A workplace culture where fathers are encouraged to take paternity leave would result in stronger families, a more equal labour market and a better economy.
David LammyRead
Courts are too distant from the communities they put on trial.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the disconnect between judicial systems and the communities affected by their decisions.
David Lammy highlights the issue of geographical and emotional distance between courts and the communities they serve, suggesting that such detachment can lead to a lack of understanding and fair representation in the judicial process. This separation can hinder justice, as courts may not fully grasp the complexities and realities of the lives of those they are judging.
In practice
During a speech on criminal justice reform, one might say, 'As David Lammy pointed out, courts are too distant from the communities they put on trial.'
A workplace culture where fathers are encouraged to take paternity leave would result in stronger families, a more equal labour market and a better economy.
People don't contest that I'm British as a black man, but they do contest that I'm English. Too many people are going back to an ethnocentric idea of what being English means.
We cannot afford to lose talented young black people, who make it to university, overseas, or worse, to let other talented black people be put off by the notion that university is somehow not for them.
The idea of a family sitting round the kitchen table and carefully planning their future family size based on the certainty of years to come is a complete fantasy. Back in the real world, jobs are lost, livelihoods taken away, families break apart, partners leave or pass away.
Many black youths are defying stereotypes, achieving good academic results, finding employment and contributing to their communities. But helping those who fall behind is not an exercise in political correctness, it is a precisely what a compassionate - and sensible - state should concern itself with.
Like many black men growing up in London, I have been stopped and searched by several policemen. I was 12 years old when I was first groped and frisked by police for walking down the road. It terrified me so much I wet myself.
Rule-following, legal precedence, and political consistency are not more important than right, justice and plain common-sense.
During the Jim Crow era, poll taxes and literacy tests kept the African-Americans from polls. But today, felon disenfranchisement laws accomplished what poll taxes and literacy tests ultimately could not, because those laws were struck down. But felony disenfranchisement laws had been allowed to stand.
In countries with a properly functioning legal system, the mob continues to exist, but it is rarely called upon to mete out capital punishment. The right to take human life belongs to the state. Not so in societies where weak courts and poor law enforcement are combined with intractable structural injustices.
Our capital system is haunted by the demon of error: error in determining guilt and error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die. What effect was race having? What effect was poverty having?
Once you've acquired a criminal record, you can be discriminated against legally in employment, housing, and access to education and public benefits. You're relegated to a permanent second-class status, forever a 'criminal.' Inflicting this amount of unnecessary pain and suffering is not cheap.
Supporters of capital punishment bear a special responsibility to ensure the fairness of this irreversible punishment.
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