Twenty-two-year-old Osime Brown has lived in this country since he was four. Whatever the law may say, he is British: he has spent the majority of his life on UK soil and has the vaguest memories of Jamaica, the country in which he was born. Yet Brown, who has autism and a learning age of between six and seven, now faces deportation because he was jailed in 2018 for the robbery of a friend’s mobile phone – something he denies responsibility for.
Despite all the platitudes and regrets expressed in the aftermath of the Windrush scandal, here is the unapologetic racism of the British justice system. After serving his sentence, Brown, a black man born overseas, will receive a second punishment that would not be imposed on someone born in the UK who committed the same offence.
That’s nationalism, citizenshipism perhaps, but it’s not racism. Would, could, the same happen to a white folk from, say, Russia? Yep – so it’s not racism, is it?
“…something he denies responsibility for.”
Well, yes, don’t they always?
“This is where the moral panic over migrants has taken us. “
No, we’re just fed up of being taken for mugs, Owen.
He’d be better off pointing out Pakis aren’t deported after serving time.
Agreed not racism. One easy answer: In the year to June, 2019, “Albanian nationals had the highest number of asylum-related returns (296).” https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/immigration-statistics-year-ending-june-2019/how-many-people-are-detained-or-returned
If he likes the bloke that much he should be deported to lovely Jamaica along with him. Given Jamaican culture a white gayboy would certainly get a warm non-racist welcome.
Whereas in truth Jones would run the other way if he saw his new bestie walking down the street towards him– alone–never mind mob-handed.
In spite of being a “sell the widows and go into South American zinc” swivel eyed, far right lunatic, I do have some sympathy for the Windrush people who apparently weren’t told and didn’t realise they were guest workers not immigrants.
I’m sure these Jamaican men are only too happy and proud to have this doe-eyed, battyman twink as their champion.
@RlJ: who had the responsibility to tell them? Are we sure it wasn’t done?
Julia,
As I understand it, they had the right to live in the uk under the 1948 act, but then lost that right in later legislation without realizing it. Perhaps somebody else can explain.
Yet Brown, who has autism and a learning age of between six and seven, now faces deportation because he was jailed in 2018 for the robbery of a friend’s mobile phone – something he denies responsibility for.
So we have a retarded criminal who is un- or less-able to understand other people’s suffering or empathise with them, who is such an arse even his friend insisted on prosecution – he would not be in trouble if the friend said it was a misunderstanding – and he is unable to understand taking responsibility?
Frankly I do not think Jamaica is far enough away. Is it possible to send him to Mars? What possible benefit is there for Britain to have this person in the same hemisphere? I am happy to forgo the deportation but only if the alternative is a length of hemp
From the Guardian there are cases of British citizens who face the same fate in Australia (after a lot longer)
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/12/british-citizen-in-australia-for-50-of-51-years-faces-deportation-for-scrub-fire
It is not racism. It might be unfair but it is not racist.
Questions
A) Does Owen not read his own paper?
B) If he does, is he aware that what is saying is untrue?
. . . he was jailed in 2018 for the robbery of a friend’s mobile phone . . .
Whiffy.
From the link in Owen’s piece:
A [Home Office] spokesperson said Brown was convicted of robbery, attempted robbery and perverting the course of justice and sentenced to a total of five years’ detention.
Still not the full story. Five years means either those are not his first convictions or they were committed with serious unpleasantries.
I don’t mind attempts to tug on my heartstrings but as soon as I see lies and bullshit they can fuck off.
David: ’ Questions
A) Does Owen not read his own paper?
B) If he does, is he aware that what is saying is untrue?’
Since this is yet another column with no comments allowed, he’ll remain blissfully unaware.
We should deport every foreign criminal at the first opportunity, regardless of race. We’re already over-stuffed with thieving violent wankers we can’t get rid of, so any chance to lighten the load ought to be welcomed.
He’d be better off pointing out Pakis aren’t deported after serving time.
Now this sounds like something worth complaining about.
What PJF sais.. 5 years of porridge is a tad much for just nicking a phone off your mate, innit?
He hasn’t gone yet.
My guess is 90:10 he stays and does more time within 2 years allowing for the snail-like pace of our court system unless wascally wacist wypipo are involved.
