Race and justice: are the courts biased?
In her first public statement as Prime Minister, Theresa May vowed to fight injustice. If you are black, she noted, you are “treated more harshly by the criminal justice system than if you’re white”. This was “hardly a revelation”, said The Guardian. But if proof were needed, the Labour MP David Lammy’s comprehensive review of the treatment of black, Asian and minority ethnic (Bame) individuals in the criminal justice system, which was published last week, highlighted the problem starkly. Bame people make up 14% of the population of England and Wales, but 25% of its prison population. Black people make up 3% of the population, but 12% of prisoners (and 20% of young offenders in custody). For every 100 white women handed custodial sentences at crown courts for drug offences, 227 black women are jailed. Ethnic minorities, Lammy concluded, still face bias and “overt discrimination” in the justice system.
Lammy found plenty of evidence of “racial disparities” in the system, said David Green on his Spectator blog. The problem with his review is that it assumes any such disparities “must be the result of discrimination”. Prejudice, he stated, “has declined, but still exists in wider society – it would be a surprise if it was entirely absent from criminal justice settings”. Yet in fact, he found no compelling evidence for that: successive studies have shown that juries in England and Wales deliver equitable results regardless of race. And as Lammy admitted, there are many other likely reasons for the disproportionate figures, such as high levels of lone parenthood and poverty among ethnic minority people. Lammy suggested that some Bame people’s prosecutions should be deferred or dropped, to even up the numbers, said Rod Liddle in The Sunday Times. “I suppose another solution might be to jail random white folk who haven’t committed crimes.”
His proposals “are not easy sells politically”, said The Guardian. But it is vital to tackle the “lack of trust in the system” among Bame people, which discourages them from pleading guilty and means that many lose the chance of the reduced sentence that comes with a guilty plea. Improving minority representation among judges and prison staff would help. So too would deferred prosecutions: a pilot scheme in the West Midlands, allowing charges to be dropped if offenders receive rehabilitation, has cut reoffending rates by 35%. Lammy’s review is well-intentioned, said The Daily Telegraph. “But the Government must proceed with caution” and bear in mind that “our police and courts exist primarily to uphold law and order”, not to deliver politically correct statistics.