Policed The Beat – Traveller Access to Justice

Hi folks, as it happens, this is the last podcast. Our dear friend, colleague and fellow Tortoisechak Trubblemaker, Dr. Vicki Conway recorded. I'm putting it out now. Just demonstrating it again. Brilliant she was, amazing she was, and because she shared her platform, helped give the space for voices that needed to be heard, used her intelligence intellect expertise and just incredible ability to get things done. Vicki was a change maker, Vicki really made a difference. There's so many. We're gonna miss her terribly, terribly. Rest in power, Vicki Conway. Thanks to everybody for their support and for sharing their memories of a wonderful woman. Again, we'll never forget you. Welcome to this episode of "Please Speak" the companion series to police in Ireland, where we look at news events and research relating to policing in Ireland. Today I am incredibly honored to be joined by Dr. Cindy Joyce and Dr. Amanda Haines of the University in Limerick, where our part of the team have just published a hugely significant research report called Irish Travelers Access to Justice. And just while I'm here, I'm gonna mention the other members, project members of the team, Oliver Riley, Margaret O'Brien, David Joyce, and Jennifer Schwab. This research, which, as we'll see, is completely novel in Ireland, has within days of publication already been presented to the UN Human Rights Committee. So it's a really monumental piece of work. It covers a lot more than policing, but obviously for the purpose of this we're gonna focus in on some of the findings relating to policing. Amanda, would I start with you? Would you like to outline for us what the aim of the research was? Yes, absolutely. The purpose of this research really was to understand the relationship between Irish Travelers and the courts. And I think we're really building on the shoulders of many of those who came before us, who have looked at these issues, but not necessarily connecting the police and the courts together with this more holistic perspective on the criminal justice system. We were very aware in particular of Eon Malka's work. We were very aware of Dennis Braken's work, the work of the Irish penal reform trust in relation to Travelers in prison. And so what we wanted to understand was from Travelers own point of view, from their own perspective, how did they perceive and experience the police and the courts in Ireland? Yeah, and what we've talked about, you know, we've talked to Egon actually previously on the podcast about that research. And we've talked as well about, obviously, the Eon and Human Rights artists, which actually found in the early 2000s that in Garteshire Corner was institutionally racist. So yeah, that that basis for what you're talking about. Cindy, I was really struck. I mean, even reading some of the opening pages of the report, the kind of connection that's made to Traveler Culture and how what the police do and how they use their powers and all of the criminal justice system. Like it's a real threat to Traveler Culture, isn't it? And it's very existence and survival. Absolutely. Yeah. And that was, I suppose, part of the, excuse me, absolutely. That was part of what the participants told us talked about the historical policing of the community as a tradition, in nomadic community. And it's relevance of the historical part of that policing to today, to today, to their experiences of right up to today. So if we look at kind of the criminalisation of nomadism, for example, and if we look at the role of the justice system in, in, in their role in, in the anti-nomadic policies that have been produced in numerous decades. And we can see kind of like with the findings of our research that lack of trust within the criminal justice system across the board has been embedded within within the community. And we can see kind of like through our findings and of everyday experiences of today's experience connecting to the historical experience of the community as a nomadic tradition in nomadic community. And I suppose if we're looking at our over society as a whole, we can't expect that the criminal justice system is going to be the exception in, in how they view the community as a, as a, as a, as a nomadic community, but also as a community that has been particularly, I suppose, their traditional ways of life has been criminalised in that sense. So looking, looking at, looking at that sense, we can see that there has been many members of the community that has experienced the role of, on guard of Shikana, for example, coming into sites and the role in evictions, which would kind of bangbaradim, I suppose, which those experiences of today's experiences, for example, have been, been stacked and being stacked and searched and to our findings, what we have found. Yeah, so you've got a double whammy there because you've got like specific powers that the police can use against people living these nomadic lives. And the criminalisation is to say that has happened of that. And then how ordinary police powers are used and whether or not racism is a factor in that. So you've got these two things going on. I will say I disagree though that, you know, when you say the, we shouldn't expect the criminal justice system to be an exception in that behaviour. I'm very much of the view that when we give any entity the kind of power that the criminal justice system has, we should absolutely expect them, you know, to up all principles of non-discrimination and so on. But that's a be in my own broadness. So I just can't last past. Absolutely. I think that I think you're correct, we should expect that. But I just comment from the community myself. I suppose looking at Irish society and the institutions in Ireland as a whole. And I suppose that