Law: the supervision of drill music

Written by: Jessica Leane

Drill music has gained popularity in recent years, under scrutiny from the Metropolitan Police and the criminal justice system. While there is no doubt that the genre’s music videos and lyrics are sometimes considered inflammatory, the extent to which this can be attributed to the overall increase in violent crime is a much grayer area, which ultimately begs the question of whether drill music should be admissible at all in the persecution of individuals and groups. This article aims to reconcile alternative views as a way to facilitate further discussion on this controversial topic, in the hope of bridging the gap between artists and the institutions involved.

Drill music often explicitly refers to zip codes, people and groups. It’s what I call the genre of name-dropping. The genre’s graphic lyrics, which allegedly glorify gang culture, are only one piece of the puzzle: the accompanying music videos and hand gestures are an additional aggravating factor in the eyes of the police.

The routine issuance of Criminal Behavior Orders (CBOs) and Anti-Social Behavior Injunctions requiring the removal or censorship of certain content confuses artistic expression with crime. In my opinion, there seems to be a general miscommunication between the artists and the respective authoritative bodies. Much of this comes down to a matter of interpretation: the police often take the text too literally and then work backwards to build a case, presenting the CPS with what appears to be an ‘oven-ready’ case.

After all, the police are not a music mogul or record company! I truly believe that if drill music is to be admitted as legitimate evidence in court, it is only fair to have the appropriate “expert witnesses” on hand to interpret and adjudicate in a contextually appropriate manner. As it stands, socio-cultural anthropological evidence is not freely admissible in court, limiting the possibilities for a more nuanced interpretation of the allegedly inflammatory texts. Awarding evidence based on socio-cultural analysis the same status as other forms of expert evidence (scientific, medical, psychiatric) would help to create a level playing field.

Despite the adversarial design of the legal system, the prosecutor appears to have more leverage when it comes to citing drill music as “bad character evidence,” a loosely defined standard. The Criminal Justice Act 2003 extended the scope from what could be broadly defined as ‘evidence of bad character’ to a ‘propensity to misbehavior’: the perfect trap for incipient offending (planning/conspiracy). Novice offenses are more vulnerable to the evidentiary use of drill music as there is no action to infer evidence from and therefore relies purely on presumption, which is deeply unfair to the individual performer on the receiving end of the criminal justice system.

This is reflected in the crossed wires between artists and the authorities in authority, making it all too easy for those in power to attach a sinister motive to these lyrics, when much of the time these people are just rapping about what they see and hear every day and if this is negative content, but it does raise the question of what has gone wrong in society to facilitate the normalization of such texts within certain communities? For example, by looking at the causes instead of criminalizing the music per se.

Indeed, a number of artists rely on drill music as a way out: an escape from which they can ironically avoid any run-ins with the law, but the authoritative institutions are demonstrably trying to undermine such efforts. This has been exacerbated in recent years by the start of Project Alpha, an operational police unit that uses intelligence and investigation to flag drilling videos deemed dangerous. These videos are then deleted, hindering the artist’s success and rarely giving a reason. Artists are therefore forced to walk a tightrope or risk getting a criminal record.

Progress has already been made to redress this imbalance with the recent dismantling of the Gangs Matrix, which should allow artists to perform in venues with less police interference, but more needs to be done. Hopefully the tone of this article will be aimed at getting all parties thinking about the most effective way to achieve greater equality between artists and authoritative bodies without compromising the safety of our streets.