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News Archives: Index

October 7, 2010: Probation Set For Industrial Action

October 5, 2010: Turning Prisoners Into Taxpayers

October 4, 2010: Murder Changes Now In Force

September 20, 2010: Probation Programmes Face Cuts

August 24, 2010: Victorian Poor Law Records Online

August 10, 2010: Justice Job Cuts

July 28, 2010: Prison Violence Growing

July 22, 2010: Police Numbers: Latest Figures

July 22, 2010: New Jurisdiction Rules

July 16, 2010: CCJS On Prison And Probation Spending Under Labour

July 15, 2010: Latest Statistics On Violent And Sexual Crime

July 15, 2010: Latest National Crime Figures

July 15, 2010: New Chief Prisons Inspector

July 14, 2010: Hard Times Ahead For Prisons: Anne Owers

July 14, 2010: Prison Does Not Work: Ken Clarke

July 13, 2010: Criminal Justice Reform: Sentencing and Rehabilitation

July 13, 2010: Criminal Justice Reform Priorities

July 12, 2010: What Price Public Protection, Asks Probation Chief Inspector

July 12, 2010: NOMS has failed, says Napo

July 10, 2010: IPCC To Investigate Death of Raoul Moat

July 9, 2010: Women In Prison: New Report

July 9, 2009: Unjust Deserts: Imprisonment for Public Protection

July 8, 2010: Police Search Powers Change

July 7, 2010: Make 'Legal High' Illegal, Says ACMD

July 2, 2010: Failing Children In Prison

July 2, 2010: Police Buried Under a Blizzard of Guidance: HMIC

July 1, 2010: Freedom To Change The Law?

June 30, 2010: A New Outlook On Penal Reform?

June 30, 2010: Revolving Door Of Offending Must Stop, Says Clarke

June 30, 2010: Ken Clarke: Speech on Criminal Justice Reform

June 29, 2010: No More Police Targets

June 26, 2010: Family Intervention Projects Questioned

June 25, 2010: Cutting Criminal Justice

June 24, 2010: Napo on Sex Offenders Report

June 23, 2010: Closing Courts: The Cuts Begin

June 23, 2010: Strategy To Tackle Gangs

June 15, 2010: Courts and Mentally Disordered Offenders

June 8, 2010: Working With Muslims in Prison

June 1, 2010: Your Chance To Nominate a QC

May 5, 2004: No fresh charges over racist murder

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) have announced there is insufficient evidence to bring fresh charges over the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993. This follows a 5 year long reinvestigation by the Metropolitan police. Three white men - Neil Acourt, Luke Knight and Gary Dobson - were acquitted of Mr Lawrence’s murder in 1996. Though a 1997 inquest concluded that he was "unlawfully killed in a completely unprovoked racist attack by five white youths", no one has been convicted of the murder (though Met Police commissioner Sir John Stevens once went on record stating that he knew the killers’ identities).

In its advice to the police the CPS stated that while the reinvestigation produced an eye witness who had not previously come forward, their evidence did not provide reliable identification. There was no credible forensic evidence placing specific individuals at the murder scene. A number of accounts of alleged confessions were also investigated but almost all proved to be second hand hearsay and unverifiable and therefore not admissible. None were sufficient to support a prosecution.

The Macpherson Report into Stephen Lawrence’s murder explicitly stated that the Metropolitan Police were "institutionally racist" and that this was reflected in their investigation. The Report  illuminates the dynamics of race within the criminal justice system and arguably represented a key point in the development of UK criminal justice.

According to Macpherson, institutional racism pertains where there has been a "collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture or ethnic origin. It can be seen or detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racist stereotyping which disadvantage minority ethnic people.