Crown Offers No Evidence in Prosecution of Black man Recalled to Prison for Saying “My Nigga” to a Black Police Officer

Ife Thompson, of Nexus Chambers was instructed by Ghislaine Sandoval of Hodge Jones and Allen.

A Black man who is a fluent speaker of Black-British English (BBE) has his criminal prosecution against him dropped once the Defence team served two linguistic reports on the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

The defendant was prosecuted for racially aggravated harassment of a Black police officer. As a fluent speaker of BBE he sought to reason with the officer and used the term “my nigga” a BBE term of endearment. The defendant, who is bilingual noting that his words had been misinterpreted and opted to use a mainstreamed English term “My Brother” instead. The incident led to the defendant not only being charged but also recalled back to prison as he was only released on a license.

As part of the defence case, Miss Thompson worked extensively to instruct a BBE and AAVE (African American Vernacular English) linguist to explain the history of these languages, how they are interconnected and what the defendants use of ‘My Nigga” meant within these languages.

The expert both provided extensive reports:

Dr Dominique Branson explained “When used by Black speakers, “nigga” signifies group membership and African American identity, or Blackness more broadly. Highly respected African American linguist, Arthur Spears says, “…the use of nigga in an utterance does not necessarily mean that it is racist or reflective of self-hate. Terms such as these are used sometimes simply to refer [to] individuals without any evaluative implications. Sometimes they are even used in positive evaluative contexts”

Black British English Linguist Dr Ian Cushing noted in his expert report that  “BBE speakers use of the term nigga follows Black diasporic language practices. The use of nigga as a neutral or positive way is completely in line with broader patterns of Black language practices across the world.”

Shortly after the service of these reports and our detailed representations showing past cases we had acted on where Black Linguistics were in issue and the CPS rightfully discontinued the charges.

Despite this outcome our client had to spend a number of months in prison via a recall for an offence that was not made out evidentially on the facts and that sends a frightening message to other fluent BBE speakers, that how you speak could be a trigger to being recalled back to prison. It is of particular note that Black people remain disproportionately criminalised so whilst similar offences would rarely attract an immediate custodial sentence, the overrepresentation of Black men in the detained parts of the justice system means there are more likely to be more being released on license and thus for BBE speakers’ outcomes like this are not far removed. This is why there needs to be urgent work to address the criminalisation of BBE.

Ife Thompson Notes as follows:

Linguistic discrimination[1] refers to a range of practices, actions, and systemic failures that result in the unfair treatment of individuals on the basis of their language use. This case reflects a wider pattern in which both the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and the police disproportionately penalise speakers of Black British English (BBE), largely due to the absence of clear and appropriate guidance for dealing with bilingual defendants.

No individual should be made to feel afraid or criminalised because of the language they speak. Current practices within these institutions allow linguistic discrimination to become normalised within the criminal justice system. Black language speakers should be able to use their language freely and without fear.

[1] Linguistic discrimination can be defined as a broad range of practices, actions and experiences, which share a common core of an unfair treatment of a person on the basis of their language. For example, when a linguistic community, often a minoritised one, is intentionally denied right to the use of their language in institutional contexts and civic life, or even, in more extreme cases, denied the right to maintain and transmit their language use of their language in institutional contexts and civic life, or even, in more extreme cases, denied the right to maintain and transmit their language.