Barrow Cadbury Trust (BCT) welcomes the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) report “Tackling Racial Disparity in the Criminal Justice System: 2018 Update” one year on from the launch of the landmark Lammy Review. The Government should be praised for its commitment to this agenda and its willingness to be transparent regarding its intentions to reduce BAME disproportionality in the justice system.
BCT is committed to developing the criminal justice system. Its view is that the criminal justice system was, and remains, principally designed to respond to crimes committed by men. Although a separate approach to children has been successfully developed over time, the system still fails to adequately account for the distinct needs and contexts of particular groups in society, such as young adults, women and those from Black Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities. Changes are needed in policy and practice. To achieve this, a better evidence base of where the system is failing, and what can be done to change it, is required. By funding and disseminating research, policy and good practice, and by campaigning with others for change, the Trust seeks to influence the organisations that comprise the criminal justice system to implement the evidence, improve the way that services are designed, and support it to achieve better social and economic outcomes.
BCT has a particular focus, across all its programmes, on racial justice and to this end uses its resources, and works in partnership with others, to reduce ethnic and faith-based inequalities. One current example of this is its co-convening of the Funders for Race Equality Alliance, which has taken a keen interest in the Lammy Review and the Race Disparity Audit. BCT supports Equal (formerly the Young Review), the chair of Equal, Iqbal Wahhab OBE, has commented here on the 2018 Update report. BCT echoes the response by Equal and encourages the MoJ to involve Equal in its policy development. We share Equal’s concerns that the Secure Schools development and the obligations set out in the Equality Act and Public Sector Equality Duty are not referenced in the 2018 Update.
Data-driven action
BCT was particularly pleased by MoJ’s response to the collection and analysis of data as David Lammy MP says, ‘data provides insight, insight leads to action’. Greater granularity of the broad BAME category is important and MoJ will benefit from the 18+1 categorisation system and by extending the Relative Rate Index analysis.
Maturity and young adults
The creation of a dedicated youth disproportionality team is a positive development and with its remit to look at a child’s experiences before engagement with the police will provide significant insight into the circumstances that create offending behaviour. However, the Trust has long argued through its support of the Transition to Adulthood campaign that creating a distinct approach for 18 to 25 year olds in the justice system. We urge the Government to build on the experiences of the youth disproportion team will and create a dedicated team for young adults.
Recommendation 17 in the Lammy Review called for the MoJ to develop a method to assess the maturity of offenders. We are pleased to read that the maturity assessment tool following a successful pilot will be rolled out across prisons and will be used by probation staff, but are very concerned that changes in the system, low morale and the dangerous state of some of our prisons will limit the use and effectiveness of the tool. The MoJ should go on to extend youth justice provisions to young adults who are assessed as having low maturity as advocated by David Lammy MP.
BCT is supporting The University of Sheffield to conduct an analysis of the trends in reducing young adults in the criminal justice system. The work will identify key changes in the operation of the criminal justice system over a 10 year period, enabling a timeline of key events to be plotted against the trends in outcomes. Further analysis of the general trends will provide a nuanced narrative on gender ethnicity and geographic area. The work is due for publication in spring 2019 and we look forward to discussing its conclusions, and action to further reduce engagement, with MoJ colleagues.
Women, faith groups and Gypsy, Roma and Travellers
As evidenced in the Prison Reform Trust report ‘Counted Out: Black, Asian and minority ethnic women in the criminal justice system’, Black women are more likely to be remanded or sentenced to custody and are more likely to be sole parents when imprisoned. The recent Muslim Hands report ‘Invisibility – Female, Muslim, Imprisoned’ which was supported by BCT shows the acute difficulties of Muslim women re-entering local communities following custody. We encourage the judiciary, MoJ and HMPPS to review the experiences of BAME and minority faith women and make good on their ambition to develop culturally informed practice. The BAME voluntary sector has undisputed expertise in supporting these groups of women but is widely recognised to be starved of funds. Commissioning agencies must ensure that local and national BAME organisations supporting those in the criminal justice system are properly supported both independently and through genuine partnerships with larger voluntary, contracted service delivery providers and statutory organisations.
BCT welcomes the long overdue focus on Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people in the justice system, but intent is not enough – the system will be judged on outcomes. To this end, we hope that the cross sector working group in the MoJ vigorously pursues a better understanding of the experiences of Gypsies, Roma and Traveller communities. We encourage the MoJ to work with relevant support groups when developing the HMPPS action plan and develop regular engagement forums for candid dialogue.
