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Nacro believes that the criminal justice system must serve ethnic minority communities more effectively if it is to deliver justice fairly and promote confidence in its performance.
It's well known that minority groups are disproportionately represented in all areas of the criminal justice system:
as suspects, defendants and offenders
- As a proportion of the population, young black people are stopped and searched four times more often than young white people.
- The inmate population of prisons in England and Wales contains five times the number of black people found in the population at large.
- Black people found guilty of offences are sentenced to custody sooner and for longer than white people.
as victims
- Black people are more likely to be victims of crimes perpetrated both by white people and other ethnic minority groups, than white people.
- Minority ethnic groups are the targets of racist offenders.
- Poverty and social deprivation amongst some minority ethnic groups makes them more vulnerable to both property offences and offences of violence.
as employees
- There is a lack of minority ethnic personnel at senior levels of all criminal justice agencies. For example, there are no black high court judges, and no black governing prison governors
Nacro leads the drive to rectify these imbalances and assist race equality programmes in criminal justice agencies by:
- Promoting research into and analysis of the work of Crime and Disorder Act crime reduction strategies
- Promoting race equality issues in the composition of Crime and Disorder Act partnerships
- Tackling youth race issues within criminal justice through the work of youth offending teams
- Widening the race and crime debate within Area Criminal Justice Strategy Committees
- Identifying human rights issues
- Hosting the national Race Issues Advisory Committee chaired by Lord Dholakia
- Conducting surveys and producing reports on the race aspects of the operation of the criminal justice system
- Providing race relations training to the CPS, Police, magistrates, court staff and the Prison Service
We are represented at the highest level in criminal justice agencies as well as on the Lawrence Steering Group and the Race and Violent Crime Task Force of the Metropolitan Police Service.
For more information contact: raceunit@nacro.org.uk
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