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Building Strategies to Address Racially
Motivated Crime in Devon - Devon's Community Safety Partners   

Philip Burton,
Devon and Cornwall Constabulary

This Constabulary fully accepts the findings and the recommendations of the inquiry into the death of Stephen Lawrence. Let me say that from the outset because I think perhaps it may be the source of some questioning later on. I think that most police officers, if we are honest about it, have gone through the whole range of emotions from shame, anger and denial that anything like this could ever happen. I think we have come through that and we are moving on and we are moving on quickly.

The Report proved to be a watershed insofar as the Police Service was concerned and its whole approach to dealing with racist crimes. I think the point that emerges from the speakers thus far today clearly shows that good race relations do not wholly depend upon the police, but that there are a whole range of other services and agencies that need to, first of all, acknowledge there is a problem. Clearly we are talking about racist incidents here - racist crime, all matters relevant to the findings of that inquiry. The fact that there is racism in the South West goes without saying - the Jay Report in 1992 that Mohammed Dhalech has referred to clearly illustrated that and it is the case, as we shall see in a moment, that perhaps things haven't changed too much.

What is actually going on? Again, Mohammed has made useful reference to the figures that have come out. We have recorded incidents related to racist crime and racist matters generally for a number of years. However, the definition does change and is changing, but at least we have a definition now from the Macpherson Report that we are all working to. They are published annually so they are a matter of public record; there is no secret about what's involved in this, but what it does show, is the extent of the problem.

Now, talking here about New Devon*, the figures probably speak for themselves and I am not going to dwell for too long on this (see table below).

3 AREA	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sept	Oct	Nov	Dec	Jan
Teignbridge	0	4	2	1	3	1	2	0	0	0
South Hams	1	3	2	1	2	0	1	2	0	0
West Devon	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	2

4 AREA	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sept	Oct	Nov	Dec	Jan
North Devon	1	1	2	2	2	2	2	1	0	0
Torridge	1	1	0	1	2	0	1	2	1	0
Exeter	5	6	8	5	4	6	9	4	5	3
East Devon	5	2	1	1	3	1	0	3	0	3
Mid Devon	0	1	1	0	2	2	0	0	1	1

Full year's figures April 1999 to March 2000 are as follows: Teignbridge 19; South Hams 13; West Devon 4; North Devon 15; Torridge 9; Exeter 73; East Devon 21; Mid Devon 8.

For the first three-quarters of this year, the police have recorded something like 131 racist incidents and that compares with a total of 116 recorded for the whole year, for the whole Force, Devon and Cornwall, for the previous year. Now those incidents vary from abuse through to damage, through to assault, the whole range of incidents are included in those totals. Now, why have the figures gone up? Well, I think, returning to the definition already alluded to, Recommendation 12 of Macpherson, that it's now wide open and it does include any incident including the perception of victims, police and anyone else in relation to racist incidents. I would say that there is a difference between a racist incident and a crime, classifications of crime and the burden of proof, as we have already heard from Barbara Cohen, are different matters. More of that later perhaps this afternoon.

"A racist incident is any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person." Recommendation 12, Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Report

That is in fact a streamline version of a definition that the police have been using for some time, but I think the particular emphasis now has shifted towards the victim - how does the victim perceive this activity that has been directed towards them? Just to give you an example, perhaps in the past, circumstances where bullying took place in the school or in the workplace, neighbour disputes or minor crime, these incidents may or may not have been given the tag of a racist incident. Clearly now things are moving along and we are recognising, along with other agencies, that we need to think far more broadly in our definitions, to ensure that we encourage victims of racism to report such incidents.

The next point I want to make is about co-operation. This is about how the crime and disorder partnerships are working together and, clearly, what's needed is a comprehensive system for the reporting and recording of all racist incidents. The fact that the police are recording racist incidents with a national definition is fine but it still remains the case that we are struggling I suspect, to arrive at a standard definition that all agencies can subscribe to, local authorities, housing departments, social services, education, and so on. We are, of course, awaiting further guidance and we are told that a national code of practice will be out to deal with this in more detail.

