Tackling disproportionality in the criminal justice system

The chair of a new report revealing racial disparities in the criminal justice system says the findings won’t come as a shock to communities affected.

“It’s something they live with every day, so the challenge is what are these organisations and partners going to do to alleviate that?” asks Desmond Brown.

The report published in February sets out 83 recommendations for the Avon and Somerset region, covering areas that include stop & search, youth justice, out of court disposals, prisons and the judiciary.

It has been described by the chair of Bristol’s Commission on Race Equality as “one of the most important reports to emerge on racial injustice in Bristol in a long time”, but Museji Ahmed Takolia also expressed concern about the lack of media coverage and public attention it gained.

Brown is determined that the roadmap to address the disproportionality in the treatment and outcomes for people of different ethnicities across organisations and institutions outlined in the 127-page document is followed so that we are not in the same situation in five years’ time.

“Communities are really tired of reviews and reports because it just seems to be an ongoing cycle – something happens and people wring their hands and then there’s a report and it starts again,” explains the founder of youth organisation Growing Futures, speaking from the organisation’s base in St Philip’s.

“This disproportionality that we’ve revealed in the report, for lots of communities affected by this, will come as no surprise.”

All of the organisations to have received the recommendations have accepted them but Brown wants to establish an independent scrutiny panel with representatives from affected communities to keep checks on work being done and make sure action is taken.

“My issue is that even this report was under-resourced and under-funded,” he tells Bristol24/7.

“To move past the rhetoric, we need commitments from organisations to give us an analyst and data sharing specialist.”

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Read more: School exclusions: The young people at risk of slipping through the cracks

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The culmination of more than four years of work, the Identifying Disproportionality in the Avon & Somerset Criminal Justice System report comes in the wake of the 2017 Lammy Review, which painted a stark national picture of disproportionality in the treatment and outcomes for people of different ethnicities.

Brown says on a national level, there have been reports from the early 80s from which recommendations have still not been fulfilled.

“It has become very tiring and they’ve been worn down by the lack of action and the fact that we’ve always gone back to this silver bullet of ‘let’s look at the data again’,” says the chair of the new regional report.

“I think there needs to be more collaboration – we need to have less lip service, we have a lot of high-level people saying we need to look at disproportionality but it’s not being tracked down to a local level. There has to be real desire to do this but also it needs to be resourced properly.”

He also highlights the vast disproportionality in the police use of stop and search powers, with black people nine times more likely to be targeted than white people.

“Drug policy around stop and search is a racist policy,” states Brown.

“One of the reasons police stop black people more is because there is more intelligence on them because, for years, these communities have been over-policed and under-protected.”

Chief constable Sarah Crew is taking the lead on implementing recommendations in the police force – photo: Avon and Somerset Police

The report contains a roadmap for real change that would include an end to school exclusions, which all too often lead to young people being vulnerable to exploitation and entering the criminal justice system.

On this, Brown concludes: “Schools are the biggest protective factor we have for young people. To exclude young people and leave them vulnerable to outside influences just seems crazy to me.”

Read more: Disproportionality in the criminal justice system laid bare in new report 

Listen to Desmond Brown on the latest episode of the Bristol24/7 Behind the Headlines podcast: