Likewise in the West Midlands, the figure is almost one in 200. A similar exercise for Scotland would have been useful, but the wheels move disgracefully slowly there. Ten days ago the Scottish Executive Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Steering Group, set up to tackle problems of racism in Scottish society, issued its second report. It announced that police in Scotland still need to develop 'performance indicators for tackling racism'. It also proposed that all officers be given 'credit cards' with Macpherson's definition of a race crime on it as an aide memoir .
Questions also hang over the figures for England and Wales.
There is little doubt that the statistics represent not a sudden leap in the volume of racist incidents but a sudden leap in their reporting. We must ask, though, whether that willingness to report is consistent across the country. The answer is definitely not. At the same time as the figures on race and the criminal justice system were released, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary issued its third report on the way the 43 constabularies deal with race issues. The Metropolitan and West Midlands police, which reported those comparatively low race crime figures, did receive praise from the Inspectorate for the systems they have put in place to deal with the issue.