Kerrin Morris, left, Sheryl Nwosu and Kwabz of Mix Tape Madness

POLICE who are specially trained to use drill and grime music as a tool to convict young people in criminal trials have no particular expertise in the field, it was claimed this week.

In the past detectives have said they have been able to decipher lyrics on songs uploaded to the internet and some include bragging about real-life violent crime around Islington and Camden.

But speakers at a fringe event connected to the Labour Party conference in Liverpool this week said that the music, a subgenre of hip-hop, was being used against black people and that their art should not be used as evidence.

Barrister Sheryl Nwosu said: “The racial element of it is that a genre of music is being treated as autobiographical of black people’s lives. And I find that personally and professionally offensive.”

Dr Lambros Fatsis

Ms Nwosu warned that evidence taken from drill music was often used to “criminalise” young people who appear in music videos or recite lyrics. “You have a label applied to you of gang membership, of gang affiliation, gang association,” she said.

Dr Lambros Fatsis, an academic from City University, told the audience: “What are [convictions] relying on? The expertise of police officers who are called to testify as experts in gangs.”

He said these police officers are “not experts on youth musical culture” and have “no expertise in Afro-diasporic cultural traditions… that’s the experts not being experts… The evidence [from police officers] doesn’t quite meet for me the requirement of evidence because it lacks rigour, it lacks evidential weight, but it’s very rich in prejudicial value. To put it a different way, if a student submitted an essay on those grounds, there’s no way they would pass. But this is allowed as evidence in court.”

Dr Wanda Wyporska

The meeting in the Revolution bar close to conference centre drew a packed house and appearances from Labour’s former shadow culture secretary Lucy Powell and new shadow minister for youth justice Janet Daby.

Dr Fatsis said: “It makes a mockery of anything resembling a fair trial,” adding he was mounting a campaign called “Art Not Evidence”.

“It’s basically a challenge both in terms of raising awareness on this issue, but also mounting a challenge to the use of drill in court as evidence.”

Dr Wanda Wyporska said: “I think we also have to think about: ‘what are the roots of rap, and what are the roots of hip hop?’ This is a form of our oral history.

“This is a way of telling people about our lives… These are some of the few areas where we are able to tell our stories.”

She added: “It’s not about bias. It’s about racism.”

Ms Daby said: “There are serious concerns about deciphering lyrics, and drill music’s only been around for 10 years. So why are police officers all of a sudden professionals in that?”

She pledged to focus on creating a “criminal justice system that doesn’t racially profile people” should a Labour government come to power next year.