that experience throughout the whole institutions, which include the criminal justice system. I suppose that we can see that I suppose for us that we shouldn't expect to see any difference in the other institutions. However, we do expect that that would be changed in the future and that they would do their utmost best to look at a policing in a human rights perspective, and policing the community. And I just I suppose the travel community, but all marginalized communities, where there is an underpinning of the human rights principles in their policing for different communities. So we would expect that to come forward in the future, and particularly I suppose to look at implementing some of our recommendations from our from our report and to work with us to implement those recommendations in order to make it a fair or just a system for the community. Yeah, and obviously we got to the recommendations. And actually you're making me think this point that while all of us should expect the institutions of the state to behave better than anyone and be the example when you're getting the opposite from them and they're using their powers and discriminatory ways like and you know we've talked about in other places but the the the vehement of that that violence and victimization that's experienced it's all the stronger when it comes from the state, but I think that's going to be really clear when we talk about the findings. Who'd like to chat to me about the methodology because it's a really impressive scale of our report that you've done. Yeah, I'll talk about that Vicki if that's okay. Yeah. And yeah, so the the project was envisaged prior to the pandemic I should say. The initial application I think was submitted in the summer of 2019 and let's give those heavy days, heavy days, heavy days of unproblematic fieldwork and yeah little did we know the difficulties that we were going to encounter and we're you know we're very grateful to the Irish Research Council and the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission who funded us for for sticking with us and to the University of Lemurick which is for supporting us as well through the kind of disruption that we experienced. So the in the end post post COVID adjustments which we have to make and we have conducted a survey with members of the traveler community in the end 326 members of the traveler community and the survey is very lengthy and it was quite a burden on the respondents I think to ask them both to trust us with these experiences which sometimes were very difficult but more generally are difficult to share because they're founded in issues of mistrust and distrust and so sharing them with a researcher, a stranger is particularly difficult. Also often the engagements were very lengthy because of the extensiveness of the issues that we were talking to our survey respondents about and also because respecting both the need to gather quantitative data which is extremely persuasive to policymakers and the oral traditions of the traveler community the survey included both closed-ended questions and also open-ended questions where people got to talk at length about about their own experiences particularly the most positive and the negative experiences with the police and with judges and so in addition to that we also conducted 29 interviews with individuals who work for traveler organisations and that was around the country and we have been very lucky to benefit from the expertise of the National Traveler Organisations on our advisory committee. So Pavy Point the Irish Travelers Movement, the National Traveler Women's Forum, Minkair's Widen and also the Traveler Mediation Service were all represented on our advisory committee along with the representative of the Department of Justice and Representative of the Guard of the Shia Conor but we wanted to ensure that we also included understandings of traveler's experiences from those who were engaged with the community regionally and so that is what those 29 interviews did and they gave us great insights into the question of whether there are significant regional differences or not but also because they were conducted prior to the survey they helped us to design a survey which was more relevant and more appropriate. In addition to that Cindy conducted two focus groups to allow us to draw in in particular the experiences of older and younger travelers. Younger travelers of course because the population as whole is so youthful and we only included people of age 18 and above in our research were particularly of interest to us to engage with through that focus group in an additional through an additional medium and then also older travelers in particular because of the life expectancy of the traveler population and the different demographics of the traveler population we wanted to be particularly inclusive of older travelers points of view but also because the research is very interested in the intergenerational transmission of perceptions of criminal justice institutions but also strategies and tools for successful encounters with criminal justice institutions and for dealing with those encounters with criminal justice institutions and this follows on from the work of people like Brunson and Witzer in the United States who have looked at the intergenerational transmission of strategies for in particular dealing with the police in the African-American community there. So these were the modes of data collection that we employed we had also hoped to conduct some analysis of police recorded data in relation to hate crimes committed against the traveler community but we were not permitted access to that data. We were however very much assisted by the Irish prison service who provided us with access to data on commitels in order to bring an