Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

I can conceive of reasons other than institutional racism for differing solve rates.

Such as?

Worth noting there actually wasn't really any discrepancy under Dick's predecessor (the unsolved rate was just below 10% for both) - since then its increased to over 20% for black and Asian victims while it's still below 15% for white victims. There may be other reasons but there seems to have been a number of issues around not really caring/challenging internal culture in the police under Dick - she was, by all accounts, a "copper's copper" which I think says it all.

Edit: Incidentally local Tory MP for Dover who voted against a bill banning fire and rehire (which isn't actually what's happening with P&O - but, that doesn't matter) trying to join the union protest went about as well as you'd expect
https://twitter.com/mikegalsworthy/status/1505118478398894088?s=20&t=Eu-UD2Mq6AzjYsIJrGQQ2A

[Admiral Yi]

Such as?

Unwillingness of witnesses to provide information.

[Sheilbh]

Although that could also be a function of institutional racism.

But I'm also not sure whether that would have shifted so much that the solve rate went from the same (and actually slightly higher for black and Asian victims) before Cressida Dick to a significant difference in her tenure and now.

[Admiral Yi]

I agree that the sudden (and sustained?) change in the solve rate is troubling.  But surely if the Boss was telling people to slack off on minority murders you could find people who could testify to that.

[Sheilbh]

I agree that the sudden (and sustained?) change in the solve rate is troubling.  But surely if the Boss was telling people to slack off on minority murders you could find people who could testify to that.

That's not institutional though - that's deliberate.

What they did have was a boss who said that she didn't think institutional racism exists in the Met - it was "not a label I find helpful" and, while acknowledging that there is a "systemic" dimension to prejudice", she emphasised that the Met "have come such a very, very, very long way." Similarly they had a boss who was referred to by people in the Police Federation (equivalent of a police union here) as "our Commissioner".

I think that culture from the leadership - we've done our bit on diversity and we've got your back - impacts how the organisation acts in all sorts of ways which we saw with all of the scandals under Dick, but includes reinforcing not actively trying to counteract institutional racism.

[Admiral Yi]

She said institutional racism doesn't exist in the Met, so that's proof of institutional racism?

[Sheilbh]

She said it didn't exist overturning about 20 years of consensus that it did - using the MacPherson report definition ("The collective failure of an organization 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 that amount to discrimination through prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness, and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people").

My argument is the message that sends within the wider organisation and culture is that they don't need to worry about it and all those measures they've taken to try and remedy it. If an organisation spends twenty years working to address institutional racism and is then told by the boss it no longer exists and they've done very, very well - my suspicion isn't that it has gone away/been solved for good but that they'll pretty much immediately backslide into old habits which are, as the name says, institutional.

This was also the case with stop and search - Theresa May was actually really effective on this (and the Police Federation did not like her at all) because she didn't ban stop and search as others had called for but massively increased the paperwork and record keeping around its use. Once you made police identify the legal grounds for using the power, record the interaction and outcome it was still used but the stats shifted dramatically in terms of the race of people who were being stopped. The people who were stopped looked broadly like the demographic make-up of London, the number of stops which didn't result in finding nothing dramatically decreased and more broadly crime was still falling. That policy was changed by one of May's successors (I forget who) and we're back where we were - it used far more, disproportionately used on black men and boys and there are far, far more searches that don't find anything (and crime's been increasing).

[Admiral Yi]

Riddle me this Riddler: if that describes the bad old days, to which the Met under the new boss simply reverted, why did the solve rate rise?  Shouldn't it have stayed the same? 

On a wider, meta sort of rant level, that quote you cite is the kind of subjective HR diversity training babble that doesn't do much for me.  My beef with the whole racism discussion is the lack of objectivity, science, hard definitions, statistics.  I would like to live in a world where we could take a set of facts, send them to the racism lab and the lab would send back Racist or Not Racist.  And we would all agree.

[Jacob]

Riddle me this Riddler: if that describes the bad old days, to which the Met under the new boss simply reverted, why did the solve rate rise?  Shouldn't it have stayed the same? 

Wasn't it the unresolved rate that rose?

[Sheilbh]

Riddle me this Riddler: if that describes the bad old days, to which the Met under the new boss simply reverted, why did the solve rate rise?  Shouldn't it have stayed the same? 

They didn't - that may have been my bad. The solve rates fell, the unsolved rates rose. Unsolved rates were under 10% and basically at the same level (rates for black and Asian victimes were actually a little lower) in the years before Dick's tenure. During her tenure the unsolved rates for all murders rose - but they rose more for black and Asian victims (to above 20%) than for white victims (to just under 15%).

On a wider, meta sort of rant level, that quote you cite is the kind of subjective HR diversity training babble that doesn't do much for me.  My beef with the whole racism discussion is the lack of objectivity, science, hard definitions, statistics.  I would like to live in a world where we could take a set of facts, send them to the racism lab and the lab would send back Racist or Not Racist.  And we would all agree.

It's from the 1999 report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence by a group of racists and the incredible series of failures in the Met investigation. It may seem like subjective diversity training language (and I get that issue) but it's from Sir William MacPherson - formerly of the Scots Guards and SAS before becoming a barrister and eventually a High Court judge. It's a very establishment background obviously, but not the sort given to wooly babble.