If there’s a rule that applies equally to black and white people in a particular situation, but more black people than white people are in that situation, then the rule is still racist.
Rules don’t have to explicitly discriminate to be racist; they can just discriminate against things correlated with race.
And it’s certainly true that immigrants to the UK are much more likely to be non-white than citizens of the UK born here.
I see I’m in a minority of one here. whatever his biological age, his mental age is six or seven. We should whether he is a above the age of criminal responsibility.
Autism sufferers are often a PITA. But they did not choose their affliction.
Deportation is a double punishment, to a country where management of autism sufferers is even worse than in the UK.
Philip – my sympathies lie with the victims of violent criminal retards.
Philip – if he genuinely was mentally ill he would not have been tried as an adult.
And what PJF said. He would not have got a 5 year sentence for a first offence unless there were some serious aggravating features.
He’s 22 now and was jailed in 2018. He got five years at age 20. He seems to have been awfully treated for an autistic person with a mental age of 6. Unless perchance that whole story is a farrago of lies and half-truths. Nothing in it makes sense. And the guy is certainly not in any way a member of the so-called Windrush generation.
Citizens are entitled to protection from criminals from overseas.
Is it true this “would not be imposed on someone born in the UK who committed the same offence”, as Jones writes?
Not everyone born in the UK is a British citizen. I don’t think there’s any special rule that someone born in the UK gets any exemption from deportation rules regardless of their citizenship status. Indeed even British-born people who have previously been (but are no longer) British citizens can get deported: https://www.freemovement.org.uk/uk-born-murderer-to-be-deported-after-renouncing-british-citizenship/
“the robbery of a friend’s mobile phone”: that is crap English. Presumably he means ‘the theft of a friend’s mobile phone’.
@Philip
I sympathise with your view. I think people with autism, especially at the serious end, have some serious disadvantages when it comes to criminal law – living in a world and society you cannot comprehend must be a very frightening experience. Obeying laws, or even just social conventions that are necessary to keep your nose out of trouble, is going to be a tough ask. But contrast, for example, a schizophrenic who can perpetrate a completely random killing yet have no legal guilt assigned due to being delusional at the time. The flip-side being that they may end up spending more time away in a secure mental hospital than they would if they’d been sentenced to prison. Now people with severe autism can also be held in secure hospitals, but I can’t recall off-hand any notable cases where autism alone was sufficient to get off on “not guilty by reason of insanity” though for a murder case, it might be enough for the partial defence (i.e. downgrade to manslaughter) diminished responsibility. Perhaps M’Lud can comment.
https://www.cps.gov.uk/publication/mental-health-conditions-and-disorders-draft-prosecution-guidance
To establish the common law defence of “insanity”, it must be clearly proved that, at the time of committing the act, the suspect was labouring under such a “defect of reason”, from a “disease of the mind”, as
(i) not to know the nature and quality of the act being done (a delusion, for instance where a suspect believes they are cutting a slice of bread when in fact they are cutting a throat), or,
(ii) that the suspect did not know what was being done was wrong (“wrong” meaning contrary to the law – Johnson [2007] EWCA Crim 1978): M’Naghten’s Case (1843) 10 Cl & F 200).
“Insanity” thus has a legal definition, to be assessed by a prosecutor and thereafter, if appropriate, by the court applying the M’Naghten criteria. It incorporates conditions such as sleepwalking, psychomotor epilepsy, diabetes and arteriosclerosis where the M’Naghten criteria are met; but not, conversely, severe mental illness, or expert evidence diagnosing the suspect as “insane”, unless the M’Naghten criteria are met. It may be permanent, temporary, organic or functional, but must not come from an extraneous cause (which would amount to non-insane automatism): Sullivan [1984] A.C. 156.
Insanity does not mean an absence of mens rea. A suspect who lashes out in a confrontation causing injury is likely to be reckless as to an assault albeit they are insane if they do so labouring under a delusion as to the nature and quality, or wrongness, or what they are doing. A suspect who repeatedly and continuously lashes out in a confrontation causing injury is likely to intend an assault albeit they are insane if they do so labouring under a delusion as to the nature and quality, or wrongness, or what they are doing. Insanity can be a defence to a strict liability offence or an offence with an objective element, if the person comes to be doing what is criminal because of a delusion as to its nature and quality: Loake v DPP [2017] EWHC 2855 (Admin).
