Source · Select Committees · Home Affairs Committee
Recommendation 75
75
Paragraph: 552
Persistent, deep-rooted racial disparities in policing indicate structural problems for BME groups.
Conclusion
But our inquiry has also found that despite many years of commitments being made to race equality by the police service and the Home Office, there are still persistent, deep rooted and unjustified racial disparities in key areas. The failure to make sufficient progress on BME recruitment, retention and progression, troubling race disparities in the police misconduct system, unjustified inequalities in the use of key police powers such as stop and search and a worrying decline in confidence and trust in the police among some BME communities point to structural problems which disadvantage BME groups. Examination of individual bias without also directly focusing on the processes that enable disparities in outcomes will not improve the experiences of BME groups. We are most concerned about those areas where police forces are not taking even the most basic action to implement existing recommendations aimed at tackling racism or, where they have failed to collate rigorous and consistent data that would allow them to investigate, understand and address racial disparities or injustices that arise.
Paragraph Reference:
552
Government Response
Acknowledged
HM Government
Acknowledged
The Macpherson Report left an indelible mark on policing. Over the past two decades, since the report’s publication, significant progress has been made to address Sir William Macpherson’s findings. As a result, the way the police approach racially motivated crimes has changed beyond recognition since the terrible murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993. Over the past few years, this Government has built on that progress. Police accountability has been strengthened with the reforms introduced to the police discipline and complaints systems in 2020 and significant improvements have been made to Home Office data collections to enable greater scrutiny of police activity broken down by ethnic group. Most significantly, the Government has made attracting more officers from a wide range of ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds a core ambition of its drive to recruit an extra 20,000 officers.