In Black and White: A Young Barrister's Story of Race and Class in a Broken Justice System
Alexandra Wilson2020

'I glanced around the courtroom, quickly at first and then repeated it. Slower this time, taking in the details of everyone's faces. I began to play the game I'd played my whole life: spot the black person. Of course, I wish it didn't matter what I looked like or where I came from, but it was obvious that no one there looked like me.'

Alexandra is 25, mixed-race and from Essex. As a trainee criminal barrister, she finds herself navigating a world and a set of rules designed by a privileged few. This is her story.

We follow Alexandra through a criminal justice system still divided by race and class. We hear about the life-changing events that motivated her to practice criminal law, beginning with the murder of a close family friend and her own experiences of knife crime. She shows us how it feels to defend someone who hates the colour of your skin or someone you suspect is guilty, and the heart-breaking cases of youth justice she has worked on. We see what it's like for the teenagers coerced into county line drug deals and the damage that can be caused when we criminalise teenagers.

Her story is unique in a profession still dominated by a privileged section of society with little first-hand experience of the devastating impact of violent crime.