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

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Let’s get it right‘Our study has underlined the need to meet twoclear duties. The first is to be fair in the way weoperate. The second is to be effective in protectingcommunities. The challenge for the police serviceis to reconcile fairness to the individual withprotection for communities.’The extent to which stop and search is effective in reducing crimeis debatable. Police services believe it is an invaluable tool fordetecting crime when effectively targetted. On the other hand,there is a long history of confrontation and hostility betweenfrontline police officers and local communities because of theperceived unfairness of the use of stop, and stop and search,powers. Emerging research and statistics confirm theseperceptions.There is also the low strike rate of searches leading toarrest and the fact that a great many people are subject tointrusive police powers for no result.The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Report commented on the‘widely held view that junior officers discriminate inpractice at operational level’. It continues:‘If there was one area of complaint that wasuniversal it was the issue of “stop and search”.Nobody in the minority ethnic communitiesbelieves that the complex arguments which aresometimes used to explain the figures as to stopand search are valid.’ (45.8)‘It is pointless for the police service to try tojustify the disparity in these figures purely ormainly in terms of the other factors which areidentified. The majority of police officers whotestified before us accepted that an element of thedisparity was the result of discrimination.’ (45.10)The Government has accepted the Report’srecommendation that these powers should be retained, butnot its further recommendations about recording andmonitoring all stops. Future Home Office research is tolook at current practice on recording all stops, and pilotprojects on managing stop and search effectively areunderway in the MPS. Further decisions will be made inthe light of the findings.A revised Code of Practice on stop and search wasapproved by Parliament in March 1999. It includes a newnote for guidance which emphasises the importance ofsupervising officers considering and tackling evidencethat stop and search is being used in a discriminatory way.However it does not help to define or explain reasonablesuspicion, and the need to avoid discrimination or to makestereotyped assumptions. The new section on managementand supervision of stop and search is welcome but needsto be stronger.The Government response to the Stephen LawrenceInquiry Report recommendations is disappointing. A farreachingreview of the purpose, use and management ofs1 PACE powers would be a positive development.Police ‘culture’‘Racial prejudice does manifest itselfoccasionally in the behaviour of a fewofficers in the street. It may be all tooeasy for some officers, faced with whatthey see as the inexorably rising tide ofstreet crime, to lapse into an unthinkingassumption that all young black peopleare potential criminals.’Lord Scarman’s report, 1981‘For their part, the police sometimesview members of ethnic minority groups,and black people in particular, as“problematic”. They tend to perceivethem as being disproportionatelyinvolved in certain types of crime and,correspondingly, have heightenednotions about the “suspiciousness” oftheir behaviour.’‘Entry into the Criminal Justice System’, HomeOffice, 1998Despite a 16-year gap between these two remarks, theproblems of police perceptions of minority communitiespersist.Operation Eagle Eye in London was designed to increasethe detection of street robberies. These crimes are ofserious concern to all communities and clearly it is ineveryone’s interest that they are tackled effectively, withthe right suspects being targeted. However the way inwhich the campaign was launched, by a statement fromthe MPS Commissioner, made it appear that young blackmen were to be the main target and were held primarily32
RACE AND JUSTICE 2000CHAPTER 6 SUSPECTS AND DEFENDANTSresponsible for the majority of these offences. Out ofcontext, the launch of this campaign antagonised thosewho should have worked in partnership with the police;and it reinforced negative perceptions and stereotypes ofyoung black men as criminals.It is not possible to mount similar campaigns against theperpetrators of most other types of crime, as victimsusually do not know, for example, who burgles theirhome. Prison statistics reveal that white people are morelikely to be sentenced for burglary than black. A highprofile campaign which focuses on one group of suspectsin this way, out of context to other types of crime, can beextremely damaging and reinforces prejudiced attitudeson the part of officers and the wider public. It is alsodamaging to those who are the suspects:‘Young black men feel criminalised by the mediaand by the police with whom they interact in theireveryday lives. They become demoralised anddevelop a kind of paranoia whereby they assume aperson standing or sitting next to them willperceive them to be a mugger or a rapist … suchcriminalisation is sometimes used to justifypolicing strategies which disproportionately targetyoung African Caribbean males. Thoseinterviewed were used to being stopped, searchedand questioned about their possessions andmovements. Experiences were similar: the youths’mode of dress had been used to justify – wherejustification had been offered – their being stoppedand sometimes detained.’‘This is Where I Live: Stories and Pressures inBrixton’, Runnymede Trust, 1996Better ways must be found to involve local communitiesin planning future campaigns against crime which,hopefully, the new consultation channels will ensure.The knowledge that young black people are more likely tobe unemployed, excluded from school and out on thestreet is sometimes used to account for the numbers ofsearches of young black men. The following extracts fromattitude surveys and discussions with officers inTottenham in 1996 highlight this:‘People from different backgrounds reacteddifferently when approached by an officer, and thismight make the officer suspicious. From whiteyoung men it was often the lack of a reasonableexplanation for what they were doing. From blackyoung men this was often a question of attitude:“West Indians have a more excitable culture”, saidone officer.’‘The presence of large numbers of young blackpeople on the street was given repeatedly as areason for searching. For many young people withno money there was nowhere else to go but thestreet, where they came to police attention.’‘Descriptions of white suspects tended to be fullerthan descriptions of black suspects. Given thehigher rate of unemployment among young blackmen, they were more likely to be on the streetsand if a victim’s description came close to whatofficers observed, then officers were obliged tocarry out the search.’‘Policing Local Communities’, NACRO 1997Although the statements about school exclusions andunemployment are true, and even if much of one type ofcrime (street robbery) in one city (London) is indeedcarried out by young black men, it is not logical to moveto the belief that all young black men are criminals. Ayoung man in Tottenham said: ‘Some of the police are allright, so why do they think all black people are criminals?We treat them as individuals but they treat us all the same– no respect!’.Socio-economic factors may quite rightly be used – incontext and without sensationalism – to explain what isgoing on, and to develop strategies involving otheragencies – education, local authorities, training providersand employers, for example – to redress inequality. Alltoo often, however, poorly grasped ‘socio-babble’becomes an excuse to justify unfair practices.Debates about the continued existence of the ‘canteenculture’ in the police (and indeed in other agencies) haverecently been transformed into a debate about‘institutional racism’. This question arose during Part II ofthe Stephen Lawrence Inquiry.In 1998, the new president of ACPO, Chief ConstableJohn Newing of Derbyshire, said:‘We pick on people because they appear to bedifferent and officers have a stereotype of them.You can’t explain it other than by institutionalracism and the stereotyping of young blackpeople.’33
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Page 65 and 66: BIBLIOGRAPHYBland et al (1999), ‘
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