UK: Stop & search & arrest and racism
01 May 1998
In the late 1970s and early 1980s most local authorities in England and Wales, following the example set by the Greater London Council, established ethnic monitoring systems. It was argued at the time, that police forces should establish similar systems to monitor the use of their powers. There were numerous allegations, particularly from police monitoring groups, that the criminal justice system as a whole, and the police in particular, discriminated against ethnic minorities and it was therefore essential to monitor every aspect of the criminal justice process. Police forces, however, were reluctant to follow the example of local authorities.
With the passage of the Criminal Justice Act in 1991 the police were forced to take action. Section 95 places a duty on all persons working in the criminal justice system to avoid discriminating against anyone on the grounds of race, sex or other improper ground and the Home Secretary is obliged to publish information that he or she considers expedient to monitor this duty. In 1992 the Home Office sent a circular to all Chief Constables drawing their attention to the requirements of Section 95. The following year Her Majesty's Inspector of Constabulary (HMIC) begun collating statistics for stops and searches but only on the basis of a white/nonwhite split and no ethnic information was collected on arrests.
In March 1995, following discussions within the Home Office, HMIC and the police, a more extensive system of ethnic monitoring was agreed. It now covers four main areas: stop/searches, arrests, cautions, and homicides. The system, described in Race and the Criminal Justice System 1997 published by the Home Office, requires a police officer to made his or her own judgement about the ethnic origins of the person. They are required to use, "a 4-point scale", i.e. "White, Black, Asian and Other." (p8). The use of the word "scale" is totally inappropriate and implies a graduated series or order and suggests that the Home Secretary and the Chairman (sic) of the Criminal Justice Consultative Council, who sign and commend the Report, as well as a number of Home Office civil servants, have a long way to go in racism awareness.
The classification, apart from being based on a police officer's assessment of a person's ethnic identity rather than how the individual would describe themselves, fails to include a separate category for Irish people. They form the largest ethnic minority group in Britain and, moreover, there is increasing evidence that they are discriminated against by the police and in the criminal justice system. Yet most academic and government research continues to ignore their presence within British society. Notwithstanding these points, however, the new system of ethnic monitoring is a significant step forward and goes a long way to meet the demands of those who have been arguing for many years for some systematic monitoring of police powers.
This system of ethnic monitoring began in 1996 and the first set of figures were published by Home Secretary in Race and the Criminal Justice System 1997 in December last year ? some six years after the section 95 provision in the Criminal Justice Act.
The Report's findings
The Report presents a range of statistics on the four main areas. It records for all police force areas, the total number of people stopped and searched under section 1 of Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE), the number of arrests, and the number cautioned broken down by ethnic appearance. The small number of homicides ? 671 in 1996/97 ? prevented any sensible analysis of the statistics by police force area. An appendix contains a statistical update on racial incidents, the proportion of ethnic minorities on probation and in prison and the ethnic breakdown of those working in the criminal justice system.
Some police forces are still not in a position to supply all the data required. The main offender appears to be the Metro