Since the start of the recent riots, there has been much talk about ‘two tier policing’. Commentators on the right allege that the criminal justice system is biased against whites and right-wing movements, and is biased in favour of non-whites and left-wing movements. Meanwhile, those on the left insist that it’s actually biased in the other direction.
These claims are mirrored in voting patterns. Labour and Green voters tend to think the police are biased against ethnic minorities; Reform voters tend to think they are biased against white people and the far-right.
Where does the truth lie? A big problem is that practically all the evidence cited on both sides is anecdotal. Pointing to a few examples of people being unfairly treated isn’t a very strong argument. Britain is a big country: in the year ending March 2024, there were over half a million prosecutions for non-motoring offences. Hence it’s always possible to find a few cases that seem like grave miscarriages of justice. To justify a claim of ‘two tier policing’ or, more accurately, ‘two tier justice’, you need to show evidence of systematic bias.
Right-wing commentators can point to anti-immigration activists who received harsh sentences for posts that were said to constitute incitement. Left-wing commentators can point to environmental activists who received harsh sentences for trying to recruit volunteers for disruptive actions. Right-wing commentators can cite questionable arrests of anti-lockdown and anti-immigration protestors. Left-wing commentators can cite questionable arrests of anti-monarchy and pro-Palestine campaigners. Right-wing commentators can mention anecdotal reports of police bias. Left-wing commentators can do the same.
Is there a better way to resolve the debate than simply trading anecdotes?
The grooming gang scandal, where police failed to protect vulnerable white girls for fear of appearing ‘racist’ against Pakistani Muslims, does constitute evidence of systematic bias. So does the fact that police routinely engage with ‘community leaders’ for some ethnic groups but not for others. Are the right-wing commentators correct then? No, because there’s also evidence of systematic bias on the other side.
Several studies have analysed sentencing decisions in British courts and found that black and Asian offenders are more likely to get a custodial sentence than white offenders, even when controlling for many relevant factors, such as measures of culpability and harm caused. Of course, it’s difficult to control for all relevant factors, but the data do suggest a bias in the direction claimed by left-wing commentators. (Such commentators also claim that police use-of-force is biased. However, I’m not convinced.)
Overall, the evidence is too messy to say that one particular demographic group is consistently favoured or disfavoured by the criminal justice system. There are certainly examples of bias and unfairness, but they don’t generalise to all contexts. Claims of ‘two tier justice’ are therefore unsupported.
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”Unsupported”? Disagree entirely. I’ve shared enough examples on here of ‘two-tier policing/justice’ and if you want to write all of this evidence off as anecdotal then you’re in denial. As long as people are getting sent to jail for memes and posts while those Muslims that attacked and injured those security officers at Manchester airport are walking free then there’s your evidence that ‘those who must not be offended’ have the upper hand and are treat more favourably than white people. How many non-‘far right’ thugs got banged up off the back of the BLM riots, in comparison?
”The last Democracy Watch warned that, although the riots might be over, the political “Counter-riot has only just begun.” “The UK establishment,” as I put it, “is interested not just in clearing the streets of rioters, but clearing the political battlefield of opposition views.” That counter-riot has spread even faster and more furiously than we might have imagined.
Since the short-lived unrest, which included localised clashes with police and a few reprehensible attacks on migrant hostels and mosques, well over a thousand people have been arrested. Many of them have been charged and fast-tracked through the courts and into jail with a speed we did not think our broken justice system capable of achieving.
Nobody would argue against those guilty of violent crimes being properly punished and imprisoned. However, some of the severe sentences handed down for relatively minor offences make it look as if the courts are settling political scores rather than upholding criminal justice.
It is not a stretch to see these cases as a form of show trials. No, we are not talking about the sort of merciless political frame-ups practised by the authoritarian regimes of history, and there are no death sentences at the end. Yet these are show trials, in the sense of turning the courts into a theatre for a show, a morality play, intended to make an example of the guilty and re-educate the public as to what they can or cannot do and say.
