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On the fifth anniversary of the Keith Report into the murder of Zahid Mubarek in a young offenders' institution, Lord Ramsbotham asks how many recommendations have not been implemented and why.
Every so often there is an event about which everyone in authority should feel ashamed. One such was the murder of 19 year-old Zahid Mubarek, in March 2000, by a known racist psychopath with whom he had been paired in a cell at HM Young Offender Institution (HMYOI) Feltham.
For the next three-and-a-half years, the family, and others, campaigned for a judicial review and/or a public inquiry, because it was so abundantly clear that the murder should never have been allowed to be committed. But both Jack Straw and David Blunkett, the home secretaries at the time, refused to allow them, and it was only following the unprecedented direction of the lord chief justice, Lord Bingham, and his fellow law lords in the House of Lords, in October 2003, that, in April 2004, the Home Office was forced to announce the establishment of a formal, public inquiry, under Mr Justice Keith.
He published his report on 29 June 2006, and it makes shameful reading. Official prevarication over the holding of an inquiry is castigated; more than 20 members of the staff at Feltham are named, because their actions, or inactions, in one way or another contributed to the murder; 84 recommendations for improvements in procedure, and particularly in the treatment of those from ethnic minorities, were made. Following its publication, regular meetings between the Home Office and the Mubarek family were planned, so that they could be updated on progress. The family itself set up a Mubarek Foundation, to help make improvements, including the establishment of a help line in Feltham.
But, as the years have gone by, the impetus appears to have died. The updating meetings with the family have ceased, without them being awarded any compensation for the avoidable death of their son, while in the hands of the state – in sharp contrast to the hundreds of thousands of pounds awarded to the parents of Stephen Lawrence, murdered at a public bus stop.
My question, on the fifth anniversary of the publication of the Keith Report, is designed to establish how many recommendations remain unactioned and why. In its shame at the public exposure of so many avoidable failings, I would have expected the criminal justice system to have ensured that they had been completed years ago. I regret my lack of confidence.
David John Ramsbotham was raised to the peerage as Baron Ramsbotham, of Kensington in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in 2005. A former British Army officer, he served as Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons from 1995 to 2001.
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