What about the strategies themselves? Well, we've already heard, again from Barbara Cohen, some mention about the Crime and Disorder strategies and the extent to which they include matters relating to racist incidents. I think the timetable for creating those strategies was tight; most people would admit that, from the outset we were faced with the quite difficult task of completing audits and producing strategies in a short space of time and that publication of the Report was too late to inform the audit process. There clearly is a need for the partnerships to ensure that robust systems are in place in order to give an accurate picture of racist incidents.

I think the point that emerges from this is that we do have a problem as you can see from the statistics, but it isn't on the same scale as some of the inner city areas. The fact is that the minority ethnic population in Devon and Cornwall is widely dispersed throughout the two counties. That, in itself, brings particular issues of support for members of minority ethnic communities; are they prepared or encouraged to come forward and report these issues? where are the networks that support them? and so on and so forth.

The final point I would like to make is about service delivery. It's one thing to acknowledge the extent of racist incidents and crimes against individuals, but another to do something about it. Today's conference is about action and I hope I have the opportunity later on to talk to you about that. It won't have escaped your notice that any given racist incident, or indeed crime, is likely to involve the Crown Prosecution Service, Probation, and may include other services - housing and so on. Much work is going on - there is more to do.

Current police developments include:-

Nationally

• Establishment of Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) Race and Community Relations Committee
• ACPO Guide to Identifying and Combating Hate Crime
• ACPO Diversity Strategy

Locally

• Chief Constable's (Minority Staff) Advisory Group
• Force Diversity Strategy
• Diversity Strategy Sub-Committee
• Force Guide to Cultures and Religions
• Links to Racial Equality Councils:
  Plymouth and District
  Devon and Exeter
  Council for Racial Equality in Cornwall
• Membership of Plymouth Anti-Racist Task Force
• Diversity Training Programme
• Appointment of District Diversity Officers
• Improved Performance Monitoring

Mike Ellis,
Devon County Council

What I want to talk about are ten things that the County Council is currently doing, very much with the points that Jo and Barbara had in mind about how we ensure we have effective policies, but not only that, we turn them into practical results. I have heard Mohammed speak on a number of occasions going back to 1991, when the Commission for Racial Equality held a conference on the Eric Jay Report, and I think Mohammed's skill is always to bring us down to earth on what's going on here and with some very practical examples of what exists. I don't think that any of us would deny that those are issues that we need to tackle in Devon in the future.

Ten points - firstly the County Council has established new responsibilities and new people who operate in District Council areas. One of their responsibilities is to ensure that the County Council is delivering its commitments in the Community Safety Action Plans that are being implemented locally with district councils, police, the voluntary and community sector, and others.

We have seconded a senior officer - Roy Tomlinson - who is in the audience and some of you will know him, to work directly to our Chief Executive so that we can be sure that we are implementing the Crime and Disorder Act and taking the steps that we need to take to tackle crime, including racially motivated crime. We have a team that we have established within the County Council that is looking at ways in which we can ensure that community safety work is integrated into the way we do things. We have identified a Lead County Councillor who is part of our Executive of County Councillors, Coleen Herriman, who is also in the audience, who has specific responsibility for ensuring that we take forward our community safety work including those things that we are discussing today. We are seeking resources to put into those local community safety strategies and that's a signal of our commitment to ensure that the action within them is dealt with and done, and takes place, and that there are targets that we all commit to and can achieve, and we have set up and financed in a pretty substantial way, the Youth Offending Team that arises as a consequence of the Act. We are also working with the Police Authority, the police force and our district colleagues and others, to establish community safety networks so that we can spread good practice, identify what the priorities are and ensure we do take action and, in particular I pick up one of the points that I think Barbara made about the importance of training in all of this, and that's already led to four countywide training events, provided by the partners. Also so that we can identify what the real issues are in localities and work effectively to deliver those, and that includes things other than racially motivated crime, in particular things like domestic violence, which is also an issue in this county as it is elsewhere.

