30 Patterns of Harm: A Structural Review of Systemic Racism within the London Metropolitan Police Service

Written By Shereen Daniels

Source: Sky News (7/11/2025)

You can access (and download) a PDF version of the 30 Patterns of Harm report here and the Structural Companion Guide here.

1. How should this work be read?

The report, 30 Patterns of Harm,  was written in three parts.

  • Part A sets the intent. It explains why the review exists, what it stands for, and the boundaries it holds.

  • Part B provides the structural diagnosis. It traces how racism operates as design within the Met, and how systems, governance, and leadership produce harm, not just fail to prevent it. [This is the section that has garnered the most media attention, but it is incomplete if people only focus here.]

  • Part C moves from diagnosis to discipline. It identifies the structural conditions that must be created if the Met is to repair and avoid what I term “institutional drift”. It asks the organisation to build the capacity to act differently, not simply to act faster.

30 Patterns of Harm and the Structural Companion Guide should be seen as a single body of work rather than two standalone documents:

  • The report diagnoses how racial harm is organised and sustained inside the Met.

  • The companion guide translates that diagnosis into a route for reform. You cannot have one without the other.

Said a different way, the report explains what must change; the guide sets out how that change must be led and sustained.

Both documents are available in audio format on all good podcasting platforms.

2. Why was this review asked for?

The Metropolitan Police commissioned me to provide expert strategic advice on its commitment to becoming an anti-racist organisation, with a specific focus on addressing anti-Black racism and improving trust and confidence within Black communities.

This followed two key moments. First, Baroness Casey’s 2023 review recommended that the Met bring in subject matter expertise on systemic racism, advice it did not act on until 2025. Second, in late 2024, the People and Culture Committee of the London Policing Board raised serious concerns about the clarity, seriousness and effectiveness of the London Race Action Plan (LRAP). Alongside this, community voices and oversight bodies were raising consistent questions about whether the Met truly understood what structural change requires. Not helped by the Met's persistent refusal to accept the term institutional racism.

It was within this broader context of lost trust and confidence that I was asked to support.

To determine whether the LRAP was fit for purpose, I had to do more than repeat examples of racism and discrimination that have already been well documented. The task was to assess how well the Met understood the structural conditions the plan was supposed to address. In other words, why racial harm remains patterned and recurring despite decades of public commitments to becoming an anti-racist organisation.

That required a structural reading of the Met itself: an examination of how the organisation recognises, downplays or absorbs racial harm through its systems, leadership practices, governance and culture.

My job was to hold up a mirror so the Met could see itself clearly.

3. How independent was this work?

Completely.

The Metropolitan Police commissioned me to carry out an independent review, but it had no role in setting the methodology, shaping the analysis, or approving the findings. The work was issued in full, without alteration, “feedback” or internal sign-off.

Independence and autonomy shaped every decision about how harm was read, what counted as evidence, and how conclusions were drawn. Many reviews of public institutions are subject to internal clearance or approval before publication, which can soften or control critique. That did not happen here.

4. What makes this review different?

Many people will read 30 Patterns of Harm and find it familiar. It isn't telling many of us anything we don't already know. The patterns described will echo what has already been said in inquiry after inquiry over the past fifty years. That familiarity is the point. That familiarity is why systemic racism cannot be excused or dismissed by the "bad apples" narrative.

Most reviews of the Met have focused on responses to high-profile racial events: individual cases, incidents or failures of conduct. This review examined how the organisation’s systems, governance and leadership thinking make those events possible, and why the same forms of harm keep returning, no matter who is in post.

Earlier reviews have named “institutional racism” or pointed to “structural causes”, but rarely explained how those structures actually work. 30 Patterns of Harm goes further. It identifies the internal institutional logics that reproduce harm, revealing how policies, decision-making, leadership practices, governance arrangements and culture combine to protect the institution from facing itself. That is a structural reading.

To do that, the review treated the Met’s own records, communications and decisions as evidence. It read the organisation itself, not the people harmed by it, as the primary site of inquiry. That shift matters. It moves moral and evidential responsibility back to where it belongs: to those who hold power and are ultimately accountable for intentional response and repair.

