A ‘bolt-on extra to the police’s work?’: Racism and policing in the UK since the Macpherson Report

Abstract

It is by outcome that the [Police] will be judged, not by the expenditure of energy on good intentions.Alan Marlow and Barry Loveday, After Macpherson: Policing after the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry (2000), p 1.2INTRODUCTIONIn February 1999, Sir William Macpherson issued the findings of his investigation into the death of London teenager Stephen Lawrence, killed in what was evidently a racist attack as he waited at a bus stop one evening in April 1993. Controversially, Sir William found that the initial murder inquiry, conducted by the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), had been marred not only by incompetence and management failure3 – serious enough in themselves – but by what he termed ‘institutional racism’. The report provided the following definition:The collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people.4