Should police reveal a suspect’s racial identity and immigration status in serious crimes?
- Written by Tamar Hopkins, Honorary fellow, School of Social and Political Sciences, The University of Melbourne
British prosecutors have charged a 32-year-old British national[1] with 10 counts of attempted murder in the mass stabbing attack that occurred on a train travelling from Doncaster to London on Saturday night. Another man was arrested but later released.
The attack has spurred a vigorous debate[2] in the United Kingdom about whether police should reveal the racial identity and immigration status of suspects who have been arrested in high-profile cases. The race and nationality of both men were publicly divulged after their arrests.
UK police recently amended their guidelines[3] to permit police to reveal the race and nationality of suspects in high-profile cases. The reason was to combat misinformation spread by far-right groups, who have blamed immigrants for crimes allegedly committed by white British nationals.
In one high-profile case, riots broke out last year in England and Northern Ireland after misinformation spread on social media[4] that an illegal migrant was responsible for the murders of three girls.
What are some of the issues to consider when revealing the race and nationality of people who have been arrested?
The danger of implicit bias
There is a right-wing media environment in both the UK and Australia that thrives on spreading anti-immigration and anti-First Nations rhetoric, particularly in relation to crime[5].
As a consequence of these widely circulating stereotypes, many people will make an instinctive assumption when a criminal act is committed that the perpetrator comes from a particular racial, ethnic or immigrant background. This is called implicit bias[6].
An Australian study[7] in 2020 revealed, for example, that 75% of Australians hold negative implicit biases towards Indigenous people.
These harmful biases create dangers for racialised communities, such as hate-based attacks[8] and increased racial profiling by police.
Sharing details of race and national identity
In this context, it makes sense to release the racial details of suspects in high-profile cases when this information can counteract race-crime stereotypes.
For example, if an arrested suspect is a white citizen, then releasing these details will undercut any attempt by far-right movements to blame immigrants, asylum seekers or First Nations people and inflame implicit biases.
In high-profile cases involving racialised suspects, however, the best strategy may be to wait to release any details about race and nationality until defence counsel has described their client to a magistrate.
For example, if a suspect is from a racialised background, other details can help mitigate the spread of misinformation or the deepening of implicit biases. These could include the fact the suspect is not part of an organised criminal gang or does not hold particular ideologies.
Releasing details of suspects who have not yet been arrested is a different question. Stating that a suspect at large is white is unlikely to have consequences for white Australians. However, stating that a suspect is of African, Aboriginal or Lebanese descent can cause entire communities to fall under a shadow of suspicion.
Consequently, releasing the race and nationality of unidentified suspects is not a safe practice and can only be justified when accompanied by other highly detailed time-sensitive descriptions. These include height, age, gender, weight, facial hair, hair length, tattoos, clothing colour, backpack colour and where they were last seen (within a one-hour window).
Otherwise, all male or female members of an ethnic community could be interrogated for “fitting the description” – as they routinely are.
Very few Australian states and territories have released guidelines on the release of ethnic appearance data in high-profile cases.
New South Wales police prohibits[9] the public release of a suspect’s ethnicity after their arrest, but permits it in the pre-arrest phase, when combined with a physical description. Victoria police permits the release of the perceived ethnicity of wanted suspects as a last resort.
These policies should be revisited to prevent racial profiling and the inflaming of racial biases in right-wing media coverage of crime.
What can be done to combat the problem?
Unfortunately, while it is important to address misinformation from circulating in the public, the police themselves are not beyond racial bias.
I founded the Racial Profiling Data Monitoring Project[10], which seeks to monitor the Victorian police’s compliance with its 2015 ban on racial profiling.
Victoria police data to be released later this month by the monitoring project reveal that in 2024, police were 15 times more likely to search Aboriginal people than white people and 8.6 times more likely to search people they perceive to be African than people perceived to be white.
These data suggest police are consistently more suspicious of certain racialised groups. It also supports the findings of other studies[11] on racial profiling.
The release of aggregate data like these is critical to understanding systemic bias. This ought to be a priority for police oversight bodies, not just independent monitoring groups.
While reducing the spread of race-crime rhetoric and bias in the media is an important step in combating racial profiling by police, more is required.
One important step is to reduce the level of discretion police have in determining whom to stop, question and search. Unfortunately, legislation in Victoria is gradually expanding[12] the ability of police to search people without reasonable grounds.
Police in every state and territory should also create or amend their policies to take implicit bias into account when deciding how and when to release information related to the race and nationality of suspects. More caution should be applied in cases involving First Nations people and non-white immigrants.
References
- ^ charged a 32-year-old British national (www.bbc.com)
- ^ vigorous debate (www.theguardian.com)
- ^ amended their guidelines (www.bbc.com)
- ^ misinformation spread on social media (www.bbc.com)
- ^ particularly in relation to crime (www.heraldsun.com.au)
- ^ implicit bias (perception.org)
- ^ study (www.researchgate.net)
- ^ hate-based attacks (www.theguardian.com)
- ^ prohibits (www.police.nsw.gov.au)
- ^ Racial Profiling Data Monitoring Project (www.racialprofilingresearch.org)
- ^ other studies (www.tandfonline.com)
- ^ gradually expanding (static1.squarespace.com)
Authors: Tamar Hopkins, Honorary fellow, School of Social and Political Sciences, The University of Melbourne
