Action for Race Equality welcomes the news that the Metropolitan Police Service has scrapped it’s Gangs Violence Matrix following years of campaigns against the racist nature of the tool.
The Violence Harm Assessment (VHA), an already existing mechanism within the Met that has been partially adapted, will replace the Gangs Violence Matrix.
The VHA is a tool used to identify and risk assess individuals, who are involved, or likely to be involved, in violence in London. It uses a number of separate data sources to create a comprehensive list of individuals considered the ‘most violent’.
Jeremy Crook OBE, Action for Race Equality’s Chief Executive, said:
The Matrix was a racist tool that came to symbolise an institutional culture that sustained racist policy and practices for Black Londoners.
We commend all the campaigners and young people who called for the Matrix to be scrapped. The Commissioner has made the right decision, but he needs to make sure the new database only includes those who meet the criteria. Individuals who don’t must be removed immediately.
ARE hopes the Commissioner will now reconsider his decision not to accept Baroness Casey’s judgment that the Met is Institutionally racist and use the same language.”
The Matrix was created in 2012 as part of the government’s ‘war on gangs’ – a political response following a summer of riots in 2011. These spread through parts of England after Mark Duggan, a young mixed race man, was killed by a Met Police officer in Tottenham, London.
Despite researchers finding no evidence to show that gangs or gang activity caused the riots, links between gangs, race and youth violence have become hard to shake off. Crucially, there were concerns about the Matrix racially profiling young people from ethnic minority backgrounds, especially young Black men.
Action for Race Equality was one of many organisations that campaigned for the Gangs Violence Matrix to be scrapped. In our #ScrapTheMatrix campaign video, we called for a number of actions, including for current and future intelligence gathering bodies learn from the lessons of the GVM and have transparent best practice guidelines that guarantee racial equality in data collection.
The Met has said it will only retain data from the GVM for a period of three months before it will be permanently destroyed in May 2024 to allow time to process any Right of Access Requests.
While scrapping the GVM is a step in the right direction, there is a concern that racial discrimination may continue to be embedded within the VHA.
The Equality Impact assessment on the VHA shows that 65% of individuals on the VHA are from an ethnic minority background, 69% are under the age of 25, and men represent a higher proportion of individuals on the VHA.
In order to review and monitor for disproportionality, the MPS has committed to publishing ‘a high level breakdown of the characteristics of individuals on the VHA’ on quarterly basis. Disproportionality on the VHA will be reviewed at the Disproportionality Board, which is chaired by the Deputy Mayor for Policing & Crime and the Deputy Mayor for Communities & Social.
The Met must be careful not to repeat the mistake it made with the Gangs Violence Matrix. We look forward to continuing to work with the MPS and MOPAC to ensure the racial discrimination caused by the existence of the GVM will end now that it has been closed down.
Author: Meka Beresford, ARE Head of Policy
