If he were still alive, Stephen Lawrence would be 26. In the eight years since his death, the botched murder investigation by the Metropolitan police and the bungled prosecution of the white men accused of his killing have created the potential for a sea change in British race relations.

The investigation into neglect of duty by the police led to Sir William Macpherson, who chaired the inquiry, adopting the language of Stokely Carmichael, an American black activist, in concluding that institutional racism was to blame. The report defined institutional racism as "the collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their colour, culture, or ethnic origin".

Since then, the government has put anti-racism on the mainstream agenda. Institutions from the Royal College of Nursing to the Home Office itself have rushed to declare themselves institutionally racist. But how much has this shift in understanding affected the experience of black and Asian people?

In the most thorough investigation of racial harassment in Britain, a survey funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has found that reporting of incidents has significantly increased since Macpherson's report. His acknowledgment that racism affects all aspects of black and Asian people's lives appears to have laid the foundations for them to come forward with more confidence that they will be taken seriously. In addition, the findings suggest, the police are more likely to record any racial motivation than they were previously.

Despite Macpherson's assertion, the survey report, Racial Harassment: Action on the Ground, acknowledges that black and minority ethnic people are not all equally likely to be racially attacked. It cites statistics from the 1995 British crime survey, which found that 4% of black people, 5% of Indians and 8% of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis experienced one or more racist crimes, compared to 0.5% of white people.

The Rowntree survey, conducted by researchers Lemos & Crane, found that racist attacks tend to occur more frequently in crime "hot spots" such as particular housing estates and poorer multi-racial neighbourhoods.

Lemos & Crane interviewed more than 250 contacts in the police, local authority community safety and housing departments, housing associations, specialist and voluntary agencies in the 67 local authority areas in the UK identified by the 1991 census as having the highest numbers of black and minority ethnic residents.

Examining levels of harassment, which range from murder in the most extreme cases to attacks on individuals and property and racist abuse, the survey found that the number of incidents reported varies hugely between areas, with 10 London boroughs, Birmingham, Leicester and Glasgow each reporting more than 1,000 separate incidents in 1999-2000. However, most agencies said under-reporting was still a problem, with incidents often not receiving the appropriate response because the racial motive was not taken into account.

So although the message has gone out to black and ethnic minority people that they no longer have to put up with racial harassment, the survey found that the mechanisms to record, and respond to, their experiences are often far from established.

Fewer than a third of the areas studied had a 24-hour helpline for victims and fewer than 40% provided in-depth counselling. Although more than half the areas had third-party reporting centres - including places of worship, doctors' surgeries and schools - which pass information on to relevant agencies, many staff were not trained in report taking.

Most councils provide alarms, stronger locks, doors, fencing and improved lighting for tenants experi encing harassment, the survey suggests. But less than half the councils and housing associations had rehoused families because of racial incidents, arguing that it allowed perpetrators to drive tenants from "white" estates. Other councils considered the victim's security to be paramount and rehoused families if they requested it. In Ipswich, one of the areas singled out by the survey for its good practice, council tenants are rehoused at the expense of the council if they ask to be moved.

Meanwhile, Waltham Forest, in east London, has set-up Alert, a special agency to run a 24-hour emergency line as well as compile a monitoring database, provide counselling and a specialist lawyer for victims.

Gerard Lemos, author of the study, says that "lack of clarity, rather than lack of commitment" is behind much of the frustration that agencies described to researchers. He is calling for a national strategy to deal with racial harassment.

This would include a national helpline where victims could seek immediate advice and support and then direct callers to local agencies. In addition, the researchers propose to standardise training and competence for police, landlords and other agencies dealing with victims of racial harassment.

But Lemos & Crane's most radical proposal is perhaps a national programme, possibly led by probation services, to change the offending behaviour of racist perpetrators.

Action against perpetrators is still rare, the survey shows. Only 10-15% of reported incidents had resulted in criminal action and only a small proportion of councils had taken out injunctions or eviction orders against perpetrating tenants.

The report cites Thames Valley police's use of restorative justice in racial harassment cases as something the rest of the country could follow. The method is most suitable for cases involving neighbours. A trained officer chairs a meeting between the perpetrator and their victim, who confronts the offender with the impact of the harassment with the intention of making him or her accountable to the victim.

Lemos says: "I'm not against enforcement and am not proposing this is appropriate for the most serious racially motivated crimes, but the current agenda is entirely about locking people up. We need to be thinking about positive ways to change the offending behaviour."

Leeds leads the prejudice-busters
Martin Wainwright

It may be muttering at work; it may be a brick through a window; it may be nastiness in the secret, don't-grass-to-teacher world of the classroom. Whichever, the likelihood in Leeds is that racial harassment, in all its crude and subtle forms, will eventually end on the desk of Shakeel Meer and his team of local prejudice-busters.

Singled out in today's Joseph Rowntree Foundation report as an example of best practice, Leeds Racial Harrassment Project was born six years ago out of frustration at repeated persecutors evading justice.It now runs courses for companies, the police and professionals, including lawyers.

"The Stephen Lawrence inquiry probably marked the greatest step forward in our work," says Meer, whose appointment as director three months ago marked another stage in the project's growth. "Institutions like the police came forward and held up their hands and said: 'Yes, we do have a problem.' Acknowledging that is more than half the battle."

Leeds has a typically British record of kindness and coldness in racial affairs. Its university nurtured the Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, but some of its landladies shut their doors in his face. Kindness usually wins; Soyinka acknowledged that when he came back two years ago to premiere his new play, the Beatification of Area Boy, at the city's West Yorkshire Playhouse. But the unpleasant undercurrent is still there.

Hence, Meer and his team's busy schedule advising families who have been targeted by racist neighbours, loaning closed circuit TV (the source of several succesful prosecutions) or installing alarms. Project staff act as advocates for individuals who have decided to fight back, and they have a reputation for novel ways of getting the message across - such as Grass, a playlet written and produced by the local Blah Blah Blah theatre company. A youth officer, financed by Comic Relief, edits a sparky newspaper for kids, with a video-making sideline, and Meer says: "Getting the message across to young people is having a striking effect."

If racism isn't cool, it's also kept on the run in Leeds by the project's independence, thanks to a catholic range of funders, including the Home Office and the national lottery charities board. As a fledgling, the project was under the wing of Leeds city council - a blessing but also a threat in the longer term. "Genuine independence is essential," says Meer, "because then there's no danger of us holding back if the council or any of its agencies figure in a case."

Success has not brought complacency in Leeds; as word spreads of the project's effectiveness, so more people come to use its services. Shakeel and his colleagues are not going to twiddle their thumbs after a year which has already seen 31 personal alarms installed in frightened homes and 28 other tenants referred for rehousing because of local spite.

"And we now have the challenge of asylum seekers," says Shakeel. "Leeds has done well to take so many in, but there are lots of problems on the ground. It hasn't been at all obvious to the victims where to find help if they're harassed. We're letting them know that we're here."

• Racial Harassment: Action on the Ground is available at £9.95 plus £1.50 p&p from 01752-202301. A summary of findings is at www.jrf.org.uk