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.
