?A Tale of Two Englands?
UKWatch.net - 28 Apr 2008
?Race? and Violent Crime in the Press EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This report explores the reporting ? and the semantic meanings transmitted through reporting ? of violent crime in relation to the ethnicity of both victim and perpetrator. The purpose of this study is to analyse the place of ?race? and ethnicity of both victim and perpetrator in reporting of violent crime, and to draw out and make explicit the implicit theories underlying and informing this reporting. By systematically examining crime articles in the national print media as well as a selection of regional media over a period of two months, this report demonstrates how notions of race still tint the lens through which criminality is both viewed and projected. The report argues that violent crime is seen as endemic within the minority ethnic ?communities?, but unrelated to the structure of British society and the experience of minority ethnic people within it. In crime reporting, wider structural factors ? such as discrimination, disadvantage and inequality ? are generally ignored as contributors to crime trends and patterns. The key argument is that a particular understanding of ?culture? has replaced overtly racist ideologies as the dominant discourse on race and crime. However, following the decline of racial determinism as a paradigm of diversity, ?culture? has re-introduced racism through the back door. ?Culture? appears to have replaced ?race? because, as a non-biological concept, it is supposedly non-racialized, and thereby non-racist. But in spite of its de-essentializing appearance, ?culture? still leaves racial understandings of diversity and difference as a profound challenge. Together with two other master tropes ? community and ethnic identity ? culture has become one of the pillars of the dominant discourse about ethnic diversity and ethnic minority groups. This discourse conceives culture as an innate quality, something people have and makes them act in certain ways under certain circumstances; culture is understood as a ?way of life? determined by birth. Culturalist explanations for behaviour have entered crime reporting of the mainstream media in force. The debate about crime in contemporary Britain, particularly violent teenage crime, habitually invokes a specific notion of ?culture? to explain the behaviour of perpetrators of violent acts. Gang, gun and knife violence is conceptualized as ?cultural? phenomena, albeit pathological sub-cultures distinct from and in contrast to the moral values of the law-abiding majority. Given the simplistic equation between ?culture?, ?ethnic identity? and ?community?, the report demonstrates the ways in which the press connects different types of criminal ?cultures? to specific ethnic communities. The connection between criminal ?cultures? and ?communities? leads to a logical fallacy. The claim that ?culture? is the source of violent crime necessarily attaches violence to certain ?communities? defined by their ethnic ?identity?. This implies that most members of those groups are violent. The effect is that entire ?communities? are criminalized on the basis of their ?cultures?. Importantly, this equation relates exclusively to ethnic minority groups, but largely excludes the white majority. ?Culture? and ?community? are seldom evoked when speaking about white Britons. White middle-class England is not thought of as a ?community? in itself, and to be English is not considered a ?cultural? trait. The purpose of this study is not to accuse the media of institutional racism ? a term that is often used without particular qualification of what it actually means ? but rather to explore the ways in which popular understandings of race and crime influence reporting in the media, and vice versa. A fair and reflexive media representation of the state and nature of crime in Britain ? including the involvement of all ethnic groups as both victims and perpetrators ? is necessary not only from a social justice point of view, but for practical reasons as well. Through this report, we hope to engage the media in a constructive dialogue on how British society thinks about the complex relationship between race and crime. Key points Although diverse views are discernable both between and within papers, there are clear differential patterns in the way in which the press reports on violent crime. These patterns are strongly informed by notions of race. In essence, England is conceived as two-fold: an England consisting of a law-abiding and morally superior Us; and an England inhabited by criminal and pathological Others. The current breakdown of law and order is conceived as spilling out from inner cities and sink estates into leafy suburbs, threatening the very pillars of Englishness. Many journalists employ a strategic lack of precision when discussing different ethnic groups. In some instances, this includes an allusive taxonomy equating criminal cultures with particular communities: Eastern European bag snatchers, Jamaican yardie crack dealers, Somali gang members and so on. At other times, however, all these different ?communities? are lumped together as standing in direct contrast to white middle-class England. This strategic lack of precision creates an impression of a ?tide? of alien and hostile elements threatening the white English identity and its values. Media theories ? both implicit and explicit are often ?common sense? theories. Anecdotal evidence is habitually treated like evident truths and conclusive proof. For example, an inconclusive and brief Metropolitan Police report on the