I think it is also important to say that the County Council itself has defined that it has three principal roles, clearly we have the responsibility to represent Devon outside the county, we have a job to do delivering the services we deliver within the county - those are two of our reasons for existing. Our third very explicit reason for existing is to respect every individual and to value diversity within the County and ensure that the action we are taking and the way we work reflects that commitment. We have established a project on valuing diversity, managing diversity, within the organisation that obviously links into all of this work and that looks at the County Council itself in all of its roles, whether that's as an employer or, in our job as enabling things to happen or in our job to directly deliver services. We have recently carried out one of our staff attitude surveys which tells us that 1 in 5 (20%) of the people surveyed, about 700 or 800 people in the organisation have experienced racially motivated incidents or sexual discrimination, so we know we have a problem that, as an organisation, we also have to tackle.

I think I've got three things to say finally about what might usefully happen next. The first is that for some years now, a couple of years, the County Council have had a formal Partnership with the Commission for Racial Equality and the Devon and Exeter Racial Equality Council. It might be useful and challenging to people in this room if we talked about the possibility of extending that partnership formally, to include other people, to signal the sort of commitments that we are discussing today.

Secondly, I think it is critical that we encourage very specific, very practical and very targeted action within the Community Safety Action Plans that have been developed locally and that we are all clear about how we are monitoring that action so that we can make some real progress in reducing the racially motivated incidents that have taken place since April last year, and I think it is also important particularly to pick up the point that Mohammed made about ensuring that when we are working on these issues, we do find ways of engaging with, involving, consulting and enabling the ethnic minority groups to participate in that work. For me this is about moving forward, I think the conference is an opportunity to kick start a lot of action. A lot of good work is already taking place but we cannot be complacent about it and I think Mohammed made that very clear. We need a commitment to get moving, to look ahead and to work together and we need a commitment to support initiatives in a very practical way so that we can make a real difference on the ground. This is the third conference that I have been involved in since the Eric Jay Report in 1990; and the conference in 1992, Philip shows us that reported incidents are increasing and we are all committed to do something about it.

David Incoll,
West Devon Borough Council

I have set my target as 300 seconds, because it sounds longer! Just a very quick run through of the area I am talking about. I am talking about West Devon but I am representing any District Council in Devon, where the same sort of situation is happening.

Presentation Slide One

Lead Officers

Chief Inspector Chris Amos, Devon and Cornwall Police
John Smith - Devon County Council Partnership Officer for West Devon
Nick Payne - Head of Environmental Services, West Devon Borough Council
David Incoll - Chief Executive, West Devon Borough Council

West Devon

448 square miles
47,500 residents
1.038,000 overnight/813,000 day visitors
Traditional low crime area
Excellent relations between police and communities

Because West Devon is the most sparsely populated part of Devon, indeed of southern England, and why I've made that point is because one might think at first instance that the agenda of this conference wouldn't be relevant for that sort of area but, as we have heard this morning, those situations are very much part of every part of the country. The figures for overnight and day visitors are actually the figures the government give us when they pay us rates for grants and, again, after what Mohammed said about the possible attitude towards visitors, I really took home some of those messages and I think we'll look again at those issues. It is an area of traditionally very low crime; we are in the lowest 20 areas of the country on the recent crime figures, and we have the lowest violent crime incidents per 1000 of any part of Devon and Cornwall.

