Inequality and Policing Reforms

The New Statesman and The Guardian this week have been reporting on a new report about inequality in Britain, which shows that black people make up less than 3% of the population but 15% of the people stopped by police. People of Afro-Caribbean and African descent are also imprisoned nearly 7 times more than their share of the population, compared with 4 times more in the US.

This indicates that there’s still a long way to go to improve problems of racism in the UK’s criminal justice system. This is an issue that I hope will be taken seriously in the government’s reform of policing. In the current consultation paper ‘Policing in the 21st Century: Reconnecting police and the people’, a prominent theme is to cut back on bureaucracy. The paper specifically refers to ending form-filling, including ‘stop’ forms.

I agree that in general we want the police to spend more time on the streets and less time on filling out paperwork. The principle that there should be more local accountability and less central bureaucratic control is certainly right. But the way that this is implemented needs to be VERY carefully thought through in order to ensure that controls remain to prevent racism and any potential inhibition of civil liberties.

The consultation paper highlights the need to allow the police to use their professionalism to do their job well. I agree with this, but we also need to recognise that the police have a great deal of power and this needs to be used wisely. We still need to have measures in place to ensure that policing powers are used in inappropriate ways, racism is tackled, and civil liberties are protected.
(If you’re interested, the Equality and Human Rights commission report ‘How Fair is Britain’ is available here, and the policing consultation document here).