London gang profile was employed as evidence that the majority of young refugees from ?anarchistic warlord cultures? are necessarily committing violence on the streets of Britain. An important aspect of the common sense connection between ?culture?, ?community? and crime is that it freely lends itself to a logical fallacy generic in the press; while it may be true that certain groups are responsible for a disproportionate amount of certain types of crimes, it does not logically follow that most members of those groups are involved in offending behaviour. However, this logical leap is often made. Although a ?gang? can refer to both black and white youth, it is not a race neutral term. young black criminality would more often be associated with ?gang membership?, drawing on stereotyped images of gangs in America. The archetypal ?gang member? is black; correspondingly, a murder covered in the news was more likely to be assumed to be ?gang related? if there was black youth involved than if all involved were white. It would be unfair to point the finger exclusively towards the media. The press is part of a discursive system which includes a range of social actors. However, the media does have an immense influence on the development of social and ideological perceptions and practices of not only its audience, but other elite institutions and influential social actors as well, such as politicians, corporations and civil society. Judging from senior politicians? responses to the media frenzy of 2007, crime reporting is potentially a strong force in policy development. The over-representation of young black people in the criminal justice system (CJS) is a problem of enormous severity, and the gap appears to be growing wider. Media attention to these matters may prompt a more decisivepolicy response. However, the question is how the problem, and by extension the solution, is analysed and formulated. Policies based on the assumption that black ‘culture’ is criminogenic, that black crime is qualitatively different from white crime, and that black communities are themselves to blame for their overrepresentation in the CJS are unlikely to be effective. The rest of the report can be downloaded here

The Great Consolidation
UKWatch.net - 28 Apr 2008
Everything is getting bigger and further away. Hospitals, post offices, schools and prisons are being ?rationalised? and ?consolidated?. The government says that this process improves efficiency. Instead, it outsources inefficiency: we must travel further to use public services. This is bad for the environment, bad for community life, bad for universal provision. But we haven?t seen anything yet. We are about to be confronted with the biggest shutdown of all: the government has started the process of closing England?s network of doctors? surgeries. If you know nothing of this, don?t blame yourself. The announcement was buried in an interim report published last October by a health minister(1). The report was 52 pages long, and the policy was explained in a single paragraph on pages 25 and 26. Rather than being brought before parliament, it was released four days before MPs returned from their recess. Since then there has been no further public announcement. But in December the Department of Health sent a letter to all the strategic health authorities in England, demanding that the policy be implemented immediately(2). The greatest transformation in the history of the NHS is taking place without public debate, public consent or formal consultation. The government?s policy is to consolidate doctors? surgeries into a series of giant health centres or polyclinics. Thousands of small practices will be closed and patients will be processed in buildings containing up to 50 GPs. The new clinics will also house some services currently provided by hospitals, which allows the government to claim that it is bringing healthcare ?closer to home?. The net effect will be a massive reduction in convenience. The policy was launched by Ara Darzi, a colorectal surgeon who has been raised to the peerage and made under-secretary of state for health. He wrote his interim report in three months, during which he claims to have spoken to thousands of people. But it contains no record of who they are, how they were selected or what their answers were: he reveals only that ?their views have helped shape this interim report.?(3) His final report will not be published until June, but the Department of Health has instructed England?s primary care trusts (PCTs) to advertise for bidders for the new polyclinics by May 2008(4): the first notices have already been posted in the Health Service Journal. During a parliamentary debate launched by the Conservatives last week, Alan Johnson, the secretary of state for health, claimed three times that this policy is not being imposed on primary care trusts. ?There is no national policy,? he said, ?for replacing traditional GP surgeries with health centres or, indeed, polyclinics?; ?we are not specifying polyclinics as any part of the exercise?; ?[the Tories say] we are imposing a system of polyclinics throughout the country. We are not.?(5) Three times, in other words, he misled the House. The letter sent by the Department of Health in December ordered that ?each PCT will be expected to complete procurements during 2008/09?(6). In a parliamentary answer in Febrary, the health minister Ben Bradshaw confirmed that ?every PCT in the country will be procuring a new ? health centre during 2008-09.?(7) A press release published by the Labour Party on April 15th confirmed that the new health centres would be built ?in every town and city.?