October has been a very busy month. We began October celebrating Inclusion Week (28 September to 4 October 2020) and Black History Month which runs from 1 October 2020 until 31 October 2020, and today is the beginning of National Hate Crime Awareness Week (10 October to 17 October 2020).
The NBCPA will use our all of these celebrations to build the work we have done to support the CPS to highlight race disparity and promote an anti-racist work environment.
Black History Month (BHM) is an opportunity to pause, focus on and celebrate the contributions of peoples of Black African and Caribbean descent to society.
This year BHM has a special significance for us all. We are living through a monumental time in human history brought about by the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, the death of George Floyd, global warming, and of course Brexit for us in the UK.
In October 2019, we hosted our annual conference’The Journey’ that looked at race disparity in the CPS and wider criminal justice system. A key aspect of our focus was youth justice, and we shared our post conference report ‘The CPS journey to tackle racism – where do we go from here?’ with our senior leaders which presented our emerging findings and recommendations to the CPS. This year we will continue to focus on two key themes of our report which are anti-racism and youth justice.
We also intend to use BHM to celebrate Black African Caribbean contributions to the British legal history and show case extraordinary pioneers and the challenges they faced making their mark in the British legal system.
Due to the lock down we will not be able to have our traditional annual conference during Black History Month, however we will be hosting a series of virtual events that would have made up different aspects our usual conference.
We hope you will join us and participate in the following events:
Black History Month Events
16 October, 11.30am-1.30pm – Hate crime awareness – The event aims to raise awareness of racist hate crime and its impact, and the role of the CPS in prosecuting these cases.
20 October, 2-3pm – Finding Justice in the youth justice system – This event will explore how we can improve youth justice outcomes for BAME children.
3 November, 12-1.30pm – How to be an ally and create an anti-racist workplace – Learn more about what being an ally involves, and playing your part in creating an anti-racist workplace.
In the meantime, you can view the highlights from our 2019 annual conference The Journey below.
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