Multi-agency anti-slavery partnerships provide a map detailing anti-slavery partnerships between police and local agencies. I simply identify who they are, where they operate and what they are doing.
Simple, clear and easy to use.
Created by: Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner and the University of Nottingham Rights Lab
Re-blog: Stealing to eat: London’s hungry criminalised for taking waste food from supermarket bins – http://wp.me/p40ccd-1Op
Original article: Stealing to eat: London’s hungry criminalised for taking waste food from supermarket bins, The London Economic, written by Ray Barron Woolford.
Quote:
I am sure many people think that it is just criminals who are locked up for stealing. However, our society will lock people up for two weeks and fine them on average £150 for “stealing” the equivalent of a £15 food shop from supermarket waste bins. The obvious irony here is that if they had £150 they would not need to be looking for food in bins in the first place. Thus our society perpetuates its own problem…Surely the most economic solution would be for the police to issue the offender with a caution and direct them to the nearest food bank…Yet a further freedom of information request informed me that between 1st January and 31st December 2016, 2,823 people had been “proceeded against with a charge or summons where food property was stolen.”
For the purposes of this report, we can understand the poverty premium to occur for one or more of three key reasons:
Additional costs directly resulting from having a low income, for example because this reduces the flexibility of payment methods;
Additional costs associated with a low income even though not directly resulting from it, for example the additional chance that someone on low-income lives in a high-crime area where insurance premiums are high; and
Additional costs that can be experienced by people across income groups, but are more likely to be experienced by lower-income households, such as not “shopping around” for utility tariffs, and which place a disproportionately high burden on low-income households’ resources.
The Poverty Premium – When low-income households pay more for essential goods and services by Sara Davies, Andrea Finney and Yvette Hartfree; University of Bristol, School of Geographical Sciences , November 2016
Notes from the Introduction:
The notion of the poverty premium was first conceived by American sociologist David Caplovitz in 1963. The term is used to describe how poor people pay more for essential goods and services compared to those not in poverty. In the UK the poverty premium has been highlighted as an important social policy concern by charities and organisations working with low-income families. In 2010 Save the Children illustrated the nominal cost of the poverty premium at £1,300 per year and showed how those on low-incomes paid more for fuel, telecommunications, insurance, accessing cash and accessing credit.
This study makes a significant contribution to moving forward our knowledge of the poverty premium in the UK. It takes a fresh look at understanding why the poverty premium arises and analyses new consumer data to show how the poverty premium is actually experienced.
Slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory labour
(1)A person commits an offence if—
(a)the person holds another person in slavery or servitude and the circumstances are such that the person knows or ought to know that the other person is held in slavery or servitude, or
(b)the person requires another person to perform forced or compulsory labour and the circumstances are such that the person knows or ought to know that the other person is being required to perform forced or compulsory labour.
(2)In subsection (1) the references to holding a person in slavery or servitude or requiring a person to perform forced or compulsory labour are to be construed in accordance with Article 4 of the Human Rights Convention.
(3)In determining whether a person is being held in slavery or servitude or required to perform forced or compulsory labour, regard may be had to all the circumstances.
(4)For example, regard may be had—
(a)to any of the person’s personal circumstances (such as the person being a child, the person’s family relationships, and any mental or physical illness) which may make the person more vulnerable than other persons;
(b)to any work or services provided by the person, including work or services provided in circumstances which constitute exploitation within section 3(3) to (6).
(5)The consent of a person (whether an adult or a child) to any of the acts alleged to constitute holding the person in slavery or servitude, or requiring the person to perform forced or compulsory labour, does not preclude a determination that the person is being held in slavery or servitude, or required to perform forced or compulsory labour.
Human trafficking
(1)A person commits an offence if the person arranges or facilitates the travel of another person (“V”) with a view to V being exploited.
(2)It is irrelevant whether V consents to the travel (whether V is an adult or a child).
