examines how racialised policing shapes the lives of Black British communities across generations. Drawing on 58 qualitative interviews with members of three generations in London, it explores how encounters with the police, particularly stop and search, extend beyond individual incidents to shape everyday life, identity and belonging. It considers how experiences and knowledge of policing circulate within families and communities through warnings, shared memories and “the Talk”, influencing how younger generations understand and navigate police encounters. These accounts reveal the cumulative harms of repeated suspicion, alongside the ways Black communities develop strategies of protection, resistance and mutual support. By placing contemporary experiences in dialogue with those of parents and elders, the presentation considers how participants understand continuity and change in policing, and what their accounts reveal about the limits of reform. It foregrounds community perspectives to examine the relationship between policing, racial inequality and the conditional nature of belonging in Britain.
Note: The series is part of the British Society of Criminology’s Race Matters Network and is organised by Monish Bhatia from the Department of Sociology at the University of York. All sessions take place online, are free to attend and are open to the public, so please feel free to share this invitation with colleagues, students and anyone else who may be interested.
About the speaker
Dr Bisi Akintoye, Roehampton University, London
Dr Bisi Akintoye is a lecturer and solicitor whose research focuses on race, policing, drugs, and the experiences of children and young people. Her work examines the role of race and racism in the policing of Black communities, with particular attention to racialised policing, stop and search, and structural inequality. Her research explores intergenerational experiences of policing in Britain and situates contemporary policing within its wider colonial and postcolonial contexts. Drawing on intersectional approaches, she examines how race interacts with gender, age, class, and migration histories to shape experiences of policing and criminal justice. Her wider research interests include youth violence, drugs policy, emerging policing technologies, and racial and social inequalities across the criminal justice system.