In a review into the Metropolitan police service’s secretive Gangs Matrix, the London mayor’s office has been forced to publicly acknowledge that the database disproportionately targets black males. “The representation of young black males on the matrix is disproportionate to their likelihood of criminality and victimisation,” the report, sneaked out just before Christmas, admitted.
Of the almost 4,000 names on the matrix at any given time, 78% are black and 9% are other ethnic minorities. Yet the review made no attempts to explain why this shocking disproportionality exists; nor did it seek to understand, or explain, the impact of this racist policing process on the individuals targeted, their families or the communities that they come from.
As a result of a number of leaks of the sensitive information the database holds, there have been several damning reports into its use. The Monitoring Group, Amnesty International and StopWatch have all cited the matrix as racial profiling, discriminatory and an ineffective tool. But probably the most damning verdict comes from the information commissioner’s office. It carried out a 12-month investigation into the legality of the gang matrix’s processes. It found that the Met’s use of the matrix has led to multiple and serious breaches of data protection, privacy and equality laws “with the potential to cause damage and distress to the disproportionate number of black men on the matrix”. As a result the Met is now effectively under “special measures”.
So there now appears to be a slowly growing recognition, even among the regulators, that the matrix is, and has been used as, a discriminatory tool in the Met’s so-called war on gangs.
Yet it is little understood how the matrix itself helps to fuel the violence it was set up to stop. The Met claims the matrix, informed by intelligence, helps identify and assess the most harmful gang members in each of London’s boroughs, based on violence and weapon offences.
But, those of us who have witnessed the impact of the matrix know this is far from the truth. Individuals are classified – given a computer-generated harm rating of red, amber or green, meant to reflect the risk an individual poses to others. Yet 65% of those on the matrix are rated, by the Met itself, as green, which means they are officially deemed low-risk. In fact, 40% of these individuals have no record of violence; and 27% of these same greens have no criminal record whatsoever. They populate the list simply because they are the friends or acquaintances of those on the matrix who might resort to the use of violence. The regulators agree that their inclusion on the database is unjustifiable, and now the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime has demanded that the Met reconsider their inclusion.
But what should be of most concern to black people in the capital is that the matrix has a significant and, according to the information commissioner, “intended impact on the rest of the public sector”, through the sharing of sensitive, untested information. In effect the entire public sector – including local authorities, housing associations and job centres – has become critical partners with the Met in this process, with chilling effects on the life chances, as there is little differentiation by the public servants whom the information is shared with between those of “high risk” and those who are greens.
So GM “nominals” are policed not simply by Met officers but by the state, in the most oppressive manner possible. Children get excluded from schools; young people receive benefits sanctions and miss out on offers of employment or training; families are denied housing transfers; local youth provision is removed.
In Haringey, north London, the Met engaged with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority, which has written to nearly all the borough’s 100 “gang nominals” telling them they are suspected cannabis smokers, and therefore have to either complete a “medical” (including providing a urine sample) or return their driving licence. The anger and frustration this creates among its young targets is what risks fuelling violence. Everyone knows that kids who are bullied can often become bullies themselves. And the overzealous focus on gangs by the Met has, in all probability, left fewer resources to deal with the real issues underlying the violence on the capital’s streets. So the matrix is not only an institutionally racist process, but it is also wholly ineffective.
In its review, the mayor’s office recommends that it and the Met engage with the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC). But this is not a mere bureaucratic error in failing to comply with equality obligations: this is institutionally racist policing in its purest form. The EHRC itself must now use its powers and conduct a full investigation, not only into the Met’s use of such a racist process but into police forces in Manchester, Birmingham and Nottingham, where such lists are also in use.
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