Police Information

Policing Diversity-Lessons From Lambeth

Wed, September 19, 2001

Source: Benjamin Spencer and Michael Hough

POLICING DIVERSITY: LESSONS FROM LAMBETH Policing & Reducing Crime Briefing Note

Summary

This study was carried out in 1998 as a preliminary evaluation of the Policing Diversity in Lambeth (PDL) strategy. This strategy was a local initiative in one London borough, addressing the challenges of policing a highly ethnically diverse population. It was developed collaboratively between the Lambeth Community-Police Consultative Group (C-PCG) and the police.  

This report analyses the problems the strategy was designed to tackle, and assesses the quality of the strategy and the extent to which the objectives of PDL’s Year One Action

Plans had been achieved or were being successfully implemented by mid-1998. The study was based on interviews with police officers, members of the Lambeth C-PCG and members of the general public. It also draws on a number of police and public documents. When the report was in draft stage, it became clear that the report of the Macpherson Inquiry into the death of Stephen Lawrence would substantially redraw the

policy landscape in relation to policing and race issues. Since then a great deal of change has taken place within the Metropolitan Police (MPS) over a short period of time. Within Lambeth, PDL is now focussing on a Year Two Action Plan, which takes account of the successes and failures of the first year; and there have been other related initiatives. In a sense, therefore, this report may now seem of historical interest only. Clearly its assessment of the strategy is now out-of-date, providing a snapshot of the PDL strategy at a particular stage in its development. However, our analysis of the underlying dynamics of relations between the police and community may have wider applicability, as do the lessons that can be drawn from PDL’s first year. 

The research was a small-scale, exploratory study, with fieldwork conducted over a four-week period in May/June 1998. Only a small number of interviews could be carried out in the time available: 14 police officers and 21 local community members were interviewed. A number of police documents were also reviewed, including current and past local and MPS-wide policing plans and police surveys of public opinion.  

Given the limited time available, the research focused mainly on Brixton Division, which covers roughly a third of the borough. It is not clear to what extent attitudes and experience of police officers and residents in the other two Lambeth divisions would be similar. Nor –given the small scale of the study - can an assessment be made of the extent to which representative views of the police and public within Brixton division were captured. 

Police/community relations in Lambeth: a snapshot in 1998 

In discussing a topic as sensitive as relations between the police and minority ethnic groups, the first thing to stress is that things have got better in Lambeth since the 1981 disturbances. There was unanimity amongst the members of the C-PCG interviewed, and amongst prominent members of ethnic minorities, that relations between the police and ethnic minority communities had significantly improved over the past 15 years. These

people felt that the quality of dialogue and exchange between the two groups had improved, with greater     mutual respect and less defensiveness on the part of senior police officers. They also thought the police were more actively involved in the community and were having greater success in tackling crime. Nevertheless, while progress should be acknowledged, police/community relations in Lambeth remained poor by comparison with other areas in London. Specifically, the research indicated that: 

• Public confidence in the police in Lambeth was significantly below the average for the Metropolitan Police in the late 1990s. 
• This largely reflects the poor ratings of the police given by black people. 
• In general, black people's low levels of confidence in the police arose from a sense of being over-policed as crime suspects, and under-protected as
• crime victims. 
• Stop-and-search, CS spray, deaths in custody and the investigation of racially motivated crimes were all specific sources of concern. 

The overwhelming impression given by the police officers interviewed was that they are a workforce beleaguered and demoralised by issues to do with race and crime. Several expressed the view that they were doing a demanding job under difficult circumstances and were getting little thanks for this from the community. In particular the research found: 

• Police morale was not high; many officers felt that the community failed to recognise the value of their work, and the difficult circumstances in which they operated. 
• Police officers tended to think that community concerns were overstated and based on rumour, anecdote and misunderstanding. 
• They thought that stop-and-search tactics were an essential part of their crime-fighting armoury. 
• Some police officers felt under intense pressure to achieve statistical targets, which skewed their work towards strategies to yield arrests. 

Probably the most important point to stress is that both the police and their critics had considerable difficulty in appreciating the viewpoints of each other. 

