Histories of race, crime and justice in Cardiff, Wales

• In Event: EHC-WG Panel 2: Histories of Race, Gender and Vulnerable Groups

Abstract

This paper will discuss findings from a British Academy funded project, conducted with Esmorie Miller, on race, crime and justice in Cardiff, 1870-1955. As an ‘empire city’, Cardiff had a historically and culturally significant multicultural population located in the Butetown district, making it an excellent case study for this topic. The project sought to examine everyday experiences and portrayals of crime, victimisation and justice in relation to racialised people during the period. It was researched from historical newspapers, photographic registers and life history documents. This paper will discuss themes related to the formation of race in the public sphere, experiences of racist victimisation and the significance of racialised imaginaries of space. These themes help to identify the historical underpinnings of the nexus between race and crime in Britain, something which has strong contemporary relevance given the overrepresentation of racialised people in the present-day criminal justice system. The research contributes to historical scholarship that marks race in British history and connects race to nation and Empire (Matera et al., 2023) and seeks to answer the call to overcome the ‘criminological amnesia’ regarding race, colonialism and criminal justice in Britain (Phillips et al., 2020: 439).

Author

• Lizzie Seal, University of Sussex