Bisi Akintoye

Dr Bisi Akintoye is a lecturer and solicitor whose research focuses on the intersection between race, drugs, policing, and youth experiences. Her research explores the role played by race and racism in the policing of Black communities through exploring lived experience. She qualitatively approaches the intergenerational lived experience of racialised policing by the police, through the prism of structural racism within colonial and post-colonial contexts. Her research prioritises how race and structural inequalities intersect with issues of policing, youth justice, and drugs. Bisi’s work applies an intersectional equity lens to racialised drug policing, and analyses how ethnicity, gender, age, class, and immigration histories affect drug policing experiences.


Session

06-11
11:10
20min
Drug, Race and Gender: Black Women and Girls' Experiences of Drug Policing
Bisi Akintoye

As the debate on how to improve the relationship between the police and Black communities continues, frequent and often hostile drug policing remains an inescapable part of life for many Black Britons. Much of the discussion surrounding drug policing focuses on the experiences of Black males, and the experiences of Black women and girls remain relatively unexplored. This paper analyses the historical and contemporary drug policing experiences of Black women and girls to gain insight into how drug policing drives racial disproportionalities in the CJS. Using data from 58 semi-structured qualitative interviews with young people, adults/elders and community workers residing in a north London suburb, it explores the lived experience of racialisation and criminalisation of Black women and girls through drug policing. The data illustrates that Black women and girls experience racially disproportionate stop and search, which is mediated by factors such as age, class and immigration histories. This intersectional analysis of drug policing provides important insights into how Black women and girls experience drug policing, and develop narratives about the police not only due to direct police encounters, but also vicarious policing experiences in their communities. This has significant implications for the present and future relationship between the police and Black Britons, representative of the experience of Black Britons in the British state.

Equity and Equality in Drug Policy
BS 3.15 - 60 cap.