“Whilst carrying out my Review I was surprised and concerned by the indifference to race in our criminal justice system – in this respect it is hugely lagging behind other parts of our public sector and other nations. The people who staff our prisons, courts and even voluntary sector organisations working in criminal justice don’t reflect the people who receive their services. The picture of individuals working in the criminal justice system is a very different one you see from the people who live in it – particularly the picture you see when you go into our youth jails.

But let’s be clear, if you are in the criminal justice business in this country then you have got to be in the race business. There needs to be a step change to ensure that this issue does not fall off the table again.

Our criminal justice system can learn from other sectors, particularly education. Notwithstanding the poorer attainment of black boys there isn’t a school in London that doesn’t recognise and understand these issues. Practice might be patchy outside of diverse metropolitan areas but the recognition that we need to tackle this issue is deeply embedded within the educational establishment and across our schools. By contrast our criminal justice system is decades behind and this needs to change.

Our criminal justice system can also learn from other legal systems across the world. In New Zealand, for example, there is an established general principle that everything possible needs to be done to prevent BAME people getting a criminal record in the first place – and this is a bipartisan and accepted view across the political spectrum.

This recognition is vital because of what it means for a BAME person to end up in the criminal justice system. The double penalty of being from an ethnic minority background and having a criminal record can be hugely damaging for employment prospects and a third of those on Jobseeker’s Allowance have a criminal record. We need to tackle this across the piece but the latest stop and search figures show that we are moving in the wrong direction – whilst the use of stop and search has reduced, disproportionality has actually increased – you are now eight times more likely to be stopped and searched if you are BAME.

It is clear that the system is not working for any BAME group. We need a specific and culturally competent approach and a key part of the solution is a vibrant third sector. There is a need to grow and sustain the number of voluntary sector organisations with the confidence and ability to work with and meet the specific needs of cohorts such as Muslim women or Travellers. These groups are often small in number but high in need and experience high levels of disproportionality – for example, although the data does not exist I suspect from my work on the review that the greatest disproportionality in the system in fact involves the Traveller community.

In terms of legacy I am clear that I will remain on the scene to drive my recommendations forward. Significant work needs to be done to address sentencing disparities and a response is needed on this from the judiciary. The government has accepted my principle of explain or reform and we have succeeded in creating a cross party moment around these issues and the Labour Party as well as government are looking at my recommendations. In summary we have come a long way but there is still a lot of work to do.”

The polling, conducted by YouGov, found:

• Three quarters of young BAME people, almost 1.5 million, think they and their communities are being targeted unfairly by stop and search
• More than two in five young BAME people think police officers don’t exercise their stop and search powers on the basis of fair and accurate information
• Almost half a million young BAME people say what they know about the current use of stop and search makes them ‘less proud’ to be a British citizen in 2017

The report is published at a time when the overall number of stop and searches has fallen from 1.2 million to 380,000 over five years. However latest figures show BAME people collectively are now three times more likely than white people to be searched (up from twice as likely a year earlier) and black people in particular are now six times more likely to be searched (up from four times more likely a year earlier).

The report features extensive detail of young BAME people’s recent experience and views of the use of stop and search across the country.

‘If I saw a crime happening, if someone died from it, if someone was in critical condition,

I’d call an ambulance. But I wouldn’t call the police.’

 ‘If I see them, and they’re coming towards me, my heart will race out of my chest,

My legs will literally turn to jelly’

 ‘I call it jump-out gang. They just jump out on you. And it’s a gang of police

And they’re jumping out on you, and they’re grabbing you up’

 The report also includes a series of straightforward recommendations from young people for police forces.

Opinion polling was carried out by YouGov.  All figures, unless otherwise stated, are from YouGov Plc. Total sample size was 503 black, Asian and minority ethnic men and women aged 16 to 30 living in England and Wales. Fieldwork was undertaken between 7 and 13 June 2017. The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted by age, gender and region to be representative of the population.

The digest summarises the results of in-depth focus groups carried out with groups of young black, Asian and minority ethnic men aged 15-26 in Birmingham, Manchester, north London, south London and Slough over 12 months from summer 2016.

The 2011 Census accounted for 1.98 black, Asian and minority ethnic people aged 16-30 living in England and Wales. 806,000 of these live in London.

Funder collaboration is an increasingly normal part of the way foundations work. Issues as diverse as migration, mental health stigma, early intervention, women and multiple disadvantage, and child sexual exploitation are being approached by funder collaboratives of varying shapes and sizes. It still appears to be a new idea, however, to explicitly set out with the aim of co-creating priorities and actions with those working in NGOs in the field – in other words a genuinely mixed alliance. This is the story of one such alliance, one between race equality organisations and funders.