additional layer to our research which was really focused on travelers access to justice in respect to police in the courts but understanding the end point of involuntary encounters with the police and going through the justice system in terms of the overrepresentation of travelers in the prison system is really important we couldn't look at those two parts of the whole without looking at the disproportionate numbers of travelers in prison as well. And am I right in thinking I believe this was said at the launch that one in 100 travelers members of the traveler community in Ireland participated in this research. So in actual fact because we only looked at the adult population it's closer to 1 in 60 every of every adult travelers in actual fact because we only looked at over 18s the figures are closer to 1 in 60 adult travelers in Ireland. That's an incredibly high response ratios that were for any piece of research which in the end is just such incredible authenticity and accuracy and far-rearing and thing that I've encountered previously like in any space. And I think it's important just people who are used to listening to police will know this but if you're not the guards don't currently record ethnicity of anyone that they have any interactions with they don't publish data on how many stuffs and searches they conduct on how many houses they search they don't actually record data on how many people they arrest or detain they don't publish all of the data on ethnicity membership of Mungarishu Kona. So you were working in this totally vacuous space but you also provide incredibly important data that we have never had before. And we're going to talk about this across the range of themes and there's I can't commend the report enough to anyone anyway interested. It's very accessible. It's very well presented. It's it's quite a harrowing read. I found myself I've had to pick it up and put it down and come back to it a couple of times and I you know ideal with this stuff pretty much all the time but the some of the rates it's just quite shocking. If I start with the victim stuff I mean like you know half of the people that you spoke to have been victims of crime in the previous five years wasn't it Cindy? It was yet half of our survey respondents had experienced being a victim of a crime in the previous five years to our research and I suppose when we're looking when we're looking at of those of those that had experienced been a victim of crime only 63% said that they didn't report their experience because they didn't trust the guards in reporting their experience so we can see then that those majority that did trust the guards and reported their experience had had a negative experience in that reporting. And not just the majority I mean I'm sorry I've taken some notes of this but please fill in around was like 83% saying they didn't feel they were taken seriously like these are just absolute shocking levels. Absolutely yeah and we can see like I suppose the high levels of of that lack of trust in the criminal justice system as a whole for the community across the board and I suppose particularly when we're talking about victims of crime you know as we stated on half half of our survey respondents had experienced being a victim of crime in those in those previous five years and not having that trust to be able to report those because I suppose some of some of our survey respondents talked about reasons and past experiences when they did report a crime to the police and the police responds to it that it was either and no response or when they did come out for example to to travel Pacific homes that they would be looking at other issues instead of the issue that they were called for so for example looking looking around the holding site for tax insurance on cars and looking for other people on the site that would have not introduced a victim that had called the police out in the first place so immediately that trust that the person had in the first place to make that step in order to call the police to come out is completely broken down and then then when that is done in particularly in a travel Pacific accommodation setting where there are other members of the community watching this end experiencing the police checking for tax insurance that they have this knowledge and the lack of trust that in future if they were to be a victim of a crime that they might not report it to Angada Shikana because of these experiences that they have witnessed and been packed of and that's that you know Amanda you mentioned earlier that transgenerational going so one person has an individual experience other people hear of it they see it and that all to their behavior and then over time this becomes you know almost to registry isn't it which is that a fair thing to say Amanda? I think it is um we were surprised nonetheless at the proportion of travelers who reported a crime who would actually recommend to other people to do so and this is despite the fact that only 15 percent of travelers who reported a crime were satisfied with the service that they received compared to 61 percent of the general population who were asked the same question and I think that it shows a desire to have equal access to an equitable policing service into an equitable criminal justice system and that for the traveler community issues of over-policing are incredibly significant but so are issues of under-policing and the under-policing is really impactful on people's lives and we did as Cindy said we heard you know some very worrying kind of perceptions of people that particularly if crime was between it happened between members of the traveler community it was in track community crime that there was a sense that travelers would be left to deal with it themselves or the travelers