5. What do you mean by a “structural reading”?

A structural reading examines how an organisation produces and sustains harm through its systems, governance, culture, and ways of thinking. It focuses on how the parts fit together, not just on what any single part does.

This approach doesn’t ask who is racist. It asks what within the institution keeps producing racial harm, even when individual intentions are good. It looks for the logic behind the pattern; how procedures, habits and decisions combine to make harm a persistent and therefore predictable outcome.

A structural reading makes the familiar visible in a different way. It shows that repetition is not a coincidence or failure of reform, but a sign that racism is built into the organisation’s design. It explains why the same issues reappear, regardless of who holds power, position or responsibility.

6. Why focus on Black Londoners and Black officers, staff and volunteers?

Ah, yes, the question we cannot get away from.

Firstly, the Met police commissioned the work with this focus.

Secondly, true accountability begins with specificity.

When organisations speak in general terms about “ethnic minorities”, “diversity” or “racially minoritised” groups, everyone’s experiences are flattened and those most harmed disappear from view. That drift is not just a pattern; it is one of the main ways power protects itself. It turns structural critique into abstraction, allowing the institution to look responsive while avoiding change.

This work deliberately begins where harm is sharpest, because nearly fifty years of evidence show that this is where real structural change must start.

Anti-Blackness is the clearest indicator of organisational dysfunction. It shows where an organisation’s stated values collide with what people actually experience. That gap is where credibility erodes, where accountability weakens, and where trust is hardest to rebuild.

The same systems, leadership practices, cultures and governance arrangements that sustain racial harm against Black people also enable other forms of harm. Confronting anti-Blackness is not an act of exclusion; it is the most accurate diagnostic of how an organisation understands power, responsibility and repair.

There is a moral tension here.

Some will want to widen this work to “include everyone” or to position Black harm as one example among many. It is essential to understand what that instinct does. In this context, universalising the work does not make it fairer; it makes it safer for the institution. It allows the focus on Black communities, and on the Met’s Black officers, staff and volunteers, to dissolve into generality and yet again disappear from view. That shift is another pattern of harm.

It repeats the erasure this review was written to confront.

7. Why didn’t you include statistics or personal testimonies?

That was an ethical and structural decision. The evidence already exists in abundance. I am not saying that Black people should not be listened to. I am saying that within the Met, the way that listening operates is not about understanding. It often works to manage credibility.

Testimonies are collected and then reframed, translated or softened so they fit within the organisation’s comfort zone. In that process, they lose their truth. They are stripped of anything that might suggest the Met itself has caused or sustained harm. Listening becomes a way to question Black people’s experiences, to treat them as emotional, subjective or unreliable, while presenting the organisation’s view as fair and objective.

The same logic applies to data. Within the Met, statistics and quantitative data are often used not to clarify the scale of a problem and determine the best course of action, but to debate it. Questions about methodology, sample size or interpretation become ways to cast doubt on the evidence itself. Numbers are treated as the "holy grail" until, of course, they point to racial harm, at which point they are disputed or dismissed. Collecting more data in this context does not lead to truth; it fuels denial.

Repeatedly asking Black people to relive their trauma or collecting new data to prove what is already known allows the Met to look attentive while doing little of substance. Doing so would have offered nothing of value beyond confirming what dozens of previous reviews and inquiries have already shown. Asking people to prove what has long been evident is not accountability. It is harm.

The evidence underpinning my analysis came from the Met’s own materials, including policies, presentations, briefing papers, spreadsheets and emails, alongside its public record: transcripts of committee hearings and public meetings, press statements, media interviews and responses to high-profile racial incidents. I also attended and observed internal and public meetings, spoke with colleagues across different levels of the organisation, and met with external stakeholders connected to the Met’s work. These materials and interactions were cross-checked with previous reviews, reports and inquiries already in the public domain.

Viewed together, these sources and observations provided insight into how decisions are made, discussed and communicated in real time, and how the organisation reasons about racism and accountability through its formal and informal processes and priorities. This was a diagnostic inquiry, designed to identify causation rather than assign blame.

Ultimately, this review was not written to re-evidence what has already been proven. It was written to explain why racial harm continues to recur despite decades of inquiry and reform.

