We share the concerns of the Runnymede Trust and the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants that the proposal to allow police to reveal the ethnicity and migration status of crime suspects has scant regard for community safety (Campaigners criticise UK plans to reveal suspects’ ethnicity and migration status, 10 August).
After another summer of far-right discontent, the Institute of Race Relations, which monitors national developments, is concerned about the focus in some communities on vigilante justice, often justified in terms of hunting down paedophiles.
The danger is that local punishment squads could deal out their own form of summary justice against anyone perceived to be an asylum seeker or a foreign criminal, with the colour of their skin marking them out for retribution.
Liz Fekete
Director, Institute of Race Relations
• It is not surprising that the police have been given new official guidance to issue information about the ethnicity of suspects (New guidance for UK police on releasing suspects’ ethnicity and migration status, 13 August). It is astonishing, however, that the debate continues without any acknowledgment that the very attempt to classify people by racial origin is a founding principle of the worst governments of the past century.
Urged to self-classify, as we are in many official forms for seemingly good reasons, no one seems prepared to say simply that the very attempt to classify people by “racial origin” is in itself an abhorrent first step on the road to apartheid, “remigration” and worse.
John Stubbs
Bridport, Dorset
• The nonsensical notion of “transparency” has raised its ideologically loaded head again in the latest front to be opened up in the culture wars (Routinely disclosing the ethnicity of police suspects is a very dangerous step to take, 13 August).
If “transparency” is really the most important motivating factor here rather, than, say, appeasement of unpleasant far‑right views, surely the annual earnings of the accused, or their highest level of educational attainment, would be more significant in helping to portray a profile of those who are accused or suspected of criminal activity.
Eddie Duggan
Ipswich, Suffolk
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