It started with a call from the Big Lottery Fund, which led to a loose alliance of funders coming together over a shared concern about ethnic inequality and social justice in late 2015. This was a diverse group working on a wide range of issues – health and wellbeing, poverty, criminal justice, arts and heritage, education, extreme disadvantage. The common thread is a concern about the stark ethnic inequalities that are apparent in systems and communities. In the criminal justice system, just to give one example, Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities are over-represented in prison: approximately 25% of prisoners are from a BAME background, compared with being only 13% of the wider population. The situation is worse for under-18s: over 40% of those in secure youth institutions are from BAME backgrounds, up significantly from 25% a decade ago. Despite decades of activism and legislation it is clear that we are not born equal: race and ethnicity still have a substantial impact on life chances and experiences.

Collective dialogue

Rather than funders deciding on a course of action, in early 2016 the funder alliance began a collective dialogue with key race equality organisations, co-creating a number of priority areas. This was and remains a complicated thing – power dynamics are at play, there are questions of who is and is not at the table. Can expectations raised by the coming together of so many funders be met? Are funders really prepared to be open about their processes and to change their practice?

We haven’t resolved these issues but we are still in dialogue, being as open as we can be with each other, building relationships and reminding ourselves of our shared purpose when things get difficult. Our work has started to crystallise around two issues, and jointly we are exploring the development of a strategic communications project, and a co-ordinated response to the government’s Race Disparity Unit (which will synthesise data on racial inequalities in public services).

Hate given licence

The work of our fledgling collaborative was given an added urgency by the Referendum last June and the spike in hate crime that followed it. It is unlikely this represented a sudden upsurge in racist sentiment. Instead it seems that the rhetoric surrounding the referendum, and the post-referendum environment, has made people with racist or xenophobic views feel more comfortable expressing these openly. The election of Donald Trump and the rise of the far right across Europe adds to the sense of a continuing trend and to the importance of renewed engagement with this issue and solidarity with those directly affected.

In our collaborative, the race equality organisations reported on a growing unease and sense of threat felt by BAME organisations and communities. Funders were keen to identify some ‘quick wins’. Together we came up with ideas, which we offer as potentially helpful to others in the funder community who want to show solidarity with those affected:

• Talk about inequalities, race and racism. Mention it on your website. Name it as an issue. Keep it on the agenda.
• Talk to race equality organisations to find out what has happened post-referendum. Reporting mechanisms for hate crime are fragmented so it is not always easy to get a complete picture – supporting existing or new reporting mechanisms, or funding race equality bodies, is helpful.
• Use your convening power to bring people together to discuss the issues highlighted by the referendum and subsequent events and to consider how to respond together.
• Support work that brings people from different communities together in meaningful shared activity or in dialogue. Under the right conditions interpersonal contact is one of the most effective ways to reduce prejudice between majority and minority group members.
• Review your own policies and procedures for unintentional bias against BAME organisations. Increasing your permeability might help with this – consider offering a secondment to someone from a local BAME organisation or inviting a review of your procedures.
• Few trusts and foundations are leading by example: our senior management teams and boards lack diversity. Are there steps that you can take to improve this, or to bring diverse voices into your organisation?

Reviewing our practice

As well as working collaboratively with the race equality sector, the funder group continues with its own separate cycle of meetings, at which we discuss and reflect on our own processes and learn from each other. Members have responded in a range of ways. For example, some have undertaken equalities audits or reviewed our grant-making practices. Several of us have made ourselves more open to BAME organisations through secondments. We are learning to be comfortable saying we haven’t got it right and we want to improve.

All trusts and foundations that want to increase their contribution to race equality are very welcome to join the funder alliance, the funder/race equality sector collaborative or both. We don’t have all the answers but we think working in the spirit of genuine partnership, with all the joys and challenges it brings, is the right thing to do.

For more information contact Cathy Stancer or Debbie Pippard

• Senior officials from the Ministry of Justice
• Representatives from the Prison and Probation Services
• Senior staff from charitable foundations
• Former service users
• Leaders from BAME led community organisations
• Chief Officers from large national charities
• Directors from private sector providers
• Academics and researchers

 
The full report from the roundtable is available at the link below:
 
http://www.clinks.org/resources-event-reports/how-can-commissioning-process-improve-outcomes-bame-offenders-may-2013
 
Following the roundtable Jeremy Crook, Director of BTEG, Clive Martin Director of Clinks and Baroness Young met with Secretary of State for Justice, Chris Grayling MP, to seek his support for the roundtable’s principle recommendation: To establish a time-limited Task Group to investigate further how particularly the Transforming Rehabilitation process can deliver improved outcomes for BAME offenders.
 
Mr Grayling gave his support for the Task Group to look specifically at delivering improved outcomes for Muslim and African/Caribbean young adult male offenders (18-24 year olds.) The Task Group is being supported by Clinks and BTEG and chaired by Baroness Young. It held its first meeting on 21 October and will produce an interim paper with recommendations for the Secretary of State before the end of 2013, followed by a final report in autumn 2014.
 
The Transition to Adulthood Alliance (T2A), convened by the Barrow Cadbury Trust, will share the breadth of experience from its collective membership into the review. If you have any examples of best practice or relevant research that the review may find useful please forward them to Clare Hayes at Clinks [email protected]