the perception was that travelers should deal with it themselves and then I suppose the alternative perception that if it was an altercation for example involving both the traveler and a member of the settled community that travelers senses that they will not be believed over a member of the settled community and we're particularly concerned I think in respect to people who experience domestic violence and the impact on their capacity to report which is something that organizations like the Galway Travel Movement have previously raised and documented where a woman might feel that they are bringing down the guards and their community because it is not only her home that the guards will enter if she reports a domestic violence incident but also that as Cindy said very much very commonly this idea that the cars and vehicles of her neighbors will also be examined to see if there's any signs of other illegality on the site and that that's really worrying yeah I mean even for me there are few things and it's the same points you're making like you know one quilting there were two men arguing and fighting and a ranger station I told them and they said look we can't be able to sit no one for you are you know in relation to domestic violence and you're afraid to order the guardito because maybe your son has no tax on his car and it is it is really striking and as you say like the point of this is not to we're not trying to deter people from going to the guards even in doing this as you say people want that policing service it's about highlighting what needs to change and that people are having such an extent of a discriminatory if not racist service you know and that that is a very strong experience that a lot of people have had and that emerges across the report and so I suppose one of the you know and look everyone this whole chapter is on all of this and we could spend the day reporting this I think but we will have to kind of move through it and stop and search which is an issue that I'm always really interested in because as you described I think as involuntary contact with the police and it's something that you know can leave a real scar on people I think in terms of their experience of the police it feels like a pretty innocuous thing being stopped on the street and being asked a few questions but actually the impact can be quite strong what kind of findings did you make in relation to that Cindy? Yeah so I suppose when we're looking at those findings we can see particularly I suppose around the ethnic and racial profiling experiences and perceptions of the community there we can see that 59% of participants felt that the last time that they were stopped that they were stopped just on the basis of their travel identity and some of the reasons that they gave for those perceptions were for example that they gathered new that they were traveling they gathered to stop them new that they were traveling or the gather that stopped them had a reputation for stopping travelers and also that perhaps they they they they they gathered that that's not them would say something about them being a traveler or about travelers in generally so we can see then there's those 59% of participants felt that the reason that the only reason that the war stopped was was because of their traveler identity and the frequency of those stocks as well we found quite surprising I suppose to say the least when when this research was being conducted as Amanda stated at the beginning it was being conducted in the middle of a pandemic and so our interviews were done via via digital technology which is which would be quite difficult for for communities I suppose that is experiencing that that digitally gap in in society where but however I suppose it just it goes to show I suppose the engagement that we had with the community throughout that the positive engagement but during the COVID we found surprising that that the frequency of the stocks during COVID were 54% and said that they had been stopped more during COVID however we found that 32% had been stopped the same and 14% said that they had been stopped less during COVID which was quite surprising and which which the restrictions that had been put in place during COVID at that time yeah because the general population was experiencing more stops and searches obviously during that that timeframe that they normally would I'm really struck or sorry Amanda no sorry yeah I'm really struck by that point of like so many believing they're stopped because they're a member of the traveler community like that idea that something you can't change like just something that's so core to you that's you know such a part of your identity is being used against you by the you know the the agency of the state that's there to you know protect communities and investigate crime and so on that must be I mean maybe people normalize to us for a certain extent but on a level that has to be really hurtful I think so and one of the things I'd point out here as well is that the data that we have on racial profiling and stops and search searches maps onto the data or the findings rather of the fundamental rights agency traveler and Roma study in Ireland where they asked travelers precisely the same question about the the degree to which they feel that they had been ethnically I'll try that again yes and one of the things that I'd like to point out here is that in respect to the 59% of travelers who believe that they were racially profiled in the last the last time that they were stopped by gardy this maps within 1% onto the EU fundamental rights agency finding on the same issue from the data that that they gathered in their 2019 survey of travelers in Ireland so we're in relation to racial profiling where we're not the first to identify this issue