Source · Select Committees · Home Affairs Committee
Recommendation 86
86
Accepted
Paragraph: 583
Lack of widespread local community oversight hinders racial disparity progress
Recommendation
The lack of widespread local scrutiny and oversight mechanisms involving different communities means that, too often, impetus to make progress is left to individual Chief Constables and PCCs, without improvements being made across the board or processes to ensure the interests of minority communities are represented. All forces need to establish local community oversight mechanisms which specifically recognise the need to monitor racial disparities and to increase confidence in local minority ethnic communities.
Government Response Summary
The government commits to strengthening local community scrutiny by developing a new framework by Summer 2023, which will ensure panels are independently led and reflect local diversity. They will also explore sharing body-worn video footage with these panels.
Paragraph Reference:
583
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
Inclusive Britain sets out the Government’s commitment to look carefully at strengthening the system of local community scrutiny of police decision-making, such as use of stop and search, and the value and use of body-worn video (BWV) in this process. We will explore how best to facilitate the sharing of BWV footage with local scrutiny panels, in order to improve the scrutiny of police decision-making and the understanding of legitimate police use of powers such as stop and search. This will feed into the development of a new framework for scrutinising use of police powers that will be in place by summer 2023. This framework will ensure that local scrutiny panels are independently led, reflect the diversity of the areas they represent and give police officers the confidence to use their powers with the backing of local communities.