Police get new guidance on releasing suspects' ethnicity

[SecretIrnBruDrinker]

If anyone heard a massive bang, it was my irony meter exploding.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5ypgg28nvpo

Welcoming the new guidance, a Home Office spokesperson said: "Public trust requires transparency and consistency from the authorities that serve them."

It is hoped the change will reduce the risk to public safety where there are high levels of misinformation about an incident or in cases of significant public interest.

But let's not worry about correctly quoting the sex of a man charged with rape, that doesn't require transparency or consistency and isn't misinformation and of public interest.

So, wait, do the police have to release the ethnicity that the suspect declares, or the ethnicity that they believe the suspect has? What if the suspect is a 2nd gen immigrant born in the UK to British parents? Would it make any difference if this 2nd gen British citizen had Bosnian Muslim grandparents or Pakistani Muslim grandparents? Are they considering skin colour or religion?

Ethnicity is far harder to pin down than sex.

JellySaurus Well it's the police, I suspect it'll be all self identification.

I'm flabbergasted they want to do this to appease Reform voters, but not when women have argued for not recording men's crimes as women's crimes.

So, wait, do the police have to release the ethnicity that the suspect declares, or the ethnicity that they believe the suspect has?

The whole identify edifice has been built around a distorted (or perverted) view that it's OK to call people <insert your epithets as appropriate> if they call themselves that to start with. This was the total bollocks I hit when i started Uni, and was bothered by the student union for my "ethnicity". "What if I say I'm black ?" I asked. "Who checks ?"

I was told that the system was very much based around how I felt (the word "identity wasn't around then).

I've come to believe it was the white patriarchy that dreamt up the "identity" bollocks as a means to ensure that minorities isolated themselves from the mainstream leaving the privileged hands as white and clean as ever.

They responded quickly. Where’s the equivalent group considering the Sullivan report? Are they the slow readers or something?

@JellySaurus They don't have to release the information at all. They are not going to release it for every suspect. It's only going to happen in high profile cases where releasing the information is going to reduce the risk of public disorder.

@SecretIrnBruDrinker If there had been riots as a result of a man being labelled a woman then something would probably happen. They are only doing this to try to reduce public disorder.

“They don't have to release the information at all. They are not going to release it for every suspect. It's only going to happen in high profile cases where releasing the information is going to reduce the risk of public disorder.”

Which, of course, won’t do anything much at all because the suspicion will be that they’ll only release the info when the suspect is Caucasian.

I haven't thought through the implications of this, and suspect that even if reported by the newspaper each time they write a story, most readers wont register "White" but will somehow remember anyone who isn't. So rather than showing it is just as likely, if not more so that the person concerned is white it will have no impact.

And as said up thread. What system of ethnic identity are they using.

And if say it was about an asylum seeker, they would have no knowledge of our identificat system.

UK Government list of "ethnic groups" https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/style-guide/ethnic-groups/

Also doesn't help identify, which is what Reform and Tories want is whether they are an asylum seeker. Many of whom have the identity of residents of the UK.

These knee jerk policies are just a response to the loudest voices, and never based on what might actually be useful.

Probably. They are only going to do this when people are threatening to cause a riot.

It will have to be like human rights. Either we all have them. Or none of us have them.

In this case they will have to release (their determination) of ethnicity for every suspect. Otherwise the ones they don't mention will have one assigned to them by the mob and riot anyway.