Let's get it right: race and justice 2000 - Nacro

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Let’s get it rightThe value of minority staffassociationsBlack and Asian staff associations play a key role incriminal justice agencies. As well as providing support atwork and campaigning on working conditions, they alsotake part in discussions about wider criminal justicepolicy and practice affecting minority victims of crime,suspects and defendants.The Association of Black Probation Officers (ABPO) wasformed in 1984. Ten years later, in 1994, the Black PoliceAssociation was established, first in the MetropolitanPolice and then in other police forces. The Society ofBlack Lawyers, founded in 1973, and the Association ofAfrican and Asian Lawyers, represent minority grouplawyers and legal workers.The Black Police Association has been closely involved inwork to take forward the recommendations of theInspectorate of Constabulary’s thematic inspection ofcommunity and race relations, ‘Winning the Race’. It isrepresented on the working group which the HomeSecretary set up to implement the report’srecommendations and on the planning group whichorganised the April conference mentioned earlier. It alsoassisted the Inspectorate in producing the follow upinspection, ‘Winning the Race Revisited’.An organisation to represent black staff in the PrisonService is now being established.A criminal justice network of minority staff associationswould have great value; it could promote a consistentapproach to employment, retention, training andpromotion across all the agencies and would be able tomake an important contribution to policy development. Itshould be actively promoted and assisted by criminaljustice managers at national level.Training‘Training is vital for all those with a roleto play in the criminal justice process.Such training should be work-based, thatis, related to the tasks the person beingtrained has to do, and help them to dothose tasks better and moreappropriately.’‘Race and Criminal Justice’, NACRO 1989In 1992, the Race Issues Advisory Committee published areport which reviewed the state of training among criminaljustice agencies at that time. It found considerable variation,with training ranging from a one-hour session to severaldays in length, and a piecemeal approach to content andmethods of delivery, both within and between agencies. Itrecommended a much higher priority be given to raceequality training, with more time and more resourcesallocated, and, importantly, with support being given bymanagers back at work, so what was learned could be putinto practice.Financial constraints and other demands have meant thattraining continues to have a low priority. There have,however, been some significant and encouragingdevelopments in the 1990s.JSB Equal Treatment AdvisoryCommitteeThe Judicial Studies Board (JSB) is responsible for trainingthe judiciary and for advising on training of magistrates. In1991 it established a new committee, the Ethnic MinoritiesAdvisory Committee (EMAC) – which in 1997 was renamedthe Equal Treatment Advisory Committee (ETAC) – toreflect its wider equality remit.EMAC was responsible for commissioning and deliveringcompulsory race awareness training to every judge in thecountry. The weekend sessions began with a dinner to whichmembers of local minority communities were invited, to tellthe judges about their experiences. There was some initialresistance by judges to the training, but the programme hasnow been completed and is regarded as a success. (Therewas also some questioning of the value of the dinners on thepart of people from local communities who were somehowexpected to be ‘representative’.)This was the first time that such training had been providedfor judges. There is a longer history of race or communityrelations training in the police, prison and probation services,but this was a radical step for the judiciary. It was animportant expression of high level commitment to a fair andnon-discriminatory criminal justice system.Together with the Magisterial Committee of the JSB, in 1998ETAC commissioned a training package for magistrates onequal treatment, which was produced by the NACRO Race24
RACE AND JUSTICE 2000CHAPTER 5 EMPLOYMENT AND TRAININGand Criminal Justice Unit. The materials are in a modularformat, so that each section can either stand alone or bewoven into other forms of magisterial training.This experience with judges and magistrates could now bedeveloped for use by those involved in tribunals, such asimmigration or mental health appeals.A human awareness training package has also beendeveloped by the CPS, initially in London, with the help ofthe NACRO Race and Criminal Justice Unit. Afterevaluation, it was adapted for use nationally and is beingdelivered in all CPS branches.In 1997, the Prison Service issued a new race relations order,replacing the previous Race Relations Manual (whichalthough very comprehensive, had been felt by many staff tobe unwieldy and impractical). Standard Nine covers training.It provides for central training for managers, members ofrace relations management teams (RRMTs) and