An understanding of implicit race bias can help us to better understand the workings of institutional racism, and in particular the idea of unwitting prejudice. And it can move towards more complete understandings of how to remedy these problems. In the context of institutional racism within UK policing practice, recent sociological research has noted that there seems not to be a good understanding, within the police force, of the mechanisms by which institutional racism is perpetuated. This research, conducted by Simon Holdoway and Megan O’Neill, and by Anna Souhami, has found that the main strategies adopted to combat institutional racism have been to challenge ‘canteen culture’and the use of explicitly racist language; and to take steps to diversify the police force. Of course, there are good reasons for doing both of those things, but if implicit bias is part of the problem, it isn’t clear that either of these steps will help to tackle that. Implicit bias can persist in individuals who reject any explicitly racist sentiments; and can be found in black and minority ethnicity individuals as well as whites. Implicit racial bias isn’t just a matter of ‘a few bad apples’ but rather a matter of widespread automatic and implicit associations that can affect the way even fair minded policies are implemented. Consider the biases mentioned above: if these are operating in the police, then we can see how that would affect the implementation of what looks like non-discriminatory policy, even if implemented by explicitly anti-racist individuals. A constraint, that requires officers to have ‘reasonable grounds’ for suspecting possession of a weapon in order to stop and search, may well be disparately deployed if it is the case that individuals in general are more likely to perceive an ambiguous object in the hands of a black male (rather than a white male) as a weapon. If implicit biases affect judgements about the level of hostility demonstrated, with greater hostility perceived in the behaviour of black males than white males (on the basis of the same behavioural indicators), then determinations of when (and what)‘reasonable force’is required may well be different depending on the race of the individual.

We can see how the operation of implicit biases could perpetuate discrimination through covertly influencing who is deemed suspicious, who is stopped and searched, who is deemed a threat, what determinations of ‘reasonable force’are made, who is judged to be armed and dangerous, and who gets shot. If biases are affecting practice such that these sorts of burdens are being imposed on black citizens, then, as a matter of urgency, there should be investigation into how policing practice should be reformed to try to prevent racial bias infecting conduct. Are such biases influencing policing? That wouldn’t be at all surprising, given what we know about the pervasive nature of implicit racial bias. And if implicit bias were operating, this would be consistent with− and could be part of the explanation for− the findings of the institutionally racist nature of policing in the UK. There is a broader context, in which policing practice occurs, of course. That is a context in which