Let’s be clear, this counter-riot is not just about dealing with public unrest. Starmer’s intervention has also led to police trawling social media, actively fishing for hidden thoughtcrimes. The current director of public prosecutions boasted to the media that special teams of “dedicated police officers” were “scouring social media” for “insulting or abusive” material, which they would “then follow up with arrests.” If insulting or abusive words are now to be put on a par with rioting, they really are going to need bigger prisons to accommodate all the rounded-up social media users.
No doubt some will say Starmer was right to intervene this way, that keeping the people safe should be the government’s priority. The question is, however, which people? The Labour leadership somehow didn’t have such a hardline response to the Black Lives Matter unrest that broke out in Britain after the killing of George Floyd in America. On that occasion, far from “leaning really heavily on the legal system” to act, Starmer and his deputy only leant on a knee in his Westminster office, to show the rioters they had their sympathy.”
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/commentary/is-anti-establishment-rhetoric-now-a-far-right-offence/
Yes, we are all David ( and the many others arrested ) now. Or did people forget the many wrongful arrests at the peaceful protest at Whitehall? ( 5mins )
”David Spring was arrested in Whitehall for “violent disorder”, quoted as chanting “Who the f***is Allah?” and given an 18 month sentence.
However, private video footage of the protest, where he can easily be identified before & after the arrest, seems to tell a different story.”
https://x.com/Politic56721677/status/1824072939307720956
Outrageous behaviour by the police. Reminiscent of the Aussie thug bobbies at the height of the Convid scam. Pick a vulnerable target (eg and old man, or frail woman in their case) and single him/her out for to be made an example of, pour encourager les autres. I recall in the 70s the security snatch squads in operation in N Ireland would single out a clear leader or known tough guy and make a beeline to grab him, in order to deter his followers. It would appear in this clip, several bullies dressed in police riot gear took it upon themselves to deliberately select a soft target and assault him with punches and knees. What heroes! Little wonder respect for the police is at an all time low, whilst they are emboldened by having a rigged judicial system on their side.
This article smacks of gaslighting. There is no way that anybody could conclude that there is no two-tier policing or indeed two-tier justice operating in the UK at this time.
Courts allegedly operating on a 24 / 7 basis and people being sent down not just for rioting but for posting personal opinions on social media. However, two Islamic thugs are still free after knocking ten bells out of three coppers in Manchester.
And to add icing to the cake the bloody Home Office can’t stop crowing about what they are up to…
“1,000 through the courts”
“Commit the crime, do the time”
It is gratuitously crude, cheap and insulting.
No two-tier justice or policing? Frankly I am absolutely disgusted by this article and Noah Carl is insulting the DS subscribers by posting such poorly researched nonsense.
I’m bloody fuming.
“that keeping the people safe should be the government’s priority. The question is, however, which people? “
One of Kneel’s primary responsibilities as our so-called Prime Minister is to ensure our borders are protected and people are safe and in this one aspect – amongst many – he has utterly failed. There is nothing complicated about stopping the Calais Yatch Club arrivals but he refuses to act, he is therefore guilty at a minimum of malfeasance in public office or treason.
And what about David Aaronvitch. Apparently it’s ok to call for the assassination of Trump and still have a job at the BBC
As I’ve already pointed out a couple of times in the past: This is indeed very complicated unless its either done onshore prior to the journey starting or onshore immediately prior to people embarking from a boat. In the meantime, they’re just people on boats perfectly legitimately boat tripping on the sea and – as additional complication – people on boats which are next to impossible to find as these boats are very small and traversing an area that’s very large and completely uniform and they don’t have ‘good’, that is, easily noticable radar signatures because the boats are too small for that and made out of material which doesn’t reflect radar well, if at all.
The only technically practical option is a permanently staffed coastal defense network covering all suitable landing place on the south-eastern shore of England and that’s going to be quite expensive. Further, the only way to stop these people from entering Britain is to be prepared to kill them should they try to do. There’s no chance that people who already believed that sending them to Rwanda after entry would be the pinnacle of inhumanity would implement that.
Especially hard to find when not looking for them.
UK boats should go to the French territorial limits and escort the boats back to France.
They do not comply with either French or UK regs. If necessary insert a slow release valve in the Ribs so they have to return or sink. Give them paddles.
