Invisible Voices: The Black Presence in Crime and Punishment in the UK, 1750–1900

Case studies illuminate the lives of activists, advocates and aggressors, helping to bring the history to life, and focusing on Black voices who played a significant role in abolishing slavery and were prominent in political struggles, but have been written out of the narrative. In conjunction with both the National Justice Museum and National Archives, the author is going to be using digital storytelling to explore, interpret, and narrate insights relating to the book (video-narratives, digital media, recorded voice/audio, still and moving images/video clips, music etc). The proposed book offers something that currently does not exist on the academic book market and as such could be a classic text across, and connecting, criminology, history and sociology. It adds to a more complete picture of British social history. It promises to fill invisible stories and contexts around black lives and their representation in histories of crime and punishment connected to Britain. In doing so the proposal is answering a call made by serious scholars of black British history and criminology like Coretta Phillips, Paul Gilroy, Biko Agozino and David Olusoga. This book is unique in that it fits in multiple subject areas. It fills a space in criminology and also fits the fields of historical and political sociology. It will also have relevance for the field of Caribbean Studies, Law, Critical Race Studies and Black Studies. The subject matter of this book links to any nation and region connected and touched by British Colonialism and Slavery, including North America (USA and Canada), the Anglo Caribbean, Africa and other regions where there are ex British colonies. The book offers a reckoning with the problematic history of the disciplines of Criminology and History and ties into a feeling of the times for this revisiting the past to better reflect issues of race and racism. The gathering urgency around all questions of race, racism and criminal justice will help to propel the book’s appeal beyond criminology and conventional academic audiences. It can find an audience/readership in museums, among museum visitors, museum studies and archivists, social movement activists, campaigners and criminal justice reform organisations. This book could become an important resource across the HE sector, but particularly within criminology and history, and in efforts to de-colonise the curriculum. The growth of interest in, and influence of, African scholars will extend the reach and appeal of the book.