For hundreds of years civil society was “the arena of freedom”, that network of free institutions made possible by the framework of law and order. As government grew, politicians took over many of the functions of those institutions. The state became the source of benefits, redistributing wealth and “crowding out” the institutions of civil society.
The Macpherson Report (1999) produced no evidence at all of racist policies in the Metropolitan Police. The report did not even produce evidence of any racist “bad apples” among the officers who were involved in the investigation into the murder of Stephen Lawrence. See also the accompanying Institutional Racism and the Police.
The Macpherson Report (1999) was a watershed in British race relations and led to the adoption of policies by the Metropolitan Police and Home Office. Macpherson’s claim that the Metropolitan Police were guilty of “institutional racism” provoked considerable controversy at the time of publication and continues to be strongly disputed.
This book brings together police officers from both sides of the Atlantic to describe their efforts to deal effectively with rising crime. New York achieved a significant reduction in its crime rate following the introduction of “zero-tolerance” policing under the leadership of William Bratton, while at about the same time, a similar experiment was being… [Read More]
In 1989, the American sociologist Charles Murray visited Britain in search of the ‘underclass’. Murray described himself at the time as a ‘visitor from a plague area come to see whether the disease is spreading’. According to him, it was. “When I use the term “underclass”, he wrote, “I am focusing on a certain type… [Read More]