Presentation Slide Two

Equality of Service

Programmed Approach

1. Training for Partnership Members on awareness of minority issues including race provided by Plymouth City Council's Equal Opportunities Officer. (Dec 99)
2. Development of inter-agency links with specialists to inform Partnership. (To be completed March 2000+)
3. To produce equality of service statement to underpin Partnership work. (To be completed by March 2000).
4. Formalised information sharing with Partnership within Data Protection Guidelines.
5. Equality work to be promoted through the Borough eg. media launch, press releases, poster campaign, links to national campaigns (2000/2001)

This is the approach our Community Safety Partnership has taken and the first one has been the most significant, and I think its when we really moved from looking at documents, looking and talking about issues, to really getting a grip of what this problem is and what it can mean. We were very fortunate our crime reduction sergeant, Gary Neeves, put on this really excellent training course in December and all of us were made to feel somewhat uncomfortable by the speakers, to really get to grips with the issue. I think what was reassuring - entertaining would be the wrong word - was that we had members, some mature members, who have always lived in small rural communities and, at the end of the day, they said they really appreciated it. They could see the issues, having come to them from a range of speakers, they looked at the statistics and they could really see it was an issue that they have a part to play in solving. It is not someone else's problem, it is not something they read about in the national papers - it doesn't happen in their part of Devon. So I think that was really when we turned the corner into getting people together, getting them totally committed and to making a difference.

I have listed there the next five parts of our programmed approach - the second one is the Inter-Agency Links, which is taking place at the moment and making sure we are aware of who to go to for what and what is happening. Number three is to produce an Equality of Service statement and I think that is a very important part because we are all part of the establishment to people out there, be we housing officers calling on people, trading standards officers visiting restaurants, environmental health officers, and how every one of the paid servers treat people when they meet them - I think there's a part to play in giving those people the reassurance that the establishment actually cares and wants to treat them in the appropriate way and wants to ensure that their quality of life is as good as it can be - so I think that's very important - weÕve got to spread that message throughout the organisation - a point made by earlier speakers and crucial to the success of this.

We are looking at how we best share information within the Data Protection guidelines and, again, that is part of the learning process and then, number five is actually promoting what we are doing, making the public aware. The points made about if the Western Morning News doesn't pick up this subject, the chances are we know that local provincial smaller papers don't either, so we've got to get those messages across and today gives us a great platform to have a means to go to the media to say that something like this has happened, it is an area that all the agencies in Devon are tackling, and we can try and get that message over. We are looking at various other campaigns and building on what's been done nationally to give it a local identity, a local flavour.

Presentation Slide Three

1. Explore best practice in other areas
2. Establish user group
3. Audit generic services as to their accommodation of minority communities
4. Strategy to encourage reporting of hate crimes
5. Increase support for victims of hate crimes
6. To reach identified communities in their own language and to inform them of support services

The other targets which our partnership has set for itself at this stage and, perhaps I should just say that when I set out the Lead Members at the beginning, they are the Lead Members as per the legislation but, of course, we are working very effectively with the two health authorities - West Devon is the only part of the County covered by two health authorities, and probation and other agencies. So it is very much joint working, not just those three named agencies in the first part of legislation. So the other targets we have set ourselves are continuing to learn from best practice, setting up user groups and there are a number of ways we can do that and it is being looked at. Auditing the services that are provided and then moving towards giving people the confidence to report crime or other racially motivated inexcusable behaviour and that is back to showing people that we do take the subject seriously, that officers are receptive to people's needs, to their proper considerations and, if they do report matters, they will be taken seriously. I think that what a partnership between all the agencies, particularly the police, will really show us is what is happening which is I think an important part of the exercise.

Then moving on to trying to reach communities in their own language, to inform them of support services because, as we all know, being in a minority is bad enough but when that minority is a very small minority, it is even worse and we have got to make sure that people's quality of life is as good as possible.

John Howard,
Devon Probation Service

From the imperative given to the Minister as a priority to introduce the recommendations of the Lawrence Report, the Home Office have issued a paper called "Developing Minority Ethnic Representation in Probation Services." To coincide with that, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Probation is conducting an inspection into race equality in probation services in England and Wales. Here in the South West, Cornwall was one of the first areas to be inspected. Amongst other things, the Inspectors are concerned to assess how probation officers are raising race issues with offenders and assessing the risk they pose to the public in the period of their supervision. Inspectors' checklists for analysing how offenders' attitudes to race are dealt with in supervision asks, for instance, three things:

• Is there evidence that issues of racism have been discussed with the offender?
• Has work been undertaken with the offender? and
• Did the risk assessment identify any particular concerns about racist attitudes or behaviour?