racerelations liaison officers (RRLOs). There is also a localtraining package for all staff. Training – whether central orlocal – is mandatory. However, the Prison Service documentcomments:‘… effectively delivered local training in racerelations for all staff (including civilian andadministrative staff) is essential to the delivery ofgood race relations in establishments … Given thatthere will always be pressures on training budgets,and that there will often be pressure on training suchas race relations to be squeezed out by training onsubjects which are the priority of the moment,establishments will need to consider imaginative andinnovative means of ensuring that race relationstraining proceeds within those inevitable constraints.’While the constraints may or may not be inevitable, theexperience of the NACRO Race and Criminal Justice Unit indifferent parts of the country suggests that it was provingextremely difficult for RRMT members and RRLOs to getaccess to limited spaces on central training courses, and localtraining is rare. However, in recent months additionalcourses have been added to the programme, reducing thebacklog of applicants, and local training material is beingdeveloped in conjunction with NACRO.Two reports from the Chief Inspector of Constabulary in the1990s have considered training provided for the police. In‘Developing Diversity in the Police Service’, the ChiefInspector commented that while equal opportunity trainingneeded to run like a ‘golden thread’ through all trainingprogrammes:‘… there is a significant gap between perceptionsand reality. The widespread absence ofprofessional evaluation of training meant that therewas often little evidence of achievement, andcomments from trainees suggested that the equalopportunities element could easily be marginalisedor ignored.’The report identified a need to monitor training provisionto ensure the ‘golden thread’ was a reality; to support bothtrainers and those at the receiving end and ensuringtraining can be put into practice; for training to be relatedto wider policing objectives and to be placed in thecontext of fairness and the value of diversity, rather thanin the context of race and gender.A second Inspectorate report, ‘Winning the Race’, waspublished two years later. It found that ‘community andrace relations training is relegated to a lowly position onthe training agenda, not least because its relevance tomeeting operational targets is not clear’. Little evidenceof the ‘golden thread’ was found; community and racerelations training was, rather, a ‘bolt-on optional extra, decoupledfrom questions of service delivery’. Generalprobationer training did not equip new officers to dealwith the sensitive situations they had to face while someline managers showed ‘indifference (at worst) and lack ofconfidence (at best) in tackling appropriate racistbehaviour by officers’. As with the earlier report, therewas no monitoring or evaluation of the training provided,and forces often did not make use of officers who hadbeen trained centrally, offering no support or movingthem to other posts before they could implement thetraining. The report added:‘The inspection revealed that those officers who aresensitive to dealing with diversity and confident intheir handling of different community groups are fewin number, and the knowledge and expertise withinforces to develop and train staff is limited.’A NACRO evaluation of a stop and search experiment inTottenham in 1995/96 revealed fragile and often hostileencounters between police officers and, in particular,young people and people from minority communities. Itstressed the need for community and race relationstraining which related closely to street duties; to contactwith members of the public; to using powers under thePolice and Criminal Evidence Act, such as stop andsearch; to skills in taking and passing on descriptions ofpeople from different communities; and to dealing withpotentially tense or confrontational situations in a waywhich did not lead to an escalation of tension. It also25
Page 1 and 2: Let’sget itrightRace and Justice
Page 3 and 4: ContentsForeword page 21 A decade o
Page 5 and 6: RACE AND JUSTICE 2000trade unions,
Page 7 and 8: RACE AND JUSTICE 2000CHAPTER 1 A DE
Page 9 and 10: RACE AND JUSTICE 2000CHAPTER A DECA
Page 11 and 12: CHAPTER2NACRO’s workon race andcr
Page 13 and 14: CHAPTER3Commitmentfrom the topOne o
Page 15 and 16: CHAPTER4Research andethnicmonitorin
Page 17 and 18: RACE AND JUSTICE 2000CHAPTER 4 RESE
Page 23 and 24: RACE AND JUSTICE 2000CHAPTER 5 EMPL
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Page 31 and 32: RACE AND JUSTICE 2000CHAPTER 6 SUSP
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Page 49 and 50: CHAPTER8Victimsof crimeAt the end o
Page 51 and 52: RACE AND JUSTICE 2000CHAPTER 8 VICT
Page 57 and 58: RACE AND JUSTICE 2000CHAPTER9After
Page 61 and 62: CHAPTER10Summary ofaction pointsCRI
Page 63 and 64: RACE AND JUSTICE 2000CHAPTER 10 SUM
Page 65 and 66: BIBLIOGRAPHYBland et al (1999), ‘
Page 67 and 68: NACRO Race Issues Advisory Committe

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