You’re underestimating the difficulty of finding anything at sea. I’ve been in the German navy in the past (only as lowly conscript, but – among other things – serving as lookout post) and because if this, I claim to have a somewhat realistic idea of that. The RN would need about 3.6 times more ships than it actually has to cover at least the vicinity of Calais densely enough to have a chance of spotting all these boats and in international waters, it has zero rights to do anything against them unless acting in self-defense. Until these people make landfall in Britain and have been questioned what they want there, eg, they’re not seeking temporary relief from some emergency, there’s no way to tell that they plan to do anything illegal and not doing anything illegal isn’t illegal, anyway.
Drones?
As did his several predecessors.
And the policeman advising a group of Muslims that if they were carrying knives, best take them to the Mosque and leave them there.
Not watched the video but David Starkey asked what would happen if the boot was in the other foot. “Leave your weapons at the Church, the Muslims have gone now”….Can’t see that happening but apparently there is no two tier Policing according to the author of this blog. Get your blinkers off man!
“ How many non-‘far right’ thugs got banged up off the back of the BLM riots, in comparison?”
Ah but there were “mostly peaceful” LOL.
The term “two tier policing” is just another simplistic idea, as if it was a binary system. In reality, it’s much more complex than that. Money talks, and so do local political cultures. E.g most of them will have records that show the rate of burglaries by postcode. When I was a councillor some years ago, I came across those, and there was no surprise where most of the burglaries were; no doubt insurers were interested in that as well.
I’m very much afraid that any piece which uses the words ‘far-right’ as if its a thing, rather than an insulting term dreamed up by marxists to character assassinate everyone from left of centre to the real ‘far right’ is deserving of nothing but scorn. The ‘real far-right’, groups like the EDL, as quoted by the PM, haven’t functioned for at least 20 years. It shows tremendous naivety to get sucked in to the ‘who’s the enemy.? You are.!’ game that is being played..
There are some interesting points made, but sadly, they are written from a viewpoint that I cannot agree with. ‘Claims of two-tier justice are unsupported” Well, certainly by the author, but I feel some of us will have a different view.
“Far right”. I agree. Mr Carl, who almost always writes very well, should know better.
BLM “protests”, anti Lockdown protests, both happened at the same time, which were allowed to go ahead and which were shut down?
Case closed, but we could go on….Lets look at JSO and the Police handling of that. Tea & Biscuits was the piss take!
Yes.
Ask me another.
5 tiers
White
Black
Muslim
Queer
The Elite
When supposed anti-discrimination, so-called Hate Speech legislation is enacted, which favours defined groups conferring Rights on them that the rest do not have, and which removes Common Law Rights of others, then there no longer is the rule of law – equality and equity – but there is a two tier justice system.
It is inevitable policing and judiciary will mirror that.
As for “anecdotal” – what we have seen on video of how the behaviour and response of the police towards protests varies depending on whether it involves a favoured group or non-favoured group is real, actual, demonstrable.
Noah Carl: are you familiar with the expression, ‘perception is reality’?
Pulled over 40 clear examples of this in two days off Twitter.
One only has to note that the Lockdown protests were hammered, whereas the BLM protests, with 19 cops injured were untouched.
Because with Lockdown protests the Police can’t dance along with you, so they get their batons out instead.
A successful gaslight to move from the subject in question – two tier policing – to one that isn’t – criminal justice. There is a mountain of video evidence that shows police kneeling and skateboarding for and with certain demonstrators while wading in with the riot shields and heavy mob for other demonstrations. And then when challenged on this we get amazing contortions by the police and Rowley Powley bending so much to put his head up his own arse to say that neither ‘jihad’ and ‘from the river to the sea’ mean what everyone knows they mean.
The criminal justice system is also very much two-tiered.
And how many divisions did they send to Bournemouth!
There’s more to it that difference between differential police approach to ethnic groups: its the difference in approach to “white collar crime committed by senior public sector workers” and “blue collar crime committed by the riff-raff” The former crimes are typically corruption and malfeasance in public office (with possible large-scale fraud); the latter are typically any number of motoring offences, alcohol-drugs, violence, sexual offences; a third new group is “hate-speech”, “thought crimes”, domestic abuse, “typing something on social media that might offend someone else on social media, in the opinion of a third person on the social media”. Reporting the former crimes is almost impossible, and even when reported the police will not investigate them, nor the Crown Prosecution Service prosecute the suspects as it would “not be in the public interest”; detecting the second group is the obsession of the police, perhaps because it is so cheap to investigate and prosecute such cases. The third, emerging, group is the “thought crime” offences, which I suspect are reported by self-appointed snitches on social media. While the police try to convince that we are a nation of evil speeding, drunk, right-wing, shoplifting, alcoholic thugs, they distract us away from “elite” crimes committed in the public sector, a territory which abuts and at times is indistinguishable from politics.
