Scarman Report

Lord Scarman's report on the Brixton disorders, published on November 25, 1981, argued that the violence grew out of social and economic disadvantage and called racial disadvantage a significant cause. It also rejected the idea that institutional racism existed in Britain, a conclusion the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry would overturn eighteen years later. Its most practical legacy sits in police custody suites. Scarman wanted members of the public to be able to inspect how people were held, and the lay visiting schemes that followed became independent custody visiting, later made a statutory duty by the Police Reform Act. Read it alongside Macpherson to see how official thinking on policing and race moved.