For severe autism it seems we are talking more about (ii) than (i) whereas for schizophrenia, more likely (i) than (ii), and that way round is probably easier to demonstrate.
Two interesting reads on autism and crime:
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/12/autism-is-not-psychosis/266434/ – autistic people seem less likely to commit crimes overall, and generally have “emotional empathy” (feel pain/pleasure of others) even if they lack “cognitive empathy” (understanding what and how others think), but often have problems with communication and following social norms, which can lead to legal problems.
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/30707602.pdf – “A systematic review of people with Autism Spectrum Disorder and the Criminal Justice System”. Also didn’t find that autistic people were disproportionately represented in the English criminal justice system, but did identify certain challenges, e.g. that with severe autism, there could be a failure to understand even the terms “guilty” and “not guilty” (or even to mix the two up).
@Richard G
If there’s a rule that applies equally to black and white people in a particular situation, but more black people than white people are in that situation, then the rule is still racist.
Rules don’t have to explicitly discriminate to be racist; they can just discriminate against things correlated with race.
And it’s certainly true that immigrants to the UK are much more likely to be non-white than citizens of the UK born here.
British membership of the EU was deeply racist, since it grants free movement to EU citizens (predominantly white – have you looked at the European Parliament or European Commission?) but not to non-EU citizens (predominantly non-white).
I do take your point. Looking at, for example, the “literacy tests” imposed in the southern United States post-Civil War as a way of suppressing the votes of former slaves – “we’re not discriminating on race, we’re discriminating on literacy, and clearly literacy is an important component of whether someone should be capable of voting!” But the purpose was clearly to discriminate on race. And indeed the tests were rigged in a way to ensure that even illiterate whites passed, and even educated former slaves didn’t…
And I’d even go further and accept that intent isn’t strictly necessary, you can have a system that unintentionally produces systematic racial discrimination. Though if you want to call that plain and simple “racism”, then that does seem to rather dilute the term, and you probably need to keep some other expression for pure undiluted actual “racist racism”.
There surely comes a point though, when even if something produces outcomes with undesirable racial correlates, that doesn’t mean it’s inherently wrong and must be stopped. Indeed, this is another problem with using the word “racist” to cover such cases. Because there must surely be some things you’re in favour of which nevertheless produce, even if with only mild correlation, differential racial outcomes. In which case there are things you must believe are both “good and racist and overall, the right thing to do”. Whereas if you want the word racism to powerfully signify that something is “bad” and that it is “wrong thing to do”, then you really need to limit it to something more egregious – including but not necessarily limited to intentional discrimination.
As you say, citizenship of a country (not just Britain but pretty much any country anywhere) will have certain racial correlations – citizens will differ significantly from non-citizens. If a country treats both citizens and non-citizens in exactly the same way, in every respect then what would “citizenship” actually mean? A key component of citizenship is right of return – if a citizen of a country turns up on its border, they shouldn’t be refused entry. The fact a country can’t deport its own citizens follows pretty much by definition – they could just right come back in! But why – and I mean this as a serious question, and would like to hear your views – should non-citizens have the right not to be deported, any more than they should have the automatic right to entry, to employment, to welfare provision, to vote, etc? Now there are global free movement advocates out there who argue that in fact non-citizens should have all these rights, but it’s a distinctly minority position, and moreover “any special preference for citizens over non-citizens is racist” is not the strongest of their arguments anyhow.
Rhoda,
As someone who is a bit on the spectrum, I’m frankly tired of mental health being used. If you haven’t noticed, the mental health defence is growing all the time. It’s done for 2 reasons: 1) most people don’t know how different sorts of mental health affect people and 2) it’s very hard to verify.
This wasn’t just nicking a phone, it was a street robbery. In a group of lads. If you know anything about people on the spectrum, they don’t behave like that. They struggle with social connections.
Unless perchance that whole story is a farrago of lies and half-truths
Yarp. As we found out after the rioting and looting a few years ago, and in the recent attempts by the UK press to find a homegrown version of St. George Floyd, it’s actually rare for even habitual criminals with dozens of convictions under their belts to be jailed for any serious length of time in this country.
