Black and Asian police officers and support staff: prejudice, identity, agency and social cohesion

This primary research paper presents a review of research that finds that the British Government’s new social cohesion agenda does hold promise for racial and ethnic prejudice reduction – but that social cohesion policies and practice must include at their core policies to reduce institutional racism in British police services. Analysis of the literature reveals that considerably more research is required to examine the precise nature and dynamics of institutional racism within the police services. There is a need to understand how racism against Black and minority ethnic (BME) police employees, and police racism against BME communities, influences social cohesion. That this is important, given the British government’s current social cohesion policy agenda, is patently clear. Considerably more research is about to be undertaken in this area by the authors of this paper and the results will be published in the academic press, disseminated at conferences and presented in training programmes