The issue of protection for overseas domestic workers was a frustrating one. The draft Bill was silent on the plight of hundreds of workers enslaved in households in the UK. But, following sustained pressure and hands-on advocacy in which Anti-Slavery supported Kalayaan and others, a historic vote was taken in the House of Lords which brought back domestic workers’ right to leave an abusive employer. Unfortunately, the government remained deaf to our arguments and passed its own amendment requiring domestic workers to receive a positive decision from the National Referral Mechanism confirming they have been trafficked before allowing them to change employers. It is a bad decision that will deter domestic workers who face abuse and exploitation from coming forward to the authorities. On the other hand, it is a major achievement in itself that the Act now contains a specific provision on overseas domestic workers which is a gateway to getting better protection for this vulnerable group of workers in future. The fight on that issue continues.
Another momentous shift in the Government’s position was the introduction of the requirement for large companies to annually report on efforts to identify and address modern slavery in their supply chains. We worked with a coalition of NGOs, business and investors to persuade the Government that mandatory, rather than voluntary, disclosure in relation to company supply chains is the way forward.
It is a shame then that a loophole has been identified which allows companies hide their supply chains overseas as long as the goods they produce don’t end up in Britain. This, for example, means letting off the hook companies building sites for the FIFA World Cup in Qatar.
Finally, a major shortcoming in the Act is the lack of an extraterritoriality of slavery offence. This means that a British citizen could abuse someone overseas and not be held to account back in UK.
“Big step in the right direction but deficiencies leave us – and victims of modern slavery – wholly unsatisfied“, AntiSlavery.org, by Klara Skrivankova
Visualizing Emancipation is a map of slavery’s end during the American Civil War. It finds patterns in the collapse of southern slavery, mapping the interactions between federal policies, armies in the field, and the actions of enslaved men and women on countless farms and city blocks. It encourages scholars, students, and the public to examine the wartime end of slavery in place, allowing a rigorously geographic perspective on emancipation in the United States.
Visualizing Emancipation (Map) (About) (Crowd Sourcing)
This map shows the cities where black abolitionists lectured in Britain. It’s by no means an exhaustive list, but it gives some idea of how far these men and women travelled – literally the length and breadth of the country!
Black Abolitionists Speaking Locations (Map) (About) (Home)
This map shows the cities where Frederick Douglass lectured in Britain. It also shows the emerging industrialism within Britain – a railway boom was sweeping the nation in the 1840s, and the routes Douglass travelled align almost exactly with new railway lines. For example, the line from Bristol to Exeter via Taunton in the South West, and the route from Sheffield to Edinburgh. In some parts of Scotland, transport was fairly limited, and you can see Douglass hugged the coastline around Aberdeen – he was speaking so often that it was necessary to reach places easily and as quickly as possible.
Frederick Douglass Speaking Locations (Map) (About) (Home)
The animated thematic map Slave Revolt in Jamaica narrates the spatial history of a large-scale slave uprising in 18th-century Jamaica.
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database has information on almost 36,000 slaving voyages that forcibly embarked over 10 million Africans for transport to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. The actual number is estimated to have been as high as 12.5 million. The database and the separate estimates interface offer researchers, students and the general public a chance to rediscover the reality of one of the largest forced movements of peoples in world history.
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
An interactive map created from this database can be seen in many places.
Possession is foundational to an understanding of the legal definition of slavery, even when the State does not support a property right in respect of persons. To determine, in law, a case of slavery, one must look for possession.
While the exact form of possession might vary, in essence it supposes control over a person by another such as a person might control a thing. Such control may be physical, but physical constraints will not always be necessary to the maintenance of effective control over a person. More abstract manifestations of control of a person may be evident in attempts to withhold identity documents; or to otherwise restrict free movement or access to state authorities or legal processes; or equally in attempts to forge a new identity through compelling a new religion, language, place of residence, or forcing marriage.
Fundamentally, where such control operates, it will significantly deprive that person of his or her individual liberty for a period of time which is, for that person, indeterminate.
Bellagio-Harvard Guidelines on the Legal Parameters of Slavery by the Members of the Research Network on the Legal Parameters of Slavery, March 2012