The Lawrence Inquiry – Incompetence, Corruption, and Institutional Racism
| Published date | 01 September 1999 |
| Author | Lee Bridges |
| Date | 01 September 1999 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6478.00127 |
The inquiry into the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence in
South London in 1993, which reported earlier this year, documents a
catalogue of police incompetence and ‘institutional racism’. The report
also puts forward a number of far-reaching recommendations, echoing
long-standing demands by the black community, for the reform of polic-
ing in Britain. Yet, in its approach to ‘institutional racism’, the report
can be seen to have downplayed the need for a critical re-examination
of policing policies and priorities at a strategic level. As a result, many
of its key recommendations, in such areas as stop and search and the
policing of racist crime, may prove ineffective. The government’s com-
mitment to ‘anti-racism’, following the Lawrence report, is also called
into question by its subsequent decision to further restrict the rights of
defendants and the ability of black people to defend themselves against
racist police practices through the criminal justice system.
Imagine a policeman patrolling an inner city housing estate, who comes
across a young black man emerging from a house carrying a black plastic
rubbish sack. What is the probability that the policeman will stop and
search him? Now add to this that the policeman knows the young black
man to have criminal associations, or that he has received information
from various people in the area that someone fitting the black man’s
description has been involved in a series of burglaries. The chances of the
black man not being stopped and searched in these circumstances must be
fairly remote.
The Macpherson report into the police investigation of the murder of
Stephen Lawrence,1which took place on 22 April 1993, reveals that on no
fewer than two occasions when the police were carrying out surveillance of
the white youths alleged to have been involved in his killing, they watched
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1999, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
* Professor and Director of the Legal Research Institute, School of Law,
University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, England
298
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 26, NUMBER 3, SEPTEMBER 1999
ISSN: 0263–323X, pp. 298–322
The Lawrence Inquiry – Incompetence, Corruption, and
Institutional Racism
LEE BRIDGES*
1 W. Macpherson, The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry (1999; Cm. 4262-I) (the Lawrence report).
as black plastic rubbish sacks were removed from their homes. Of course,
some of these suspects were already known to the police as having been
involved in previous incidents in which knives had been used, and they had
been named as suspects in Stephen Lawrence’s murder by a number of
sources in the community. In the words of the inquiry report, there was ‘no
wall of silence’.2Despite this, nothing was done to stop these white youths
from removing the plastic bags and whatever was concealed in them.
As the inquiry report remarks:
We will never know what was removed . . . on April 26. PC Smith’s [who was carrying
out the surveillance] memo book records this event as follows: ‘Silver Sophie carrying
dry cleaning.’ It is unusual to place a bin liner over clothes en route to the dry cleaners.3
It concludes that the ‘whole history of surveillance reveals inefficiency and
incompetence’4and that everyone ‘who heard the evidence about this
aspect of the case were understandably aghast’.5
But it reveals something more. There was, in fact, a two-day delay
between the decision to set up the surveillance (which itself flowed from
what the inquiry concludes was a ‘fundamental mistake’ in deciding not to
carry out arrests on April 246) and that surveillance being put into place.
Part of the reasons for this delay was that the area surveillance team had
previously been ‘booked to observe a young black man’ on April 26, who
was suspected of ‘a minor offence of theft or “theft from the person”.’7In
fact, that surveillance went ahead as planned (we know not with what
results). On this, the inquiry report concludes:
the use of the surveillance team to observe a young black man suspected of theft in
apparent priority to surveillance of the Stephen Lawrence suspects is remarkable. No
explanation of this ‘priority’ has ever been given.8
In fact, such an explanation is readily available, in the whole history of
the differential pattern of policing to which the black community has been
subjected dating back over several decades9and in the consistent pattern of
299
© Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1999
2 id., para. 46.8.
3 id., para. 18.8.
4 id., para. 18.15.
5id., para. 18.19. The error was compounded when, almost two weeks later, the police belat-
edly decided to arrest the white suspects. Again, even though they had received information
that these youths possessed a large number of knives and were in the habit of hiding them
under their floorboards, only cursory searches of David Norris’s home were made when he
was arrested, and the floorboards were lifted in none of the suspects’ houses. The inquiry
report concludes that ‘it is extraordinary that no steps were taken . . . to look under the
floorboards’ (id., para. 23.7).
6The decision not to effect early arrests, and the circumstances surrounding it, are discussed
in detail in ch. 13, id.
7 id., para. 18.4.
8 id., para. 18.19.
9This history has been documented in many reports including, for example, the Institute of
Race Relation’s two studies, Police Against Black People (1979) and Policing Against Black
People (1986).
To continue reading
Request your trial