It has to be said that, although probation officers are required to assess the level of harm and dangerousness, we do not specifically or routinely include race unless there is a previous history which would indicate that, say, an assault was racially motivated. In the Exeter Community Safety Strategy the probation service has given an undertaking to provide information under the objective to reduce the incidence of racially motivated crime. When I asked a colleague what our part in this was, he said it was to provide information as required. I just want to illustrate the problem of working together in partnership in these ways - he couldn't recall either volunteering information or being asked for it. It is anticipated that the recommendations arising from the Inspector's report that is due out later this month -will include a requirement that all probation services assess risk in relation to race. The next step will then be to confront and challenge any attitudes that are demonstrated. More controversially, this may include the recommendation that the assessment of risk may be irrespective of the offence, that is, the offence would not have to be racially motivated for the probation officer to raise questions about an offender's attitudes to ethnic minorities. The probation service is currently devising programmes designed to enhance offenders' problem solving abilities and programmes to change their thinking patterns, and in these programmes there are modules on race and discrimination. One can see that this is a positive attempt by the probation service and the Home Office to tackle deeply held views about race and those that have broken the law and offended against society. However it may be that, in tackling racism and particularly racially motivated crime, action has to begin closer to home by making Black and ethnic minority staff more visible within our organisation. Simply put, Black staff have to be seen to be working in our organisations for service users to see and experience Black staff doing a good job - this is one of the best ways to tackle racism in offenders.

From my own agency's point of view, I have to ask the question "How can we as a probation service confront and challenge an offender's racism in the face of his inquiry as to how many Black staff we have employed in the last year?" I can imagine his reply - "Why pick on me, you are no better than me, but at least I am honest in my intentions".

The probation service nationally has exceeded the Home Office targets for recruitment for ethnic minority staff, even so, there is no room for complacency. Out of 400 applications in the South West Region to become trainee probation officers last year, there were 18 from ethnic minorities. Only two were interviewed and neither was appointed. Devon and the South West Probation Services are giving positive encouragement to Black and other ethnic minority staff in their applications to become probation officers. Amongst others, we are working with the Association of Black Probation Officers and the National Association of Asian Probation Staff to assist potential recruits to prepare application forms and prepare for job interviews. Incidentally, I was at a meeting on Monday where we were discussing this and, for the first time in my 25 years in the probation service, there were more Black members of staff in the room than white members, in an ordinary meeting. There were seven Black members of staff and three white members of staff and that is the first time in my life with the probation service that has happened and we, as managers, still couldn't listen.

In a paper to the Home Office last year, one staff member commented that, given the number of Black and Asian staff at middle management levels, if there are not at least 4 Black or Asian Chief Probation Officers out of a total of 42 within the next six years, then there is little to conclude other than the probation service acted in a racist way. What right then would we have to continue to challenge offenders' attitudes and behaviour.

Finally, I would say that many of our notions about race equality are predicated. Under the conception that our institutions are white organisations that are trying really hard to assimilate Black and other minority ethnic staff into our culture. I would say that this is not a helpful notion. A more positive way forward must be to conceive of our agencies as diverse, multi-cultural organisations that utilise the skills and abilities of staff from a variety of backgrounds. This is a mindset about the way we view ourselves and the management of our organisations and our partnerships. Discrimination is based upon a view that the dominant group's cultures, values and policies are better and preferable. We must move away from that idea and, sad to say practice, of being white organisations that offer opportunities to minority ethnic staff. The challenge, I think, is whether we are committed to the idea that a multi-cultural organisation is good for business - the business of combating racism and racially motivated crime.