8. Why, in the report, does it not finish with a traditional list of recommendations?

The absence of traditional recommendations was intentional, but it does not mean the Met has not been told what it needs to do.

First, let me explain.

In most reviews, recommendations act as the closing gesture: gather evidence, list actions, and hand responsibility to someone else. That sequence looks constructive, but it produces the illusion of progress. It allows organisations to perform accountability without altering the systems that created the harm.

Traditional recommendations often become tools of control. They are used to manage the response rather than transform it. They shift attention to activity, new initiatives, revised policies, task forces, training programmes, while leaving the underlying logic untouched. The focus moves to doing something, not changing how the organisation thinks.

The Structural Companion Guide replaces traditional recommendations with a framework for structural discipline. It asks the Met to build the intellectual and moral capacity to act differently, not just to act quickly.

This decision was structural. It interrupts the choreography of compliance, the reflex that turns critique or scrutiny into a checklist rather than a transformative catalyst for change.

9. What is the purpose of the Companion Guide?

The Structural Companion Guide completes the work of the review. It was written to prevent the Met from reverting to familiar habits of activity and assurance.

The guide outlines a four-phase approach to structural reform. It explains how the Met must address its own culpability and the way it has protected itself over those most harmed, identify where harm is deepest, prioritise what repair requires, and build the capacity to sustain that repair over time. It prioritises thinking over creating to-do lists, depth over speed to action, and accountability over PR narratives of “the work”.

The guide also establishes a shared reference point.

It ensures that everyone connected to the Met, senior leaders, partners, oversight bodies and communities, is working from the same understanding of what structural change means. That makes selective interpretation or symbolic response much harder to sustain.

It also guards against the risk of activities or initiatives that are not anchored in what the review revealed and its reasoning. Without that anchor, even well-intentioned work can pull the organisation off course. This is not about ownership or whose idea prevails. It is about keeping the Met focused and accountable so that repair happens where harm has been most enduring and most ignored.

The guide and 30 Patterns of Harm are inseparable. The report diagnoses the problem; the guide holds the method for response. Read together, they form one system of accountability designed to stop the Met from absorbing critique without changing its structure.

10. It is understood that you issued the Met with the report and the Structural Companion Guide in July 2025. Why has it taken the Met so long to publish them?

Yes, that is true, and the honest answer is I don’t know. That would need to be a question posed to the Met itself.

The conditions identified in 30 Patterns of Harm are not new. They have been documented, challenged and lived for decades.

This work did ask the Met to slow down.

Not to delay, deflect or sit in endless cycles of reflection, but to create space for depth and intentional action. The challenge ahead is to build the leadership discipline to face what the report has revealed and act on its findings in a way that protects the public rather than the institution.

The Met cannot mark its own homework. Progress cannot be measured by statements of intent or lists of completed actions, but by verifiable, felt change in the lived experiences of Black Londoners, officers, staff, and volunteers. Until that difference can be evidenced and trusted, the work remains unfinished.

11. What are the implications for other organisations?

The Met can be criticised on many fronts, but it is one of the few institutions willing to look directly at anti-Blackness within its own structures. That willingness matters but it does not equate to a gold star.

The conditions identified in 30 Patterns of Harm are not unique to policing. They exist, in different forms, across industries, education, housing, health and justice. Others often reinforce the systems that sustain racial harm in one institution.

This work is therefore a challenge to the wider ecosystem. Structural reform cannot rest on a single organisation. Each institution must examine how its own governance, policies and cultures reproduce the same logics of harm, and take responsibility for repair within its sphere of power.

12. What would you say to Black readers who see themselves in this work?

I believe you.

I wrote this work with conviction, not distance. I refused to play devil’s advocate with Black experiences. Black people have had to defend the truth of our own pain for decades while organisations and leaders debate its existence.

This review is an act of recognition. It names what many already know and have lived. It places responsibility where it belongs, with those who hold the power to prevent harm, not those who endure it.

Belief here is not sentiment. It is an analysis. To believe Black people is to recognise what the evidence has already shown: that racial harm is not accidental, and that repair must begin where that harm has been most sustained.

Dr Shereen Daniels

Source: Channel 4 news - 7/11/2025

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