Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan police commissioner, accepts the findings of the Casey report that there are systemic failings in the force. Yet he would not use the term “institutional” because he finds it “a very ambiguous term”. He admits that “we’ve got systemic failings, management failings, cultural failings” (Met police found to be institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic, 21 March).
He should ponder the arguments of the great anthropologist Prof Mary Douglas in her 1986 book How Institutions Think. Douglas explained that to those within an institution, it seems as natural and as invisible as the air they breathe. Special effort is needed to see by those who daily, through their efforts, generate and sustain an institution, or challenge one.
What Sir Mark calls “cultural” issues are not just the effects of ideas and beliefs or “values”. Institutions are informal matters of social relations, among officers and perhaps their wider social circles too. Change is not achieved by changing ideas or just by changing formal rules and roles or asserting authority or applying penalties, but by changing organisational ties, bonds, arrangements and practices at the informal level. Indeed, Sir Mark’s force has a systemic problem, and it is on the deeper informal system itself that he should focus his reforming attention (and we wish him much success). But he won’t address it effectively until he takes institutions seriously.
Paul Richards
Professor emeritus, University College London
Perri 6
Professor in public management, Queen Mary University of London
• I am a recently retired female officer who served with the Metropolitan police for 35 years. I am not shocked by Louise Casey’s report – I knew that the culture in the Met would be exposed one day. I’m just so sorry that it’s taken some truly horrifying events to make the Met finally take a look at itself. For the last 20 years of my service, I was burnt out from experiencing pretty much everything documented in her review. I only stayed because I loved my job and I was not going to be bullied out of it because I didn’t fit in with the Met’s toxic culture.
My retirement has not seen the end of the distress that the Met causes me. Lady Casey’s report is spot-on, but the arrogance of the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), the College of Policing and the senior management team in the Met is beyond belief. These people are speaking about the changes they are going to make now. They are, in the main, the very leaders who took the Met and policing to the point it is at today. I have not heard one apology about the incompetence and lack of integrity of the leaders in policing. Most of the NPCC leads have held their portfolios for years. The College of Policing has had more than enough time to write guidance and policy that is fit for purpose. They have all ignored numerous recommendations in relation to integrity from His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services over the years. Why should I or any other member of the public listen to any of them? I think they are a disgrace, and they must bear the brunt of the responsibility for the situation that policing finds itself in.
Name and address supplied
• While appalled at the horrors found in the Metropolitan police, I am upset by the terms used to condemn the entire force. The blanket headlines ignore the existence of good officers such as four generations of my family have produced – and others who must surely make up a large proportion of those in service.
Carol Stewart
Bridge, Kent
• Criticism from Sue Fish, a former chief constable, of Sir Mark Rowley’s refusal to accept the Casey review’s finding that the organisation is institutionally racist, misogynist, homophobic and corrupt must sting (How can the Met police change its rotten culture if its leaders refuse to see it?, 21 March). But it is worth recalling that the report by Lord Scarman in 1981 explicitly stated that institutional racism did not exist in Britain. In doing so, he may well have allowed the culture that led to the Met’s failure to investigate the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence 12 years later to persist – a culture that Casey documents in such unsparing detail over four decades on.
Bill Dixon
Professor of criminology, University of Nottingham
• How depressing to read yet another review that clearly exposes the depth of the Metropolitan police’s problems. Mark Rowley says he accepts Louise Casey’s findings about racism, misogyny and homophobia in the Met and that they are systemic. If he accepts that they are systemic then it follows that the charge of it being institutional, as shown by Casey’s findings, is correct. Why does the senior leadership in the largest police force in England consistently reject the idea that these problems are systemic and therefore institutional – and have been for decades?
As someone very involved in the criminal justice system and anti-discrimination policies and practices in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s as a probation officer and later as a lecturer in social work, I welcomed the Macpherson report following the death of Stephen Lawrence. I can’t believe we are still facing the same stumbling blocks from the Met’s leader around accepting the responsibility that the organisation is permeated with racism, misogyny and homophobia.
Tara Mistry
Bristol
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