we're really confirming something that the fundamental rights agency has raised and documented previously one of the other things I think that it's useful to note and something that I think we will explore perhaps more going forward is that among those who were stopped those who were stopped on foot seem to have been more likely to have a negative experience with the police and I think in the qualitative data some of the the stops on foot and particularly were particularly impactful for me I think in terms of the the kinds of experiences that people had and the kinds of emotional responses that they had to to being stopped and particularly for example where they're their young people being stopped or where they're stopped being stopped as part of of a group but whereas I think to some extent for all of us we can imagine the idea of a vehicular stop of being you know stopped on the road or stopped at a checkpoint and how many of us are ever outside of the issue of racial profiling how many of us are ever stopped on foot on the street and for travelers this is happening is this happening regularly and when it does happen very frequently it's not a positive experience yeah and I mean when you ask that how many of us like we know from previous episodes of police like that really we have to say how many of us white settler people have experiences of this you know young people have huge experiences of this people of different ethnic minorities have frequent experiences of the stop and searches I was really struck as well by you know some of the findings around provocation about how even once the stop I commenced that sometimes certain language the keyword all of this kind of thing was being used by police and it was provoking people and generating reactions and it even go to a point of making a finding around what you call and I thought this was very powerful ceremonies of degradation um what were those Cindy? yeah so I suppose um try that again yeah so for our participants and and for those that were surveyed some of them described really really distressing experiences and circumstances where they were where they had a negative encounter which a member of one guard is Chicana and I suppose when you're talking about the the ceremonies of degradation we're talking about where where they were the community felt members of the community felt that they were being sometimes marked and that their identity would be marked and that they would be called as you said the k word would be called used to them so I suppose those those those experiences I suppose direct experiences but also people that the intergenerational knowledge that that would be passed on to as well within the community not just I suppose the immediate family and immediate community that might be living them in the area whether that's in travel specific group housing or whether it's in standard housing these these these narratives of ceremonies of degradation are passed on and throughout the community and they are passed on from one from one to one to another where they have happened and those those narratives are are seen to be happening on a regular basis for the community where a where it breaks down even even that little bit of trust that some some members might have wish to criminal justice system that trust will will break when they hear these stories of the degradation but also when when some of them actually witness these these experiences happening on site as well I can imagine I mean when we think of degradation we can all the idea of being degraded like we can all imagine how much you would want to avoid that situation and you do anything for it and I suppose it's really important to point out that that that word has real significance in human rights terms because you know there is a complete ban on inhuman and degrading treatment and if people are being degraded then the state is overtly breaching people's rights and that you know there's no halfway house on that human rights it's an absolutely protected right so any any reports that go to that nature are deeply concerning and I think that as well for some of our survey respondents particularly as both young men you know would have talked about being provoked by by some members of of on guard of shakana and being provoked to to to be upset and to act in in a certain way in order to justify them being stopped and perhaps sometimes arrested. The for us the the concept of ceremonies of degradation come from sociology and from a particular body of theory within sociology and there the idea is about a public ritual in which the the presence of people from the the dominant culture is necessary to the degradation process where an individual is made lesser not only in their own eyes but in the eyes of of those individuals from the the dominant culture and if I could just read to you if it that's okay a quote that we actually used in the launch and it's from a mother who says it was when they followed me from a town to 10 mile to my kids' local school no need to use blue lights or the sirens but used to intimidate me and my children and my husband and then to take a big mad drug search and my children and other children watching them from the school ground that was disgusting in front of my children in front of the principal of the school in front of a child the resource teacher watching everything from the school and so for us that encapsulates exactly what a ceremony of degradation is and being made lesser in the eyes of the the dominant culture and unfortunately there there was elements of this which were very much evident in that data and you know it's not like it's making me think or like I I spoke into a man before who suffered a miscarriage of justice in America and he talks about that moment of arrest from his house