CYP Now - Media focus on knife crime 'fuelling excessive arrests of black children'

An increase in media coverage of knife crime and gang issues has contributed to high levels of arrests of black, Asian and ethnic minority (BAME) children and their disproportional representation in youth custody, a charity has said.

The Howard League for Penal Reform said that while the overall number of child arrests have fallen for a seventh year in a row, BAME children continue to be treated unequally.

The charity said its data on child arrests, collected from all forces across England, shows that 26 per cent of child arrests in 2017 were of children from BAME backgrounds despite the fact that this group of children make up only 18 per cent of the 10- to 17-year-old general child population.

This disproportionality continues into youth custody. In June this year, Ministry of Justice statistics revealed that almost half (48.1 per cent) of the 940 children in custody as of April were BAME.

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