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Comment

The Politics of Numbers: Police Racism and Crime Figures

The police forces of Britain are currently waging a public relations battle to regain credibility after the Macpherson Inquiry. Crime figures, produced by the police and released to the media along with the police’s interpretation of the figures, are playing a major role in it. The picture they give is one in which whites are

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What welcome for war refugees?

By the end of 1998, around 250,000 of the 2 million ethnic Albanians in Kosovo had fled Yugoslavia. Roughly 40,000 had gone to Montenegro (whose population is 640,000). Similar numbers had fled to Sweden, to Greece and to Germany, mostly illegally, and around 20,000 to Switzerland. No haven from ethnic cleansing But what reception had

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Exclusion: New Labour Style

Central to the welfare provisions of the Asylum and Immigration Bill is the removal of everyone who is subject to immigration control (including taxpayers) from all mainstream benefits. This won’t affect those long settled in Britain but it will affect those who have been ‘sponsored’ by a family member. In future, a sponsor’s failure to

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The Press, the Police and Macpherson

IN CARF 48 we analysed the limits of the new agenda of middle England on race, as exemplified by the Daily Mail in its championing of the Lawrence case. The Daily Mail made the murder of Stephen Lawrence a cause célèbre while also campaigning viciously against asylum-seekers. In this way middle England was proving that

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Will the Police Be Made Fully Accountable?

No-one doubts that the case of Stephen Lawrence has resulted in unprecedented public awareness of racism in institutions and in the police in particular. Even hostile commentators are no longer able simply to shrug their shoulders and talk about a few bad apples. Nevertheless the debate so far has been considerably less penetrating as to

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Comment

Stop and Search: Strong words but limited action

THE report of the Lawrence inquiry singles out countrywide racial disparities in the use of stop-and-search as one of the key areas of ‘institutional racism’ in the police. In doing so, the report does no more than to confirm what has long been widely known in the black community. The Macpherson report goes on to

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Institutionalised racism and human rights abuses

A special investigation into 45 deaths in Europe in 1998. Human rights abuses, we are told, occur in the Third World – certainly not in democratic Europe. But the 45 deaths we document here throw into question Europe’s respect for human rights. For the treatment of immigrants, asylum-seekers and ethnic minorities is the benchmark by

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Evidence submitted for Part 2 of the Lawrence Inquiry

Institute of Race Relations Evidence submitted for Part 2 of the Inquiry into Matters Arising from the Death of Stephen Lawrence The Context IRR believes that it is essential to place the events surrounding the murder of Stephen Lawrence and the subsequent police investigation in the context of organised racial violence and relations between the

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Europe, the Press And Crime

Across Europe, thanks to press reporting, ‘criminal’, ‘immigrant’, ‘Roma’ are becoming interchangeable. In focusing on immigrant crime, the press reflects the priorities of police and politicians who are the main sources for such stories. Police crime statistics The raw material for immigrant crime stories are police reports, particularly the release of selective and ethnically-based crime

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Comment

Public accountability not public relations

For more than two decades, anti-racists have struggled to put the issue of institutional racism on the agenda. In the period from the Scarman inquiry of the early 1980s through to the last few months, the accepted wisdom was that police racism existed but it was a case of ‘a few rotten apples’. To root

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