when the neighbors saw that that was the worst moment in everything and that's the bit that you can never shake right there'll always be that seed of doubt in everyone else's mind and one of the things that I think is really important about this work among so many other things is like if people look at research in the UK let's say on the experiences of black individuals in the criminal justice system you you can track and mark right how many people are stopped and searched how many are arrested how many are detained charge prosecuted and end up in prison and you can you can watch the attrition through the system and you can see how dominant in in that instance black people are among the data and so you know when we get to the figures let's say an arrest you find a 20% of the people you had spoken to have been arrested in the previous five years I mean so much of this data I'm just like if these figures were replicated in the white settle community the guards be being sponsored tomorrow but I find that figure particularly shocking and city what kind of experiences do people have who were arrested by the guards and yeah for for for different people they had different experiences and I suppose one one-fifth over our survey respondents reported being arrested in the prior five years to that and some people just once others more than once drove those five years and I suppose the impact that that that would have on them on them the impact that that would have on them and and their families and the communities but I suppose also I suppose the situations where where some people talked about being in custody and not having access to medication for example we had some people talk about talk about the impact of that but also we had some people talk about the impact of being being degraded while being in custody as well talked about being here and some anti-traveler language from some members of of the guards and also I suppose when we're looking at kind of their experiences within that system there was there was there was a small number of people that that reported being arrested wrongfully wrongfully arrested and and I suppose the impact that that has on them and their families as well is just horrendous and we can see that it's very distressing for the for the for the families and the communities and and quite a few reporting that they didn't feel safe or they weren't given the right of access to a lawyer and one of the things that and I know you talk about it in the report around mental health you know myself and I've gone a period a lot of work around experiences of custody and and for anyone who has any level of mental illness or any concerns where in their mental health custody is an enormously triggering and difficult experience and as we know from us where you know mental illness is a really serious issue in the job or community that's been deeply neglected did you have any comments in relation to that around how mental health intersected with some of these findings I think that certainly there were comments about the impact upon mental health of over policing and of the the sense that involuntary contact with the the police was to some extent inevitable so yes there were also comments on the mental health impacts on children and particularly in relation to search of the home where children would be in some cases present for those searches so yeah that certainly did arise as an issue in terms of policing more generally we were really pleased to see the the piloting of the interdisciplinary crisis intervention teams in Lemurick one of our recommendations is that those need to be really rolled out urgently across the country Cindy mentioned the issue of provocation which came up in a in a small number of cases but I do think it is really important to note that where you have a community that has this long history of conflictual relationships with the criminal justice system and where you have criminal justice professionals who are in the vast majority drawn from a settled white population who is known to hold racist views against travelers we have to be really careful of what people what what we are primed for in encounters between those two groups and and so I think that the potential for these I'm not going to start that again Vicki if that's okay because I'm getting my issues mixed up um so yeah so we were very pleased to see the piloting of the mental health crisis intervention teams which are happening in Lemurick and we do think that those need to be rolled out across the country and certainly there is an epidemic of mental health difficulties in the the traveler community and difficulties in accessing supports and I think that you know given the rate of involuntary contact with the police that we see and the arrest rate that we have documented in this study those um crisis intervention teams can be seen only as a positive yeah and I think that's really important and you know one of the descriptions that's been used even I have a mental illness and I talk about a great one relatively really but like someone said to me recently you know when you're in crisis and you're out of four or five or five out of five the most innocuous thing and the way your brain interprets it in that moment and you can lose it all together and you're you're now uncontainable where is somebody who's trained and has the right language and can respond appropriately can bring the bird if I down to a three out of five and suddenly right a crisis face and so I can imagine how you know someone who's in difficulty and someone's called a guard and the guard goes who your parents and suddenly you think you know your ethnicity or your community is being brought into it and that triggers one reaction so those crises intervention team and we've we've even done a whole