The MSM lies to us as naturally as a fish breathes water, but the odds this guy got 5 years for nicking an iPhone are basically non-existent. More likely it was for a particularly vicious aggravated assault.
“Whatever the law may say, he is British”
Moron. Being British is a legal state, you can say whatever the law is he is somethingorother, but absolutely you can’t say whatever they laws says he is British, because being British is a legal state. If the law states he is not British that the actual fact is that he is not British.
I used to get this at Taxi Licensing. Oh I pleaded guilty, but I wasn’t. Sorry, The Law states that you were guilty, The Law states that you cannae have a license. If you didn’t do it you should have plead not guilty, and gone for appeal if convicted.
And if this guy was prosecuted as an adult at the age of 20 when he had the mental age of six, a miscarriage has occured, somebody should have appealed this well before it even got anywhere near an adult court. Somebody’s head needs to roll.
Ban the 100 metre sprint, I say. For it produces outcomes (and hence rewards) on a weighted racial basis.
And to show we aren’t just picking on blacks, ban archery, equestrian events and motor racing too. No doubt that will please our virtue loving Lweis Hamilton.
@Roué le Jour “As I understand it, they had the right to live in the uk under the 1948 act, but then lost that right in later legislation without realizing it. Perhaps somebody else can explain.”
Under the British Nationality Act 1948 they were citizens and as free to move to England as any other citizen. After the war, there was a huge sentiment that registration papers were a tool of oppression, so nobody thought that ordinary citizens would ever need to prove that they were citizens, so people didn’t deliberatly keep records for that purpose. As time passed, racism insipred ever more oppressive laws until it effectively reversed the burden of proof and citizens who could not prove why they were citizens were oppressed and some even deported as in the Windrush scandal. The laws were both intended to be racist and had that effect. It is even broader than that with the current “hostile environment” policy which means that ordinary citizens must prove their entitlement to people like landlords.
“Philip – my sympathies lie with the victims of violent criminal retards.”
As should the government’s.
Governments are formed for the mutual protection of their citizens. There is no exception in their charter for ‘autism and a learning age of between six and seven.’ Protection of the citizens is their prime duty, their raison d’etre. Concern for ‘autism and a learning age of between six and seven’ is secondary.* By definition.
CM scum know that if they can get governments diverted from their charters, they can destroy them.
Owen is guilty of treason writ small. He couldn’t care less about Osime Brown. Brown is a tool. Owen is being a racist turd, exploiting a black Jamaican to advance his CM agenda.
*Has a government ever been formed for the mutual protection of the autistic with a learning age of between six and seven? The Biden admin is shaping up that way.
Biden himself is shaping up (down) to have a mental age of six or seven.
And Christ, gamecock, don’t start ranting in Ecks code. Say “Cultural Marxist” at least once for the uninitiated.
Chester Draws December 16, 2020 at 6:16 pm – “Ban the 100 metre sprint, I say. For it produces outcomes (and hence rewards) on a weighted racial basis. ”
As Steve Sailor says, around 80% of all fouls in the NBA are called on Black players. They clearly have a problem. We need to cancel basketball until they sort it out.
‘Say “Cultural Marxist” at least once for the uninitiated.’
Fair comment. Related: Can you tell me what a Blue Zanu is?
“As Steve Sailor says, around 80% of all fouls in the NBA are called on Black players. They clearly have a problem. We need to cancel basketball until they sort it out.”
Defund the referees.
Related: Can you tell me what a Blue Zanu is?
As best I can tell the “Blue” part means (the nominally) conservative (party), and “Zanu” is a cross between the Zimbabwe African National Union and the “New Labour” (party) of Tony Blair era (i.e. leftists looking like conservatives).
So it would be sort of “Blue ZaNew Labour”, basically referring to the bunch of twats that currently occupy Britain’s Tory leadership.
See also: Rino. See also: Steve Schmidt.
I have never used the daft phrase Blue Zanu.
Zanu as short for Labour connecting Mugabe’s murdering Marxist scum with Bliars NuLabour gang.
And BlueLabour as a contemptuous reference to Tory scum. Even BlueMarxist in the case of Johnson who has wondered into to Greenfreeak Hell far beyond Labour itself.
Never used the expression “Blue ZaNu”.