Investigated Or Ignored?

Investigated or ignored? An analysis of race-related deaths since the Macpherson report Harmit Athwal and Jon Burnett Investigated or ignored? An analysis of race-related deaths since the Macpherson report Contents 1. Summary of findings 2 Place 7 Reclassifying and ‘downgrading’ 2. Introduction 2 Rates per year 7 racial violence 11 ‘Racial hostility as an aggravating 3. Methodology 4 5. Responding to racial violence 8 factor in sentencing 12 Term of reference Indifference to or unwillingness to act 5 Allowing racism to be redefined Ethnicity and nationality against campaigns of harassment 8 5 as self-defence 13 Newcomers at risk 5 Negligence by other authorities 9 7. Progress since the Risk and the night-time economy 6 6. Racial motivation and the Macpherson Report 13 Age of victim and perpetrator 6 criminal justice process 10 8. Conclusion 15 Group and gang attacks 7 Failing to understand wider Weapons 7 contexts of racism 10 1. Summary of findings attacks is more dedicated than it was when the Macpherson Report was published, with police Since the publication of the Macpherson Report in forces acting with a level of professionalism that February 1999, there have been at least ninety-three was not previously evident. However, it appears that deaths with a known or suspected racial element if authorities, including the police, had, on occasion, in the UK. Of these, 97 per cent of the victims were intervened earlier, when persistent harassment and from BME communities (including those from Gypsy low-level abuse was being reported by victims, some or Traveller communities and European migrant deaths might have been prevented. workers). Particular groups of BME people are at risk There are still a considerable number of families – asylum seekers, new migrants, students and those of victims who are struggling to understand why working in the night-time economy. In 77 per cent of no one has been convicted for the murder of a loved the cases, the victims did not know their attackers. one, or for the way the case was handled. In at least In 84 per cent of cases there was a conviction of twelve cases (13 per cent), families or supporters have some kind – though not necessarily for murder or resorted in one way or another to challenging the manslaughter. In only a quarter of the cases was the decisions of the police, exerting pressure to force the allegation of racism accepted and prosecuted as such; police to recognise racial harassment, mobilising the with racial motivation factored into the sentencing of media and, in the most desperate cases, challenging the perpetrator(s). the actions of the criminal justice system. Where there are convictions, the racially motivated aspect of cases are often being filtered out by the police, the CPS and the judiciary, through a combination of 2. Introduction a failure to understand the broader context within which racist attacks are carried out, an unwillingness It can have come as little of a surprise to many to recognise racial motivation, the reclassifying of BME communities that statistics published by the racist attacks as disputes, robberies or other forms Ministry of Justice in November 2013 revealed that of hostility and through the way racial motivation courts are consistently biased against them.1 Black is incorporated into the sentencing of offenders. and Asian defendants are some 20 per cent more The over-strict interpretation of the legal provisions likely than white defendants to be given prison for racial motivation may be inhibiting the (racial) sentences for similar offences, just as race, religion charging of perpetrators and in fact removing the or nationality mark out who is stopped and searched racial basis of a crime from the court room. on the streets. But there is one area of the criminal It looks possible that in racial violence cases, the justice system in which BME communities could bar for accepting circumstantial evidence may be perhaps expect ‘fairer play’ – when they are the being set much higher than for other crimes. victims of racial violence. And that is because the In some areas, the police response to fatal racist agitation of the late 1990s and the campaigning INSTITUTE OF RACE RELATIONS | 2 Investigated or ignored? An analysis of race-related deaths since the Macpherson report around the death of Stephen Lawrence led to a or suspected racial element – the vast majority of number of changes in the criminal justice system. victims coming from BME communities. In fact these The Macpherson Report into the death of Stephen communities’ experiences of racism have been largely Lawrence, and the creation of ‘racially aggravated overlooked when murders have been prosecuted. The offences’ under the Crime and Disorder Act (1998) police, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), lawyers, were intended