Imagine you are watching the news on TV and up pops someone saying, “Youknow, the big problem with our criminal justice system is that it takes solong and costs so much to deal with many crimes. We need to speed uppunishment for minor crimes so that people get punished and fined quicklyand everyone can move on and spend more time on more serious crimes.” Itwould sound quite sensible wouldn’t it? Who wouldn’t be in favour ofspeeding up the processing of minor crimes so more resources can go intotackling more serious ones?

That is pretty much the justification for a raft of new police powers thatLabour is bringing in which will allow the police to stop and punish peopleon the spot. This will undoubtedly speed things up as it omits due legal process first. In practice – this means hitting the poor harder than the rich (the same level of fine means something very different to someone in work and who can afford the fine to what it means to someone on benefits) and inevitably it thus risks increasing racism in our society.

The link with racism is simple – the evidence shows that where the policehave discretion over how to enforce rules they are frequently enforced in aracist manner. The police have made great efforts to deal with racism and,during my five years on the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA), I wasimpressed by the very clear and personal commitment of many officers of allranks to tackle racism. But it has not been banished.

As a result we still see things such as the racist outcome of stop and searchpolicies. Figures for 2003-4 show that black people were subjected to 14.7%of all police stop and searches, 8.8% of arrests and 6.7% of cautions,despite accounting for only 2.8% of the population. Asian people faredlittle better – making up only 4.7% of the population but 7.3% of all stopand searches.

Is this all explained by blacks and Asians being more suspicious orcriminal? No – on the MPA I repeatedly pressed the police to producedevidence that justified the disproportionate number of ethnic minoritiesstopped and searched. And evidence came there none. Racism, whether it isindividual or institutional, is still there.

We see it too with the police’s National DNA Database. One third of theblack and minority ethnic population of England and Wales is already on theNational DNA Database – a number far out of proportion to their share ofthe overall population.

Of course, the racists of the BNP just mutter, “oh well, blacks cause lotsof crime so it’s no wonder there are so many of them in the database”. Thisdoes not stand up to examination; what the figures show clearly are thatthe police are disproportionately arresting black and ethnic minorities.They also show that disproportionately more innocent DNA is from black andethnic minorities than from other communities – i.e. they are arresting notonly disproportionately but wrongly. For example, in London, 57% of allinnocent DNA is from black people. I have asked Sir Ian Blair, Met PoliceCommissioner, to investigate the cause of such worrying statistics and thisinvestigation is currently being undertaken.

Labour’s plans would mean that the police stop and levy on the spot crimesand cautions more often – with the only alternative for the person stoppedbeing to go to court instead, an often long-winded and expensive processthat can result in a criminal record. The pressure will be on to cop a pleaand pay up. But poorer people will suffer more (as the fineswill be harder for them to pay) and if ethnic minorities are beingdisproportionately stopped – then they will be disproportionately cautionedand fined or -even worse – taken to court – with all the knock on effectsthat has of reinforcing existing inequalities.

Things like due process, and involving lawyers, juries and judges, don’tmake the most exciting of rallying cries. But cutting them out of the legalsystem too often will mean the quality of justice, the cause of racialequality – and in the end communal harmony – may well all suffer.