Ethnic minority young people more likely to be arrested and sent to custody

A Ministry of Justice report on BAME disproportionality in the criminal justice system in England and Wales found that during 2014 BAME boys aged 10 to 17 were 35 per cent more likely to be arrested than young people of white ethnicity.

They were also five per cent more likely to be charged by the Crown Prosecution Service, and 75 per cent more likely to be tried at Crown Court, where sentencing powers are greater, rather than at magistrates' court.

The data also shows that they are a fifth more likely to receive a custodial sentence upon conviction at magistrates' court than white peers.

Publication of the figures comes amid a drive to address disporportionality within the youth justice system. As of July this year, 399 of the 861 under-18s in custody were of BAME background - representing 46.34 per cent of the total, compared with 50.87 per cent who are white. A further 2.79 per cent have their ethnicity classified as "not known".

Earlier this year the Youth Justice Board (YJB) unveiled new guidelines aimed at tackling bias within the court system against BAME children.

Writing in the latest edition of the monthly YJB Bulletin, Louise Falshaw, the organisation's director of partnerships and performance, said that disproportionality is a "system wide issue and as such requires a system-wide approach to address it".

She added that already youth offending teams were investigating the extent of disproportionality in their local areas and developing action plans to reduce it.

"This has produced some quite exceptional work in some areas," she said.