Building trust

Racial justice in the criminal justice system: what can your church do? webinar series 2020

Our first webinar focusses on ‘Building Trust’, asking how the churches can build and reinforce trusting relationships with the communities they serve, with criminal justice bodies, the Police and the local Police and Crime Commissioner, and with individual young people who might otherwise be at risk of falling into trouble. We’ll discuss:

• How can churches help the police generally engage better with people of colour within the communities that they serve throughout England and Wales, and how might they address some of the perceived mistrust of some aspects of policing practice?
• What can faith communities do to engender trust in the criminal justice system? What social and systemic changes are needed for people of colour to feel able to trust the criminal justice system more? How can we build trust in place of fear and apparent hostility?
• What can churches do to engender trust in the criminal justice system amongst people in their congregations?

Speakers

• Bishop Rose Hudson-Wilkin was appointed Bishop of Dover in 2019, the first Black woman to be made a bishop in the Church of England, after nearly 10 years as Chaplain to the Speaker of the House of Commons. She was one of the first women to be ordained priest in the Church of England in 1994 and has extensive experience in parish ministry and in public life.
• DCC Vanessa Jardine is Deputy Chief Constable of West Midlands Police.
• Paul Rochester is the General Secretary of the Free Churches Group. The Free Churches Group comprises twenty-four denominations. As General Secretary, he serves both the Directors and Group members, providing oversight of the organisation and its work programme. FCG, amongst other things, has a public profile through Free Church chaplains in the Healthcare and Prisons sectors and the Free Church voice in Education and the public square. Paul has been an ordained minister in the Church of God of Prophecy (CoGoP) for over 30 years. He currently pastors a CoGoP church in South London as well as providing oversight for eight churches as the Regional Bishop. Paul worked in the Civil Service for 34 years and was awarded the MBE in 2016 for work on small scale renewables and community work.

How to attend

To join us for this free online event please register on EventBrite. You will be sent the link for the Webinar (which will be held on Zoom) at least 24 hours before the event. Please note only the event chair and participants will be shown on screen but you will be able to type comments and questions into the chat function and the chair will select some of these to put to the panel.