Boilerplate article much.
Keeps OFCOM happy.
I’m going to assume this is satire. On that basis Noah it’s a very good piece – hilarious.
Noah is right to point out, as others have, that anecdote does not constitute evidence’ but – and my piece on same day – claims otherwise but only in relation to certain recent incidents.
Anecdote surely is evidence – just not as convincing or useful as properly gathered statistics that everyone can agree on the accuracy of. I doubt such statistics are available for the type of thing the article covers (though it veers from “policing” (both of protests, speech and individual incidents) to sentencing – two different things). The “two tier policing” accusation is very much in relation to policing of recent “protests” or “riots”, and to policing of speech related to political matters, controversial matters, “incitement”, race relations. Good luck finding reliable “evidence” for that – probably someone with many days to spare could cobble together a picture from media reports – taking care to look at diverse media, social media, from both sides of the argument.
I’m confused, why is anecdotal evidence dismissed rather than being treated as eye witness evidence or at the very least, a secondary source? In academia, these sorts of sources would be lauded.
Several studies have analysed sentencing decisions in British courts and found that black and Asian offenders are more likely to get a custodial sentence than white offenders.
This is wrong. At best, these studies can have shown that black and Asian offenders did get custodial sentences at a higher rate than other offenders when looking at a somehow selected set of past examples. This doesn’t mean that they will be getting custodial sentence at the same rate in future because the observed process was not random and hence, relative frequencies of past events do not converge towards the probability of future events.
A probability is the likeliness that the outcome of random selection process will be a certain value, eg, for the simple, classic example the probability of getting six with throwing a dice is ⅙.
It is like the argument of Thrasymachus in Plato’s republic. He contended to Socrates that justice always has been the will of the majority or at least the ruling class. The idea of blindness and fair balance was always an illusion but this has been brought into stark relief now. It is going to get much worse very quickly in accordance with the weakening of the Anglo-Americans. Thucydides talked about the later stages of empire, where the tyranny that had been exerted on overseas colonies for generations is brought home to those in the homeland.
Does the fact that more Black and Asian people getting jailed more than whites when they represent only a small percentage of the population not show they are committing more crimes than whites? It would require an almighty bias against Blacks and Asians to suggest the opposite.
—–Bear in mind that because of absurd Hate Crime laws and the clampdown on Free Speech in this country that providing evidence of two tier policing and protections of immigrants (as we saw in Rotherham, Telford, Oxford etc) is becoming very much more difficult, as almost every thing you can provide is classed as “racism” that risks a custodial sentence.
This depends very much on your political (or societal) philosophy. For the adherents of the various crude (not critical) XYZ theories, that’s roughly as follows:
Axiom A: By-and-large, all people are equal.
From axiom A follows that the only fair selection process to pick some subgroup of people from the group of all people is one which randomly selects people from the whole population. Evidence of non-randomness in the outcome, ie, people from identifiable subgroups not being selected so often that the percentage of them in the selected subgroup is at least roughly identical to the percentage of such people in the whole population is thus evidence of a unfair selection process, ie, “structural” bias working against members of this subgroup.
This is obviously total horseshit because people are decidely not all equal, they’re actually all different. But it’s possible to render this in such a complicated way (the bare bones description above is already mightily complicated) that this becomes seriously non-obvious. Eg, by claiming that people should really be all equal and that the exisiting inequality is already a sign of structural biases working against members of certain groups. Maybe women smaller than 6’8″ exist. But only because they were repressed since early childhood and could never grow to their full potential!
This is unfortunately not an example meant as joke. Real world beliefs of sufficiently stupid (something very much different from sufficiently educated) people are that absurd.
