YJB tackles issue of race in the justice system

The number of under-18s in custody has dropped to a new low this summer, but black and minority ethnic young people continue to be over-represented in the secure estate.

The issue has been recognised by the Youth Justice Board (YJB) and academics for years, but Ministry of Justice statistics highlight a concerning lack of progress in the area.

The figures show that 27 per cent of the total number of 1,690 young people in custody at the end of June this year are black, Asian or from another ethnic minority – 452 in total. This is significantly higher than the proportion of black and minority ethnic young people in the general population, which stood at 15 per cent of 10- to 17-year-olds in 2009.

The YJB is keen to address the issue and has identified it as a priority for 2012/13. Chair Frances Done says that emerging evidence shows that young black men are more likely to plead not guilty in court than their white counterparts, meaning they can end up with longer sentences. Black and minority ethnic young people are also more likely to be unaccompanied throughout the court process, she says.

Finding solutions
The YJB is working alongside the Magistrates’ Association’s youth courts committee to find solutions to the issue and to highlight best practice from youth offending teams attempting to tackle the over-representation at a local level.

John Bache, chair of the youth courts committee at the Magistrates’ Association, believes that more robust figures and research on disproportionality in the youth justice system could help focus the minds of magistrates.

“We are trying to make magistrates aware of the possibility that these children aren’t dealt with in the same way as white children,” he says. “We have no evidence at all that magistrates are dealing with them differently, but we need to know if the figures of young people being sent to custody are different and, if they are, why they are different.

“We know there is a disproportionate number of black and minority ethnic young people in youth custody, but we don’t know why that is. It could be that they are being arrested more frequently; it could be that they are committing more crime. We want to be certain we are sentencing absolutely fairly, regardless of the defendant’s ethnic background.”

At local level, Sandwell youth offending service is being held up as an example of best practice in attempts to reduce the over-representation of black and minority ethnic young people on their books.

Sharron Miller, service manager in the area, says data analysis has helped spot issues such as school exclusion that could lead to black or minority ethnic young people becoming more likely to get into trouble.

Information is shared with partner agencies including police, health, education and youth services at board meetings of the youth offending service, while magistrates are briefed on the ethnic breakdown of young offenders twice a year.

“Over-representation is an agenda item in all our meetings – it is part of our core business,” Miller says. “It is about other youth justice agencies understanding what they can do to assist us. If we find out lots of young people are coming to our attention without an education placement, we can go and share that with schools so they can take action.

Stop and search
“All of those agencies have to work together to achieve any significant outcome in relation to over-representation. We make it clear to them that we can’t deal with it on our own.”

Sandwell is also analysing trends at street level, with a project to chart young people’s experiences of police stop and search.

Rebekha Delsol, programme officer for ethnic profiling with the Open Society Justice Initiative, says there needs to be a national focus on what happens at the gateways to the youth justice system, including stop and search, arrest and charge.

She says her research shows that young black men are seven times more likely to be stopped and searched by police than young white men. The organisation has been involved in developing a mobile phone application to allow young people to record details of stop and search, but Delsol wants police to radically reduce use of the method.

“The police need to have a complete rethink on the way they use stop and search,” she says. “Stop and search is a gateway to the criminal justice system, particularly in large urban areas, dragging young ethnic minorities into criminalisation, particularly around cannabis possession.”


Tackling the issue