to provide better protection for and trial judges are taking decisions at various points minorities at risk and justice for victims. during the investigation or prosecution of murder Fourteen years ago, when the Macpherson cases which rule out any racial element. Ironically, Report was published, the criminal justice system ‘race’ marks individuals out when they are the alleged was placed under unprecedented critical scrutiny perpetrator of a crime, but race and racism are elided in relation to how it responded to racist attacks. by institutions when such individuals are victims of After thousands of pages of written submissions, crime. And families end up disillusioned and isolated testimonies and empirical evidence, it was famously by a legal process that appears unwilling to address described in relation to the Metropolitan Police’s the impact of racism on their lives. investigation into Stephen Lawrence’s murder in One such family is that of 55-year-old Kamlesh 1993 as ‘marred by a combination of professional Ruparelia, who, in August 2013, emerged distraught incompetence, institutional racism and a failure and confused from a coroner’s court in Sheffield and of leadership by senior officers’.2 This would never delivered an angry statement to journalists. In it, they have been brought to light were it not for Doreen expressed their shock at the ‘mismanagement’ of Mr and Neville Lawrence’s dogged persistence over the Ruparelia’s case, stating that the CPS had failed ‘to intervening years to find the truth, both about what demonstrate its commitment to protect the public’. had happened to their son and why the police had ‘The decision of the [CPS] not to prosecute anyone failed them so comprehensively. Bit by bit, they forced over Kamlesh’s death’, they stated, ‘and not to let a the police to acknowledge how they had failed to jury hear the evidence sends out the wrong message’. apprehend suspects, disregarded witnesses, treated a The message that they as a family had received, and main witness as a suspect, dropped the investigation the feelings that they had been left with, was loss: soon after beginning it and, ultimately, allowed the ‘the loss of Kamlesh and the loss of justice’. teenage boy’s killers to get away with what they had Kamlesh Ruparelia arrived in the UK as a 17-year- done for nearly two decades.3 old in the 1970s, having fled Idi Amin’s Uganda. Of the seventy recommendations made in the In 2010, he was with his cousin and some (white) Macpherson Report, sixty-seven have since been friends, playing pool in a pub in Sheffield, when a implemented in full or in part.4 Ten years after it white man walked over and asked them, ‘Why are you was published, the Home Affairs Select Committee talking to these two P***s?’ According to witnesses, took evidence on the report’s impact on policing, after Mr Ruparelia got up to remonstrate, the man stating that ‘[a]ll witnesses recognised that the police hit him with a single, ferocious punch. As one of the service had made progress towards tackling racial women present at the time said, ‘He hit Kam and he prejudice and discrimination since 1999’.5 And this went down and his glasses went onto the pool table. was a message reinforced by the Equality and Human I never saw Kam do anything. He just went down Rights Commission (EHRC) that same year which, like a skittle and his head hit the floor.’ The attacker whilst highlighting particular concerns around the himself, in a statement he later gave to the police, policing of ‘race’, said that ‘there had been several was more blunt: ‘I just lashed out at him. I connected key initiatives that have been fundamental to the really well.’ progress made on racial incidents’.6 The sheer scale of Exactly how ‘well’ he connected was later made internal reviews, progress reports, policy changes and clearer by a pathologist, who explained that Mr legislative developments cannot be denied. Ruparelia had been felled by a ‘heavy punch’ which The official narrative suggests that both racial probably knocked him unconscious immediately. A violence as a problem and as an overlooked crime are few days later, he was dead. The perpetrator, a 38-year- over, that inequalities have been addressed. But the old local businessman, initially admitted to the police reality is somewhat different, as we found out when that he had thrown the punch, but claimed that he we looked in detail at murder cases with a known couldn’t remember exactly how the altercation had INSTITUTE OF RACE RELATIONS | 3 Investigated or ignored? An analysis of race-related deaths since the Macpherson report come about. After Mr Ruparelia died from his injuries, 3. Methodology however, he said that he had actually acted in self- defence and that he had felt ‘extremely threatened’ This report examines the extent of deaths with a at the time.

Load more