(8) I hope MPs demand that Alan Johnson apologise to parliament. Lord Darzi insists that polyclinics will offer ?a more personalised service?(9). This is nonsense: in the huge new centres we are less likely to be able to see the same GP and more likely to get lost in the system. A recent paper in the British Medical Journal reveals that ?patients in small practices rate their care more highly in terms of both access and continuity? and that small practices ?achieved slightly higher levels of clinical quality than larger practices?(10). The new centres will be built not where they are most convenient for patients but ? as Darzi revealed to the Commons health committee – where the NHS happens to own land(11). If you live in a village or a distant suburb and depend on public transport ? as many elderly and sick people do – visiting the doctor could take all day. Ara Darzi is the new Dr Beeching, shutting down the branch lines of our primary health service. So why is this happening? In seeking surreptitiously to privatise healthcare, the government has a problem. Primary care is already in private hands: GPs run their own practices. But they are the wrong hands: the corporations demanding guaranteed streams of income from the taxpayer can?t play. Polyclinics are perfectly designed to let them in, while preventing doctors from competing. It?s not just that GPs can?t raise the capital; because the contracts are much bigger than ordinary practices? and involve many different services, the tendering process is expensive and fiendishly complex. The big service companies can produce the same bid for any number of clinics: they need spend their money only once. The Department of Health says that primary care trusts should use a type of contract called Alternative Provider Medical Services(12), which is designed to allow corporations to bid. This is not a public-private partnership: it is the outright privatisation of primary healthcare. Do I need to explain the implications? The US health system, which the British government seems determined to emulate, is both more expensive and less efficient than ours; those who can?t afford to pay are either excluded or treated like battery pigs(13). The independent sector treatment centres (ISTCs) ? private clinics performing routine operations for the NHS – that the government introduced in England in 2003 have been a costly disaster. Private companies receive their money whether or not they carry out the work they are contracted to do. The government refuses to release comparative figures, but the little evidence we have suggests that their costs are much higher than the public sector?s(14). The risks have been transferred back to the taxpayer and in some cases the standards of treatment are appalling. In 2006 Angus Wallace, professor of orthopaedic and accident surgery at Nottingham University, told the Guardian, ?We expect failures of hip replacements at approximately 1% a year and knees at about 1.5% a year. But we have got some of the ISTCs that are looking at 20% failure rates.?(15) Because they put profits first, companies that run these centres have generated a stack of litigation claims and a huge NHS bill for repairing the damage they have caused(16). Far from reversing its policy in the light of this evidence, the government is setting up a competition panel, to ensure that the health service never discriminates in favour of the public sector when awarding contracts(17). Did any of us ask for this? Are there crowds on the streets demanding the privatisation of the NHS? Even the Tories, for God?s sake, have come out against it: David Cameron?s speech last week placed them to the left of Labour(18). Why, after the 60-odd consecutive quarters of growth that Gordon Brown keeps boasting about, can he not maintain a public service founded in the midst of poverty and rationing? What mysterious hold on policy do the corporations possess, that they can persuade this government to wreck Labour?s finest achievement and damage its chances of re-election? www.monbiot.com References: 1. Ara Darzi, October 2007. Our NHS, Our Future. NHS Next Stage Review: Interim report. National Health Service. http://www.ournhs.nhs.uk/ 2. Ben Dyson, Commissioning and System Management Directorate, Department of Health, 21st December 2007. Letter to SHA Directors of Commissioning. 3. Ara Darzi, ibid, p3. 4. Ben Dyson, ibid, para 14. 5. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmhansrd/cm080423/debt… 6. Ben Dyson, ibid, para 5. 7. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmhansrd/cm080229/text… 8. The Labour Party, 15th April 2008. NHS on your side. http://www.labour.org.uk/nhs_on_your_side,2008-04-15 9. Ara Darzi, ibid, p30. 10. Martin Roland, 22nd March 2008. Assessing the options available to Lord Darzi. British Medical Journal, vol 336, pp625-626. doi:10.1136/bmj.39510.702234.80 11. Professor Lord Darzi of Denham KBE, 25th October 2007. Minutes of Evidence taken before the House of Commons Health Committee. Answer to Q94. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselect/cmhealth/uc11… 12. Ben Dyson, ibid, Annex A. 13. During the Commons debate last week, Richard Taylor MP cited two recent papers about the failures of the US medical system, published in the BMJ and the New England Journal of Medicine. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmhansrd/cm080423/debt… 14. Allyson M Pollock and Sylvia Godden, 23rd February 2008. Independent sector treatment centres: evidence so far. British Medical Journal, vol 336, pp421-424. doi:10.1136/bmj.39470.505556.80 15. Quoted by Sarah Boseley, 1oth March 2006. NHS forced to fix bungled private sector hip replacement operations. The Guardian. 16. See also Stewart Player and Colin Leys, April 2008. Under the knife. Red Pepper magazine. 17. Nicholas Timmins, 16th March 2008. NHS providers to win right of appeal. Financial Times. 18. David Cameron, 21st April 2008. Speech on Primary Care. http://www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=news.story.page&obj_id=143765&s…

