ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the problems posed for black women and people like them by the criminal justice system in the internal colonies of London. It discusses the interpretation of documents, opinions and perceptions received from a small and selected set of informants. The chapter is concerned with the nature of the victimisation as perceived by those who suffer it and by those who were working to counter it. The chapter attempts to affirm the statement by identifying the key elements in the mythical mental linkages between crime and the politics of race, gender and class which Mike Brake and many others have struggled to demystify. It illustrates a small part of Brake’s critiques of both left and right ‘realist’ positions around individual responsibility for crime and psycho-biological determinism versus authoritarian welfare populism and socio-economic determinism.
