The police's decision to reveal the ethnicity and nationality of suspects in high-profile crimes has had a "devastating effect" and is helping to spread prejudice, racial justice campaigners say.
The warning comes from the Runnymede Trust and 50 other groups demanding that the policy in England and Wales is scrapped, in a letter sent to the home secretary and police chiefs on Friday.
Their research shows that the policy introduced in August led to the term "asylum seeker" appearing in articles on serious crime five times more than before the policy change.
The groups say the public is being given a harmful impression that falsely links criminality with ethnicity or migration status. That in turn is helping to further tear at society's fabric by feeding prejudice.
The letter says: "This guidance, which encourages police forces to disclose the ethnicity and nationality of suspects charged in high-profile cases, is having a devastating impact on our country, harming our communities ...
"The guidance was offered as an attempt to dispel misinformation ... In practice it has had the opposite effect, becoming a catalyst for crime reporting reminiscent of the 1970s and 1980s - reviving a focus on race and migration status."
The policy change was decided in August by the College of Policing, which sets standards in policing, and the National Police Chiefs' Council.
Far-right social media accounts had falsely claimed that the Southport attack in 2024 was committed by an asylum seeker, leading police to say the attacker was a British national. That fuelled largely far-right accusations of two-tier policing, namely that police were only releasing ethnicity and race details when suspects were not asylum seekers.
The letter says: "Increasingly, a suspect's ethnicity or country of origin appears to be treated as more important than the crime itself, or the experiences of victims, fostering a dangerous and misleading conflation between race, migration and criminality."
The call for the policy to be scrapped is supported by Amnesty International UK, the Immigration Law Practitioners' Association, the chair of the Independent Scrutiny & Oversight Board for police, the National Police Race Action Plan, the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, Jewish Women's Aid, Liberty, the Muslim Council of Britain and Inquest.
The research underpinning the concern of the groups compared use of terms such as asylum seeker in 2023, before the policy change, and then in 2025, after the change.
"Our snapshot analysis ... shows an increase in the use of descriptors such as certain foreign nationality, asylum status and ethnicity in crime reporting. For example, the term 'asylum seeker' in articles on serious crime increased by five times," the letter says.
"These findings indicate a pattern in which the ethnicity and migration status of people charged - or more broadly accused of unlawful behaviour - is increasingly communicated in ways that represent people of colour as inherently criminal.
"This is extremely dangerous and may be seen to encourage the public to perceive ethnicity and migration status as significant factors in the commission of crime. There is ... no credible academic evidence to support this perception. As a result, the public is being presented with a false and harmful impression that links ethnicity or migration status with criminality."
A College of Policing spokesperson said: "The police are operating in a challenging environment where there is now a requirement for the release of accurately, timely information to prevent a vacuum and the spread of mis- and disinformation.
"The current interim guidance says information confirming the nationality or ethnicity of someone can be released if it is part of a high-profile or sensitive investigation where there is a policing purpose for doing so. This includes a risk to public safety such as rising community tension. There should also be a significant level of media or social media interest before the information is released."
Some forces have decided to release race and nationality details on arrest. One recent case was a mass stabbing on a train when British Transport Police (BTP) publicised details of two suspects they had arrested, saying both were black. One was charged and the other was released without charge, and the racial details dominated hours of coverage. Runnymede said other far more relevant details, such as how many knives were used in the attack, were not revealed.
"Why was the number of weapons used not put out by the police, which is directly relevant to the crime, more so than the ethnicity and race of the suspects," said Shabna Begum, the director of the Runnymede Trust.
A BTP spokesperson said the weapons details was released later. "BTP chose to release the ethnicity and nationality of two arrested men in this high-profile case in the interests of transparency and to alleviate the spread of damaging misinformation and speculation," the spokesperson said.