Home Office written question – answered at on 3 November 2017.
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department has taken to increase BAME representation in the police since May 2016.
Police forces that reflect the communities they serve are crucial to cutting crime in a modern diverse society. The police have made real improvements in diversity - there are a greater proportion of women and black and minority ethnic (BME) officers than ever before. However, the Government has been clear that there is more for forces to do.
This Government’s reforms will allow for faster progress on equality and diversity; Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) and the College of Policing will play a key role in this.
Central to our reforms was the establishment of the College of Policing as the professional body for policing, which is charged to set standards for policing.
The College has delivered a major programme of work to address the recruitment, retention and progression of officers from BME and other under-represented groups in policing including sharing what works and publishing advice on the use of lawful positive action.
In addition in August 2016 the College published a review of police initial recruitment containing recommendations designed to address the disproportionality seen in some forces in the outcomes of candidates from BME backgrounds.
Through the use of data visualisations and force by force profiles on police.uk we are making it easier for the public to access the data they need to hold their force and PCC to account on how representative their force is compared to the local population. In July 2016 these diversity profiles were expanded to include the diversity of police staff, special constables and police community support officers, and also the ethnic and gender diversity of police officers by police rank.
Following the publication of the Government’s Race Disparity Audit on 10 October the Home Secretary wrote to all Police and Crime Commissioners urging them to examine and address the findings, including those on police workforce diversity.
Innovative schemes such as Direct Entry, Fast Track and Police Now are making the police workforce more diverse than ever before; showing that we can attract the brightest and best into policing, whilst introducing new perspectives into policing some of the country’s most challenging neighbourhoods.
Police Now is a flagship police gradate recruitment scheme which started in the Metropolitan Police. With the support of Home Office funding has become an independent organisation, expanding to 19 forces in 2017.
Decisions on when and how to recruit individuals are for the chief officer of a police force. It is important that they use equalities legislation, including positive action provisions, to make better progress in terms of recruitment of under-represented groups.
While the Government can set expectations around increasing police diversity we are clear that it is local police leaders working with the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council who are best placed to make this a reality. This includes Police and Crime Commissioners holding police chiefs to account and taking an active role in ensuring their force is representation of the communities it serves.
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