podcast on them they're so important um but it's also not just about relying on them it's about every guard are having the level of knowledge that's required and really strong communication skills you mentioned Amanda earlier something about the sorry you didn't we'd have to that was in the bit that you've got so we'd have to talk this I can I come in there and then I could go on to that um so one of the things that we found in this research is that where travelers have positive encounters with the guards one of the things that they're characterized by really is procedural justice and one of the things that we find in research on procedural justice training is that communication is really really important to operationalizing the principles of procedural justice in practice um so yes you're you're quite right that the crisis intervention teams are essential and at the same time they do not substitute for having a police service where every member is trained in de-escalation and trained in effective communication and also where we recognize the biases that we may bring with us as members of a society in which these prejudices are embedded and that by acknowledging them we can move forward to engage with training in a very meaningful way to try to address them and to try to prevent them and shaping these encounters that we have with communities that unfortunately we have so few positive platforms for engagement with um and I think it was one of the things that has been said to me previously by members of the Guardian who we've interviewed when we've been conducting research on um on hate crimes more uh more generally uh and minority communities more generally and they've talked about the fact that very often um particularly with communities where there's a a great deal of social distance as there is with travelers between the the dominant culture in that community there's so few opportunities so few platforms for positive engagement outside of these kind of involuntary contacts where people are almost primed for things to go wrong particularly where the community may for the reasons we see in this report perceive the police to be a threat and the the police in turn may have negative perceptions of the community so we really need training across the board effective training where the effectiveness of that training is monitored uh in order to ensure that these types of implicit biases that we carry with us are recognized and addressed and that point about um space and also voluntaryness is it's a really interesting theme in the report because obviously you have the situations of victims who make that contact with the guards it may be in a station or they may be calling to them to the home you have the stops that are happening and the arrests often quite a public way but another really significant issue that comes up in the report is searches of the home um Cindy what did you find in relation to these yeah um so I suppose with the searches of the home um it was um kind of very very distressing um findings that we have found you know and the impact that it would have on on children as well when it happened particularly and some some of our survey respondents told us about the times that it would be commonly commonly happened in which they called them searches of the home raids of the home and it would usually occur in the morning times just as the children were um either before they went out to school or on their way out to school and we can see um true true um to our findings that of those of those that had experienced the search of the home that only 11 percent and status that that that that they had seen as search warrant and being produced so those are really kind of um concerning um statistics to find because as we know um um searches of the home without without a warrant can only be done in very limited and circumstances and when we're talking about um which was 11 percent of our community just saying that um that that they had search warrants were talking about high high levels of um people numbers of people that have experienced them searches of the homes without them the use of a search warrant which is really distressing and which is contrary to the constitutional rights of our into what kind of as you say the impact on on everyone in the home and particularly on young people to have that experience of the police coming into your home absolutely and particularly as was um the impact that it would have on children some of our some of our respondents um talked about the traumatization that the children would experience and during during these these um searches of the homes and a small number and talked about children's school bags being searched on the way um out to school as well and sometimes in front of um other other other school children that would be on uh school bus for example you know so just just I suppose the impact and the traumatization of that itself on the child um really really makes a huge impact um on the community and in how they and how they view the policing and how do the the view the police from a very very early age you know so that that perception of the police not being not being a protector for the community is set into um a young person's mind at a very young age because of these experiences so we're seeing here very definitively in your findings a community that is both underpoliced when it needs the police and overpoliced outside of that and yet a community that wants a policing service that has has needs in this space that has concerns about its safety just as anyone else does um and wants that what needs to happen and what are your recommendations for for going forward? One of the key things that we need Vicki is data and you mentioned the um the fact that in the UK for example with um racialized