An assessment of PDL’s first year 

The PDL strategy at the time of the research was embodied in the Year One Action Plan adopted in the autumn of 1997. The Year One Action Plan itself also saw some slippage in implementation and the reasons for this need examining. Since the Action Plan had been drawn up, there had been substantial staff turnover at senior level - in the Borough Liaison Office and amongst OCU commanders. The new senior management team took the view that - whatever the practicability of the strategy at the time it was drawn up - new legislation and other operational developments had created overwhelming pressure to reschedule the implementation timetable. In particular, the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 had imposed a number of new requirements on the police and other local agencies. 

The research assesses PDL’s progress against its success in achieving the objectives set out in the Year One Action Plan (see table). The table provides a snapshot of progress achieved by the middle of 1998. It divides the objectives into those, which were concrete

and short-term - whose attainment could readily be assessed - and the longer-term objectives which define the programme's aspirations. 

An assessment of PDL therefore suggests: 

• Implementation of the strategy had been subject to some slippage. 
• This had damaged relations between the C-PCG and the police; some C-PCG members saw the slippage as a sign of a reduction in police commitment to the strategy. 
• Some of the strategy’s Year One objectives had been met, but others had not. 
• In particular, rank-and-file police awareness of PDL was low, and community awareness was very limited indeed. 
• The C-PCG had played a key part in initiating PDL, but the effectiveness of the group in promoting the strategy was limited, and constrained by tensions within the group itself. 

This stock-taking exercise has exposed some of the pitfalls which threaten any attempt to improve relations between the police and the community. First, and unsurprisingly, progress is often slow – slower than key participants would wish. Secondly, the natural impatience to see progress puts pressure particularly on police participants to take an optimistic view of what can be achieved within short time-frames: people are tempted to offer hostages to fortune in such circumstances. Thirdly, optimistic plans can very readily be derailed by unexpected factors, including new legislative demands and new management priorities.  

Finally, if and when this occurs, a dynamic is triggered in which previously established trust is rapidly eroded. Even the most adept of communicators may find it difficult to retrieve such a situation. 

Strengths and weaknesses of the strategy 

As reflected in its Year One Action Plan, the strategy had several strong points. First, it promoted the development of a broad spectrum of community contacts. Second, it placed substantial priority on CRR training as a mechanism for educating police officers on community race relations. Third, it promoted the recruitment and support of ethnic minorities in the police force. Fourth, PDL objectives were incorporated into policing plans and the staff appraisal process. Finally, the importance of improving links and relations with youth in the community was made evident by the commitment in the strategy to engage in a number of efforts involving youth and schools. Each of these components is a valuable part of the process of bringing the police closer to delivering a service that is fair and equitable and seen to be so. The strategy should thus be viewed as a good starting point, for it initiated a process focused upon CRR issues and developed some mechanisms for improving the way the police service interacts with the public. 

However, in the state of development that it had reached in mid-1998, several aspects of the strategy needed addressing. Organisational “sticks and carrots” were probably needed as much as other initiatives such as training programmes to ensure that PDL principles become embedded in everyday practice. There was a clear need for a better-developed communications strategy within PDL. This needed to ensure that all police officers were fully aware of the strategy, on the one hand, and to reach the wider public on the other. To be effective in winning “hearts and minds” within the police service, the communications strategy needed to stress that pursuing PDL is in officers’ own interests.

There were two main possible “selling points”: successfully implemented, PDL would make their job easier, safer and more rewarding; and wholehearted commitment to PDL would unlock organizational rewards for them - or ward off organizational punishments. The C-PCG clearly had an important role to play in communicating the PDL strategy and its achievements to the wider community. C-PCG members were better placed than the police to convey to some sectors of the community the nature and objectives of PDL. Stop-and-search was one of the major sources of public concern and real improvement in this area would do much to improve relations between the police and the public. 

Epilogue

This study assessed the Policing Diversity in Lambeth (PDL) strategy at the end of its first year, in mid-1998. Since then, the MPS has experienced rapid change on a number of fronts. Crucially, the report of the Macpherson Inquiry into the murder of Stephen

Lawrence has transformed debate about police/community relations, and in particular about relations between the police and ethnic minority groups. The Home Secretary’s priorities for policing in 1999 emphasised the need for improved community relations. 

The follow-up report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, “Winning the Race Revisited”, further stressed the need for urgent action (HMIC, 1999). In parallel with these developments, the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act imposed a duty on police and local authorities to work to reduce crime in partnership with local communities, and to engage more fully in consultation with local communities. 