BCT has been working with a range of Muslim groups to understand the experiences on Muslims in the CJS and the impact the CJS has on the family and wider Muslim community. Often a counter-terrorism narrative is mentioned when discussing Muslims in the CJS: less than 1% of Muslims are in custody for terrorism offences, but prisoners consistently report a widely-held assumption the prison system treats them as potential extremists. These prejudicial assumption need to be addressed and the BCT has worked with Muslim Hands, Arooj, Maslaha and others to develop a culturally competent narrative with faith and community used to support offenders in custody and the community from further offending. We plan to hold a conference on this issue this summer.
Criminal Records
An area in which urgent action is needed is the current criminal records regime. Lammy Review recommendation 35 is very clear and relates to the criminal records regime and the cost of unemployment among ex-offenders, but we have not seen any evidence of action. If the MoJ is not going to pursue this recommendation it should clearly articulate why not. However BCT encourages the MoJ to reassess its response and take into account the findings from Baroness McGregor Smith’s review on Race in the Workplace.
Future action
BCT encourages the MoJ to commit to a yearly update report to maintain momentum and hold MoJ staff to account for progress. The MoJ also needs to give their staff the freedom to identify disparity and provide them with the tools for reform. Here are some questions and ideas for future development the MoJ and the Government to consider:
- Is there a role for the Cabinet Office to develop good practice advice and support for voluntary membership oversight bodies? The Lammy Review highlighted the importance of scrutiny and oversight to reduce disproportionality. Voluntary membership oversight bodies are very often highly localised and variable in effectiveness whether they monitor police stop and search or are located in prisons with peer members overseeing Incentive and Earned Privilege decisions.
- Will the MoJ (and all Government departments) future proof IT builds from inception through to testing and development to consider equalities and reduce disproportionate outcomes? This is especially important as algorithms and machine learning increasingly take on decision making functions in criminal justice and there is a very significant risk that existing disparities will be hard-wired into machine learning.
- How will the MoJ track new initiatives in the justice system and ensure they do not lead to more disproportionality? For example what impact will the revised prison categorisation system have on BAME people in custody?
- In section 23 of the 2018 Update report the Government reports in engagement with countries on progress to address racial disparity. Will the Government share the innovative thinking it has been presented with and ensure that it influences future policy development?
BCT is committed to reducing the disproportionate number of BAME people in the CJS. We will continue to work with Equal and others to provide advice and support to Government and the MoJ on this urgent social issue.
Sentencing Young Adults: Making the case for sentencing principles for young adults presents research by the Howard League for Penal Reform, a founding member of the Transition to Adulthood (T2A) Alliance.
The report, which draws on Howard League participation work with young adults, sets out how principled guidelines would help judges and magistrates to understand young adults better, and provide a legal framework to achieve better sentencing decisions. It recommends that the principles should consider the relationship between immaturity and blameworthiness, capacity to change, and the impact of race and histories of care.
It considers how the welfare principle – the principle that, when a court is dealing with proceedings relating to a child, its primary consideration shall lie with the welfare of the child – might be extended to apply to young adults, in recognition that full maturity and all the attributes of adulthood are not magically conferred on young people on their eighteenth birthdays.
The Howard League has brought together an advisory group of experts to help draft sentencing principles for young adults, drawing on the charity’s legal and participation work and the growing knowledge base about the needs and characteristics of young people.
More than 140,000 young adults aged 18 to 24 were sentenced in criminal courts last year.
Imprisonment of young adults can have tragic consequences. Between 2006 and 2016, 164 young adults aged 18 to 24 died in custody, 136 of whom lost their lives through suicide.
The Follow the Money campaign is supported by NCVO, NAVCA, Social Enterprise UK, Social Enterprise Mark CIC, Locality, Responsible Finance, Big Society Capital, Barrow Cadbury Trust, ShareAction, CAN, Clinks, the Finance Innovation Lab, Good With Money, The Ethical Company Organisation and Ethical Consumer.
The campaign, launched a decade after the global financial crisis, will see 38 of the charities and social enterprises supported by Charity Bank loans open their doors to showcase how money saved with an ethical provider can have a positive impact on society.
It comes as research*, published by Charity Bank, revealed that 7 in 10 people agree that charities should invest their savings and investments ethically. And more than half (57%) said they prefer to buy from businesses that act ethically.
Charity Bank is now calling on charities, businesses and individuals to question how their savings are currently used. It’s asking them to consider whether that money could go beyond simply earning a fair return and be channelled into the social sector to help make a positive contribution on society.
Follow the Money, now in its 10th year, takes Charity Bank savers to see for themselves how their money is being used to support charities and social enterprises. This year’s 38-stop tour, corresponds with Good Money Week 29 September – 5 October.
Keep up to date with the Follow the Money tour and support the campaign.
Erica has served on the Board for many years and brings her long experience in governance and voluntary sector management to the role, having led a CAB in Yorkshire for a long time. Have a look at her mini-biog to learn a bit more about her.
