The UK criminal justice system Discrimination from criminal justice agencies Home Office statistics produced annually under section 95 of the Criminal Justice Act 1991 reveal the extent of the disproportionate involvement of black people with criminal justice agencies as suspects, defendants and prisoners. To fully appreciate the implications of the following figures, it should be remembered that of the population in England and Wales, just 1.1% are Black Caribbean, 0.9% are Black African and 0.2% are from other black groups.5 The statistics for 2004-56 show that: Black people were six times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched under section 1 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 compared to Asian people who were twice as likely as white people to be stopped and searched. Searches recorded by police under section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 show that 56% of searches were of white people, 24% were of black people, while 17% were of Asians. Of the searches made under Sections 44 (1) and 44 (2) of the Terrorism Act 2000 73% were of white people, 8% were of black people and 11% were of Asians, with 5% being carried out on those of ‘Other’ ethnic origin. Of the 1.3 million arrests made for notifiable offences, 9% of them were black people, 5% Asian people and 1.5% came from ‘other’ ethnic groups. Black people were more likely than white people to be committed at magistrates’ courts to be tried by a jury at the Crown Court. The proportion of black prisoners who are British nationals in the prison population is five times higher than for white people. In addition, higher proportions of black people (particularly young people) were likely to be stopped by police, arrested and once arrested, less likely to be cautioned. Similarly, black people were more likely to be remanded in custody, more likely to plead not guilty and where found guilty they were also more likely to receive longer custodial sentences than their white contemporaries.7 Even before reaching court, an analysis of 13,000 case files carried out by the Crown Prosecution Service found that there were more likely to be objections to bail for black males than for white males.8 Figures such as this reveal that black communities are over-represented at each stage of the criminal justice process from initial contact right through to sentencing. There are various criminological explanations as to the root of this anomaly which include police discrimination, socio-demographic factors, and the fact that black people who have previously committed offences are known to the police and are therefore perhaps more easily detected. However, the figures cannot just be explained away by the notion that black people are more likely to offend than other groups.9 Indeed the lifetime offending rate for black males is in fact significantly lower than that for white males.
Posted on: Mon, 12 Jan 2015 07:29:50 +0000
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