You can’t expect anyone to thrive in our current culture. Whether it’s some sullen and withdrawn white kid who hates the outside world for perfectly understandable reasons or someone introduced into this culture. There was no mindfulness at any point of the desire to create a pleasant harmonious society that promotes mental health. And this isn’t for lack of research. It was never there and it is even more absent now. What is this? You create a society which purports to be run by free markets and liberal values and yet this was always a cover for a darker agenda hence the lack of concern with mental health. This mass immigration thing isn’t an accident. Douglas Murray contends that it is the result of successive governments brushing the problem under the carpet but this tendency I think gains its momentum from darker forces. All you need to do is examine the current trajectory, just the numbers, and you will understand your fate in five years time.
We can see with our eyes the friendly policing of unprovoked BLM and HAMAS riots and criminal damage by the so-called green movement.
To the contrary we see robust policing, arrests and stiff sentences for riots provoked by Islamist outraged (including falsely reported ones) and keyboard warriors. Some of them have been given what seem to be very stiff sentences.
I find it difficult to believe policing is even handed when faced with the statements of the police, Ministers and my own family’s experiences back to the 1970s.
Evidence is too messy? Rubbish! Look at the Police who baton charged white people and asked Muslims to play nicely and drop off their knives and Machetes at the Mosque.
Carrying a bladed weapon has a mandatory minimum sentence of 6 months. How many out of the hundreds were jailed? Zero. Yet a white woman got years in prison armed only with her gob.
Yes, the evidence to support two-tier policing/justice is incontrovertible. It’s a shame I couldn’t share it but someone did a well researched thread on Twitter to show that the majority of judges sending these ‘social media terrorists’ and alleged rioters to jail had previously allowed paedophiles, including those caught with child sex abuse material, to walk. No jail time at all. They actually favour nonces, who are provably a danger to our kids and cannot be rehabilitated, over somebody posting a meme or shouting in a police dog’s face. But as the chap in the clip I posted above points out, these people are being used as ”sacrificial lambs”, to both appease the Muslim community and act as deterrents to others.
As the meme says: ”The unvaccinated were never a threat to society. They were a threat to authority”. Now sub ‘unvaccinated’ for ‘patriots’ and you have the explanation for why this is happening. Of course the authorities don’t want any more peaceful protests ( like the freedom rallies that Tommy Robinson can organize ), which can easily result in tens of thousands showing up en masse. They’re a physical representation of establishment opposition that are impossible to ignore, no matter how hard the MSM might try. Images and footage gets broadcast around the world via Twitter in minutes. Can’t have that. Look how the police went at them in Whitehall. Nobody could call these people rioters and they also weren’t even ‘social media terrorists’. Just everyday concerned patriots from all walks of life and all ages, peacefully congregating. All the trouble was coming from the police not the citizens that day. This is also why they’re so desperate to scapegoat and get Tommy but he’s still abroad. Anyway, some humour, as it’d be a shame to lose it completely. True though;
https://x.com/DaveAtherton20/status/1826299912704655870
Several studies have found Asian criminals get harsher sentences than whites, eh. And you didn’t think the the several studies were done by leftist, academics within the ludicrously left minded discipline of social and criminal studied??? No bias in those studies, then? Tosh. There is two tier law in this land: if you is brown you get a special pass.
I’m afraid this rather weak argument is totally shot down in flames by the preceding article by Dr Roger Watso, entitled ‘Crime and No Punishment: Starmer’s Red Dawn’.
He details many cases that show clearly that under Starmer’s rules the courts seem to all agree that everyone is guilty until proved innocent…. So let’s throw the book at them these Far Right sympathisers.
It seems the UK has joined the league of countries holding numerous political prisoners.
There is a pervading whiff of corruption emanating from this government, though I doubt anyone is surprised.
Tier A: things that progress towards the corporate globalist agenda – that have been sewn into place by the cabal, to take total control of humanity
Tier B: anything and everything that pushes-back against this; the burgeoning global ID police-state technocracy.
Toby doesn’t acknowledge this. Why? Am I wrong?
I’d say you are bang on the money.
Yes.
No.
Wrong question.
The UK is like Alton Towers for criminals and none of them have to pay for a ticket to get in – except for the ones on small boats from France.