IPPR analysis shows that:
• Based on evidence from past trade deals, opting to exclude immigration from the Brexit negotiations would significantly increase the likelihood of a limited and disadvantageous trade deal.
• Certain sectors, such as hotels and restaurants and manufacturing, rely heavily on lower-skilled EU labour – 28% of the food manufacturing workforce and 19% of domestic personnel are EU nationals in lower-skilled work.
• Only 11% of the UK public expect full control over EU immigration post-Brexit and, excluding the ‘don’t knows’, a majority accept that there is a trade-off between restricting freedom of movement and accessing the single market.
Read the summary or view the full report.
- The 2017 Gender Equality: Global Report & Ranking, presenting the Top 200 Companies, key findings on gender equality , as well as detailed insights per country and per sector.
- Company Reports, custom-made documents with detailed information and aggregated figures on individual companies
- The Family of Equileap Gender Equality Indices (Global, US and Europe,) designed to track best performing companies in terms of gender equality. These Indices will be used both as benchmarks and underlyings of various financial products.
Someone with a brain injury may experience poor memory, lack of concentration, aggression, problems sleeping and other difficulties which impact on their everyday lives and may make it difficult to engage with rehabilitation programmes. The pilot Linkworker service will deliver direct one-to-one support to women with brain injuries and develop partnerships with health, social care, probation, homeless, and drug and alcohol services to ensure each woman has the appropriate network in place on discharge from prison.
Each person with a brain injury will be identified on admission, using the Foundation’s simple Brain Injury Screening Index (BISI) questionnaire before being referred to the specialist Linkworker. Prison staff will also be provided with brain injury training and given simple tips – speaking more slowly without distractions to allow information to be processed, suggesting diaries and written reminders to assist with memory problems – to support the women concerned.
This two-year, £107,000 pilot scheme aims to establish whether specialist support following a brain injury, even years after it was sustained, means an individual has a greater chance of engaging with services, integrating with the community and breaking the cycle of re-offending. Funded largely by the Barrow Cadbury Trust and The Pilgrim Trust, the service mirrors the brain injury Linkworker services previously provided by the Disabilities Trust Foundation in male prisons and Young Offender Institutions.
The aims of the project at HMP Drake Hall are to:
• identify women with a brain injury who enter custody
• develop a care pathway and provide dedicated support to women with a brain injury
• raise awareness of brain injury within the female prison population
• explore causal links between self-harm, violence and brain injury in the female prison population
The Disability Foundation is commissioning an external evaluation of the pilot programme, as well as undertaking a research study to look at the relationship between traumatic brain injury (TBI), female offenders, violent offending, in-prison behavioural problems and reoffending rates.
About 60% of adult prisoners and 30% of young offenders have a history of traumatic brain injury
The report, coming the week after the Joseph Rowntree Foundation call to solve poverty, shows that fairer credit for lower income households can have a significantly beneficial impact on people’s lives.
The independent research on behalf of the not-for-profit high cost credit challenger, Fair for You showed that as a direct result of taking a loan from Fair for You:
- More than half (58%) of people said that they were better able to run their home – this increased to two-thirds (67%) for lone parents.
- 45% of all respondents said they felt less anxious, stressed or depressed
- Over half (56%) of customers with a health condition or disability said they felt less anxious, stressed or depressed
- 61% of people with a health condition or disability said they were better able to save money as a result of a loan from Fair for You, compared with high-cost alternatives.
- Half of all respondents (50%) said they were better able to budget and manage their money.
- More than one-third (37%) said they were better able to pay rent or a mortgage or other household bills including rent, council tax, gas and electricity and television licence.
Report author, Damon Gibbons, said: “Our research shows that Fair for You is making a real difference to its customers’ lives. These are people who would otherwise have to use high cost credit, and they are making considerable savings by choosing Fair for You instead. Those savings mean that they are better able to pay their rent and household bills, eat more healthily, set aside money for a rainy day, and in many cases increase their spending on their children.
The report’s authors call for local authorities, utility companies, social housing providers, and a wide range of voluntary and community agencies to support Fair for You’s challenge to the high cost lenders and to actively promote it to their service users to offer a positive, national, alternative to the high cost credit rip off that has existed in this country for far too long.”
Fair for You founder and CEO of the charity, Angela Clements said: “This report is the first social impact report to clearly show the positive impact on lower income households when we design credit products that meet their modern borrowing requirements. In essence, by creating structured credit solutions with the flexibility, visibility and support needed for customers that juggle fluctuating income, you can help lift them out of poverty.
“The fact that a £300 loan for a washing machine can do that, as well as help relieve the symptoms of stress, anxiety or depression, rather than trap them with penal debt, where they have to make choices about whether to spend on their heating or groceries because of the amount taken out of their home by the high cost credit provider, is something I find quite difficult to understand in modern Britain”.