minorities and ethnic minorities in the UK in many cases but not in respect to travelers I should say and there is sufficient data to be able to um track people's treatment and experiences really from the point of recording to the point of of sentencing um I would note that the Lamy review in the UK did state that in respect to travelers they they can't drill down into the data in the the same sense so this seems to be maybe a transnational problem for the the travel community but certainly in Ireland as you've said we don't have ethnic identifiers um used by the police or by the courts um we have seen them introduced by the the prison service which is a really important achievement um although the degree there to which the data is necessarily complete um remains an issue but I think as these things bed down that will improve we have to have that data we have to have um official data not just to be reliant upon independent studies which are funded intermittently but to have administrative data which is analysed and published transparently every year to tell us about the rates of arrests the rates of prosecution, the rates of conviction, the types of sentences that people receive um and that not just for the traveler community um but for all racialized and ethnic minority communities in this country and indeed we could expand beyond that as well. In addition to that we think in respect to the traveler community because the extent of the issues of mistrust are um so great at this point and because that legacy and that history is so long that we really need a strategy dedicated to addressing the traveler community's relationship with the criminal justice system um and one which does not simply perceive travelers as prisoners the treatment of travelers and the prison system is incredibly important but as this report shows travelers are not just prisoners travelers are also victims of crime travelers are also people who are subject to stops and surges. Travers are also in a way that this study perhaps didn't address people who go into have documents validated and so on and people who want the same kind of service from our police and from our courts as everybody else in this country and we need a a a a whole system examination of that relationship and a strategy to to address it um in addition to that one of the things that we really need is to look at our complaints mechanisms one of the things that I think that we found most worrying in this data was the degree to which people were having negative experiences did not make complaints. Now in some cases that was because people were not aware of how to make a complaint but in other cases it was because people were afraid of the negative impacts for them of making a complaint afraid either in relation to the police or in relation to judges that if they made a complaint that it would be known and that they would be targeted either by a specific guard that our judge or by the guard the or the judiciary more generally and this really speaks to a lack of confidence that people have in our complaints mechanisms and of course in relation to the the judiciary we don't yet have the development of that promised complaints mechanism and that is something that really needs to be addressed and certainly one of the things that I think are highlighted is that those travelers who were aware for example of G-soc were also aware of the role of G-d in many cases investigating other G-d and that this was something that was really highlighted as problematic among those who had that awareness so we have to have investigators working with these complaints bodies who have no continuing relationship with the institutions that they are investigating. Yeah I mean it's such an important issue Cindy I know you were part of the delegation that went and spoke to the UN this week what kind of questions were the UN asking in this space? Yes we were delighted to be able to present our findings to the Human Rights Committee in Geneva this week and I suppose we were really really happy that the committee took some of our some of our findings seriously and has asked the stage particularly around racial profiling and the searches of the homes and we want all onto lambda 20th of july now with their conclusive observations to see what they have stated to the state. Okay I mean and some of us I mean I'm hopeful that some of the changes relating to the complaints body we're going to see in the police community safety act, police and security and police safety act when that comes in but but there's obviously a huge amount more to be done in this space and all I can do is just really thank you and your team for conducting the research it's incredibly important and I do want to note in this that you dedicated the report to the Indigenous ethnic minority community of travelers in Ireland especially those that contributed to the study and that's so important and it's really important that you know that we all hear and listen to this and that that the faith that those people put in you to recount their stories and experiences and their pain and trauma you know is listened to it's heard and it's acted upon and so we really really really hope that we see action in this space in the future and I'm really grateful to Amanda Haynes and Cindy Joyce of UL for coming and speaking to police today and to talk and just about these incredibly important findings thanks also to Tony Girls for producing the beach and tea as a listeners if you've already subscribed you're awesome and we're very grateful for that if you have and please consider doing so at patreon.com/torteshack and if you can't afford to then spread the word retree, you should recommend to your friends and so on and we'll be back with more episodes soon but in the meantime take care.