Together these developments have created a significant impetus for change. While some negative reactions may be expected in the short-term post-Macpherson, there seems to be a real determination by the MPS to see real improvements. One senses that major cultural change could be starting to occur within the police service. As befits a borough with its demographic profile and its recent history, Lambeth secured a head start over many other London boroughs in developing a strategy to improve police/community relations. PDL was getting established well before the Macpherson Inquiry presented its findings. This report has offered a snapshot of progress achieved - and pitfalls encountered - in Year One of the strategy’s life. We have probably focused more on pitfalls than progress, simply because one learns more from mistakes than successes. Thus it is only fair to the C-PCG and to the Lambeth police to end this report with a summary of progress in PDL since mid-1998. The following account depends very largely on what we have been told by the police and C-PCG well after fieldwork on the project was completed. 

The PDL initiative has served as a valuable pilot for work in other boroughs within the MPS. The CRR training has been rolled out successfully, and almost all serving officers and civilian staff in Lambeth have now been through the programme. Staff moving to the borough have undergone a much-improved induction process. Comprehensive briefing packages have been prepared for both police and civilian staff about the nature of institutional racism. Policing in Lambeth has also seen some structural changes which will support PDL objectives. As elsewhere in the MPS, “borough-based policing” has been introduced, whereby there is a single operational command unit for each borough, rather than the previous two or three divisions. The borough’s crime reduction strategy has been agreed and published. The community policing system has been reorganised, to provide increased support for community-led problem-oriented policing. Three Community Safety Units have been established to support this process. Lambeth has

served as a pilot site for improving stop-and-search procedures. 

It is too early to say whether these initiatives are paying off, but there is room for some optimism. A clue to the effectiveness of the Policing Diversity initiative may be found in the nature of the response to the nail-bomb attack which took place in Brixton in April 1999. After this incident the police and members of the community worked well together not only to help the immediate investigation but also to minimise the potentially divisive

impact of the bombing. Indeed the local response seems to have strengthened the Brixton community. Of course we cannot say for certain, but we are doubtful whether a similar situation would have received a similarly positive response a few years ago. 

Points for action 

Whilst this report focuses specifically on the implementation of one particular scheme, there are general principles that can be drawn from it which apply to any CRR strategy designed to improve relations between the police and the public: 

• CRR strategies must be firmly embedded within police forces’ organisational reward systems, with a comprehensive mix of “sticks and carrots” designed to ensure that officers take the strategy seriously. 
• CRR training is of obvious value, but it cannot be relied upon as the sole or primary means of changing officers’ behaviour and beliefs. Equating CRR strategies solely with CRR training is a recipe for failure. 
• CRR strategies need a well-designed internal communications plan. Such strategies will need “selling” to officers on the ground. The pay-offs in terms of effectiveness, safety and organizational rewards will need spelling out. 
• To aid internal communication, local senior managers need to signal loudly and clearly to their workforce that they attach importance to the CRR strategy. 
• CRR strategies need comprehensive plans for external communication. It is essential to get across to the community the nature of crime problems, and the way in which the police and their partners are tackling crime. 
• The police themselves may lack sufficient credibility to get the message across to those who most need to hear it. “Allies” may be needed, such as the C-PCG in Lambeth, who can command more trust in relevant sectors of the community. 
• Local crime reduction partnerships established by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 need to be fully involved in CRR strategies. 
• The impact of formal and informal performance indicators needs to be carefully assessed, to ensure that they do not distort policing practice in ways which damage community relations. This is especially important in relation to stop-and-search practice. 
• CRR strategies should place emphasis on the early identification of sources of concern within the community about policing practice; these sources of concern need to be acknowledged and debated openly by the police. 
• CRR strategies need to find ways of educating and training people – and especially youths – from ethnic minority groups about policing practice and ways of interacting successfully with the police. 
• CRR strategies need to foster a more explicit debate about appropriate levels of stop-and-search and about acceptable “hit rates” in terms of arrests. 
• Where special operations involving high rates of stop-and-search (or other such tactics) are used, there needs to be closer consultation with local permanent beat officers and, where appropriate, members of the public. 
• CRR strategies need to assess fully the scope for effective local action to stimulate ethnic minority recruitment into the police service.

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