Anna Souhami

Institutional racism and police reform: an empirical critique

Institutional racism became a potent mobilising concept in police reform in the UK following the publication of the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry in 1999. Yet while it continues to be used to highlight problematic police/community relationships, little attention has been paid to whether it actually works as a conceptual instrument for change. The explanatory value of the concept has long been contested due to its inherent ambiguities. However, reflecting the noted lack of empirical research in this area, there has been little exploration of how the concept is interpreted and applied by those charged with responding. Drawing on ethnographic research in the aftermath of the Inquiry, this paper puts in question the continuing use of the concept as a lever for reform. Empirical exploration reveals that the conceptual limitations of the term have important operational implications. While the concept provoked an urgent reaction, its central ambiguities confronted police services with profound difficulties in responding. At the same time, it inadvertently focused attention on internal police culture. Consequently, despite the Inquirys intention that the term would divert attention away from a preoccupation with overt racism among police staff, this is precisely where reform activity was directed. Moreover, the concept not only failed to direct attention to the dynamics of institutional discrimination but, through the activity it elicited, in fact sustained them. However, despite these limitations, the mobilising power of the concept may have instigated a more subtle and pervasive series of shifts in organisational norms. A new approach grounded in practice and giving primacy to conceptual accuracy is now needed.

The Central Institutions of Youth Justice: Government Bureaucracy and the Importance of the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales

The government’s recent ‘bonfire of the quangos’ put at issue the future of the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales (YJB). Drawing on research with YJB staff, ministers and civil servants, this article argues a central body like the YJB is crucial for youth justice. The institutions of government bureaucracy are an important part of the penal field in which policy is produced. An ‘arm’s length’ body outside the civil service allows central decision making to be directed by expertise and child-centred principles. However, the same features that make the YJB important also make it both high risk for ministers and difficult to defend.

Creating the Youth Justice Board: Policy and policy making in English and Welsh Youth Justice

Despite continuing interest in English and Welsh youth justice policy there has been little critical engagement with the nature of policy itself. Instead, analyses share a common methodological position whereby ‘policy’ is equated with policy ‘products’ (such as legislation or ministerial speeches). This article argues that to understand youth justice policy a wider view is required of what constitutes policy, and where and by whom it is made. It explores how policy is produced in the complex arena of social practice which, following the establishment of the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales (YJB), now constitutes the central operation of the system. Through the creation of the YJB the central youth justice system became essentially undefined. This not only gave YJB officials significant influence in shaping the direction of the youth justice system, but a broad and flexible arena in which to act. Moreover it enabled them to do so according to values and objectives potentially unconnected to ministerial outcomes. Drawing on an ethnographic study of the operation of the YJB, this article explores the policy-making work of YJB officials through the transformation of the role and activities of the YJB itself, comparing the initial parameters of its operation to the way it was defined in action. The article discusses the implications for understanding New Labour’s English and Welsh youth justice policy, and the nature of ‘policy’ itself.