Policing and Discrimination

• 1980s - "sus laws" E+W 
• stop and search laws that permitted police to arrest people who were loitering

• Scarman Inquiry 1981
•   disproportionate and indiscriminate use of 'stop and search' powers by the police against black people
•  local community mistrusted the police and their methods of policing
• recommended changes in training

recruitment of more ethnic minorities into the police force

• 1993
• inquiry 1999
• inability to deal with problems of racial inquiries
• concluded Metro police institutionally racist
• 70 recommendations

• Blacks 7x more likely to be stopped
• Asians 2x more likely
• 2012 - EHRC Blacks 28x more likely to be stopped in some areas
• 2012 - 3% stop and searches lead to arrests

• Available street populations
• different ethnic group differently available
• unequal prop on streets

• OR is practise flawed? 
• pressure for results
• emergence of new tactics "intelligence led policing"
• eg street robbery YBM

• links between poverty and crime
• Black pop disproptionally experience poverty, educational underachievement
• BUT unlikely to be irrelevent
• connection is not as straightforward
• interplay of adverse social conditions and reactions of CJS

• lead to high levels of mistrust 
• expectations of discrimination

• Waddington 1999 "trial by respect of cop"
• giving police reasonable suspicion to search a person due to hostile/suspicious interaction
• relevant to BME - expect discrimination
• negative cycle of interaction

• significant changes
• little overt racism
• BUT overt sexism and homophobia
• due to overt racism declining in broader society
• police progressive institution under scrutiny
• YET perception of racism still exists

"collective failure of an organisation to provide appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, ethnicity"

• stereotyping - police map and world social world 
• lead to discriminatory policing
• suspiciousness 

• BUT reflects power structures of societies being policed
• dervies from broader social racism 
• we put BME in low status categories
• BUT policing reinforces these power relations
• wider social transformation needed