To me it seems fairly clear and helpful: a collective failure (so not by individuals necessarily) to provide an appropriate service to be people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin (so a fairly objective test: did they receive an appropriate service or not). This can be through processes, attitudes and behaviour that amounts to discrimination (i.e. it's not about intent but whether your processes etc result in an appropriate service or not). The result of that amounts to discrimination through prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racial stereotyping. It was this definition that was applied to the Labour Party over anti-semitism too - they did not provide an appropriate service to Jewish members who compained about anti-semitism or individual Labour Party members, which in effect meant they not only had to deal with the anti-semitism but then a layer of institutional anti-semitism in responding to those complaints.

The Sewell Report (otherwise very hostilely received) actually had a, I think, quite helpful breakdown:

The Commission therefore proposes the following framework to distinguish between different forms of racial disparity and racism:
1. Explained racial disparities: this term should be used when there are persistent ethnic differential outcomes that can demonstrably be shown to be as a result of other factors such as geography, class or sex.

2. Unexplained racial disparities: persistent differential outcomes for ethnic groups with no conclusive evidence about the causes. This applies to situations where a disparate outcome is identified, but there is no evidence as to what is causing it.

3. Institutional racism: applicable to an institution that is racist or discriminatory processes, policies, attitudes or behaviours in a single institution.

4. Systemic racism: this applies to interconnected organisations, or wider society, which exhibit racist or discriminatory processes, policies, attitudes or behaviours.

5. Structural racism: to describe a legacy of historic racist or discriminatory processes, policies, attitudes or behaviours that continue to shape organisations and societies today.

My view is basically if you have 2 then you need to look at 3-5 for the reason. An example, I'd argue, would be the difference between solve rates. Another would be the maternal mortality rates which are nearly four times worse for black women and twice as bad for Asian women than for white women. There is no explanation for this - bt there is a clear difference in outcome for people of different races, so we need to look to 3-5 for the explanation would be my suggestion (and there is a new Office for Health Improvement and Disparities whose job that is - hopefully it'll help). That is also based on facts and objectivity and there isn't yet an explanation for it.

Similarly in the UK, in the first wave of covid people from minority backgrounds had significantly worse outcomes. That was after adjusting for their profession (e.g. higher proportion working in healthcare), poverty, location etc. Again that's going to be part of that new Office's job because it looks like it was probably 3-5 in some way - though significantly less of an issue in subsequent waves.

If anything I think this is more objective because it's less about someone's intent than the objective facts of what service someone receives, what outcomes are achieved etc. You can then look at those in various other ways - and in the UK class and geopgraphy play a huge role - if there is still a difference then it's worth looking at the role race plays and how to improve the "processes, attitudes and behaviour) of an organisation to reduce that discrepancy. I have no idea how this works or how you even consider the impact of race in societies without looking at that sort of data - for example in some European countries where collecting that data is unlawful - because I feel like that's the stuff that gives us an idea of where and how race is having an impact on our society.

And similarly as it's focused on outcomes it also focuses on the more objective things in an organisation - so it's not that it's riddled with racists - but are the processes, policies, attitudes and behaviours discriminatory (possibly unintentionally).

[Admiral Yi]

Oops.  I meant the solve rate fell.

Why did it fall if it was just business as usual?

As to your #1-#5, #2 specifically says there is no evidence.  In the absence of evidence do we assume racism is the culprit?

[Sheilbh]

Oops.  I meant the solve rate fell.

Why did it fall if it was just business as usual?

I don't think business as usual by the Met or any police force is good. They don't act in the public interest. Like any other public sector body they will normally revert to producer/vested interests which are not the same as the public's.

As to your #1-#5, #2 specifically says there is no evidence.  In the absence of evidence do we assume racism is the culprit?

I read 1 and 2 as linked. So there is a racial disparity but there's no evidence linking it to another factor such as geography, sex or class (which explain a lot of disparities in the UK). If, having ruled those out, there's still a racial disparity to explain then it's worth examining if there's 3-5 institutional, systemic or structural racism at play - my guess would be that if it's not geography, class or sex then it's probably 3-5 in some combination or other.

Edit: And as I say for me this is the value of making sure you have data on race and ethnicity - and increasingly (in the UK at least) that it is broken down and not just a general BAME category.

[Admiral Yi]

I might be operating under a false assumption.

The 10% disparity in solved rates, was that during the lovely recent days when the Met was serious about racism, or was that during the bad old days when they were all racist?

[Sheilbh]

I might be operating under a false assumption.

The 10% disparity in solved rates, was that during the lovely recent days when the Met was serious about racism, or was that during the bad old days when they were all racist?

The 10% disparity is under Cressida Dick (2017-22), when they were around the same was in the previous five years. My understanding is that before then there was a disparity but it was fairly consistently narrowing. Although this only goes back to 2003 (before then the data wasn't made available to the public - it might be now as historic data, not sure ).

I'd be astonished if the discrepancy wasn't even wider pre-2003 and pre-MacPherson Report.

And again - it's not about anyone being racist. Though there is more than enough evidence that there are plenty of racists in the Met (see the IOPC report on Charing Cross station).

[Josquius]

So Boris Johnson has compared Ukraines resistance to Russia to... Brexit
Holy projection batman.