MI5 Accused of Colluding in Torture of Terrorist Suspects
UKWatch.net - 28 Apr 2008
Officers of the Security Service, MI5, are being accused of “outsourcing” the torture of British citizens to a notorious Pakistani intelligence agency in an attempt to obtain information about terrorist plots and to secure convictions against al-Qaida suspects. A number of British terrorism suspects who have been arrested in Pakistan at the request of UK authorities say their interrogation by Security Service officers, shortly after brutal torture at the hands of agents of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), has convinced them that MI5 colluded in the mistreatment. Those men have given detailed accounts of their alleged ordeals at the hands of the ISI over the last four years. Some of them appear to have been taken to the same secret interrogation centre in Rawalpindi, where they say they were repeatedly tortured before being questioned by MI5. Tayab Ali, a London-based lawyer for two of the men, said: “I am left with no doubt that, at the very worst, the British Security Service instigates the illegal detention and torture of British citizens, and at the very best turns a blind eye to torture.” One man from Manchester says that in 2006 he was beaten, whipped, deprived of sleep and had three fingernails slowly extracted by ISI agents at the Rawalpindi centre before being interrogated by two MI5 officers. A number of his alleged associates were questioned in Manchester at the same time and two were subsequently charged. This man’s lawyers say his fingernails were missing when they were eventually allowed to see him, more than a year after he was first detained. They say they have pathology reports that prove the nails were forcibly removed. A second man, from Luton, Bedfordshire, alleges that two years earlier he was whipped, suspended by his wrists and beaten, and threatened with an electric drill, possibly at the same torture centre. His interrogation was coordinated with the questioning of several associates at Paddington Green police station, west London, and the questioning of a further suspect in Canada. MI5 does not dispute questioning him several times during his 10 months’ detention in Pakistan. At his trial, the judge accepted he had been mistreated but said he believed the claims were exaggerated. No attempt was made to extradite either man to be questioned by police officers in the UK, and they received no assistance from British consular officials. They were eventually arrested on arrival in Britain after being placed aboard aircraft and flown in without extradition hearings. The accusation that MI5 is at the very least turning a blind eye to the torture of British citizens – and may have actually colluded in their torture – is to surface in a number of forthcoming court cases, including the trial of the man who lost his fingernails, an appeal lodged by the man from Luton after he was convicted of terrorism offences, and a separate civil action being pursued on his behalf. MI5 is thought to be considering a defence based on its officers’ insistence that they had no reason to know that the ISI might have been torturing the men – a position that Pakistani lawyers and human rights activists in Pakistan and the UK say beggars belief. Even a high-ranking Scotland Yard counter-terrorism detective has conceded privately that there is little doubt that the Luton man was tortured. The Guardian is aware of claims by a number of other British citizens that they were tortured after being detained as terrorism suspects in Pakistan. The allegations being made by these men and their lawyers, which are detailed in today’s Guardian, are expected to be raised by human rights groups. Andrew Tyrie, Conservative MP for Chichester and a campaigner against the abuse of the human rights of terrorism suspects, is considering asking a series of questions about the matter in the Commons. Under the Criminal Justice Act 1988 it is an offence for British officials to instigate or consent to the inflicting of “severe pain or suffering” on any person, anywhere in the world, or even to acquiesce in such treatment. Any such offence could be punished by life imprisonment. Last week it was disclosed that eight men freed from US custody at Guantnamo Bay had issued writs against MI5 and the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, alleging they were complicit in their illegal detention and subsequent abuse. The Security Service declined to comment on the allegations, but pointed to recent reports by the all-party Intelligence and Security Committee, which said all MI5 officers receive training about possible mistreatment of detainees held by foreign intelligence agencies. The Foreign Office said it was aware of five British citizens being detained in Pakistan over the last four years for questioning about alleged terrorism offences, but would not say how many were detained before 2004. It admitted it had attempted to seek consular access to only two of these people, but declined to say how many had been seen by other British officials. The FO also declined to say how many had complained of mistreatment, saying: “We have a duty to respect the privacy of the individuals concerned.”