Black barrister was told ‘it’s not for defendants’ at London court car park

A black barrister has said a security guard told him he could not park in a court’s car park in London because “it’s not for defendants”.

Stephen Akinsanya, who in June was awarded an OBE for raising awareness of youth knife crime and its prevention, said the incident, at an east London court about four weeks ago, illustrated the lack of progress on racism within the criminal justice system.

He said: “It was a sort of reflection of what happened when I first qualified back in 1993, going into the same court, being asked by a security guard which case I was on trial in. And as a junior lawyer thinking: well, why does it have to be that I’m the one on trial? Why can it not be that I’m the lawyer?

“And then 33 years later, pulling up in my car to park in the same court building, a security guard saying: ‘You can’t park here.’ And when I said why, he said: ‘Defendants can’t park in the car park.’”

The barrister, who first mentioned the incident in a Criminal Bar Association podcast published this week, titled “Being Black in Criminal Justice – Is the Profession Racist?”, said he could not believe that “people are still prejudging an individual”. He said that, apart from the gown, he was wearing his barrister’s attire, which the security guard should have been familiar with. When he challenged the guard, “he was completely embarrassed” and raised the barrier to allow him to park, said Akinsanya.

Keir Monteith KC told the podcast: “We’ve probably all experienced that situation early on and not so early on in our careers where we’ve been asked to go and sit in the dock.” He said others were still experiencing it but he personally was not, which he suggested was because he was a KC and known in a particular court.

In 2020, the courts service apologised to two black barristers after one was mistaken for a defendant three times in a day and the other twice in a day.

Akinsanya said: “I’m privy to seeing how the bar has changed with a lot more people from diverse backgrounds entering the profession but there is still a perception that, if you’re black, you’re more likely not to be the lawyer, you’re more likely to be a defendant who’s attending court because you’re on trial.

“I just think: why are we still in this position in the 21st century? Which makes one think about the wider conversation we were having [on the podcast] about the lack of black judges.”

Judicial diversity statistics published last month showed that over the past 10 years the proportion of judges who are black has barely moved, creeping up from 1.4% to 1.6%, compared with 4% of the population in England and Wales. There are 79 black judges (43 in courts and the remainder in tribunals) out of 5,337 and just one senior black court judge, Mrs Justice Margaret Obi.

Akinsanya said: “I could speak of colleagues of mine who are 40-plus years in [the profession] who are more than capable, more than able, [who] I know have applied and have been turned down.”

He believes there should be targets to increase representation and a body that is held accountable if they are missed.

Laurie Anne-Power KC told the podcast an oversight and scrutiny board was needed because “something’s going wrong”. She added: “The only way we can find out what is going wrong in that assessment phase of the process is to have a board that oversees every single aspect. Carry out comparisons. For example, look at the difference between applications for white applicants and black applicants – is there a difference? If there is not a difference, why is there a difference in outcome?”

Monteith, who co-authored a 2022 report that said the judiciary was institutionally racist, criticised the “secret soundings” used to appoint judges, by which serving judges submit confidential assessments of a candidate’s suitability. “If we’re going to have a proper application of merit, then do it on what the individual brings to the interview room, not what people have in terms of chats that are never brought into the interview so the person can deal with it,” he said.

Reporting from The Guardian contributed to this story.