Action for Race Equality

Empowering Young People who are Black, Asian and of Mixed Heritage

Criminal justice

Black, Asian and Minority-ethnic led organisations
are collaborating for criminal justice reform

discover the national independent advisory group

Our criminal justice system is in need of urgent attention.

Black, Asian, Mixed and minority ethnic communities are experiencing harsher outcomes at nearly every stage of the justice system.  

Policy makers and leaders across the criminal justice system need to urgently address discriminatory attitudes, behaviours and policies at every level.  

And with a chronic lack of under-investment and under-utilisation, the community, voluntary and frontline groups providing support to people in the criminal justice system, or those at risk of entering it, are facing multiple barriers in carrying out their work. 

ARE is working closely with decision-makers within government bodies, alongside minority-led community groups who provide essential services to Black, Asian and minority ethnic people, to ensure that race equality remains a core and achievable goal across criminal justice policy and practice.

Black square, with blindfolded lady justice on the right, with key race and criminal justice statistics on the left. These read: Black people are 5x more likely to be stopped and searched than white people. Over a quarter (27%) of the prison population are from a minority ethnic background. Black children are 6x more likely to be strip-searched compared to national population figures. 53% of the children and young people in youth custody are from a minority ethnic background. 17% of the prison population is Muslim compared to just 6% of the general population. Sources: Prison: the facts (Prison Reform Trust, Summer 2023); Analysis of Strip Searches (The Children’s Commissioner for England, March 2023); Support for Vulnerable Adults (Public Accounts Committee, February 2023)

…there is deeply concerning evidence of toxic and racially discriminatory workplace cultures across our criminal justice system.”

Criminal Justice Alliance Beyond a Numbers Game, 2023

Our key areas of work:

Policing

Prisons and Probation

Youth Justice

Our core aims are to…

  • Increase the participation and input of Black, Asian, and Muslim civil society organisations in criminal justice policy platforms and service delivery. 
  • Reduce the racial disparities across policing, prison, and probation by supporting the implementation of race action plans and programmes and acting as a critical friend when these plans are not being delivered or achieving the expected outcomes.   
  • Reduce the disproportionate over-representation of Black children and young people on remand and in custody, by addressing racialised policing such as disproportionate use of stop and search powers on young Black children.   
  • Increase the use of preventative and diversionary measures for Black, Asian and Mixed Heritage children and young people. Ensure these measures meet the needs of the young people and effectively reduce re-offending. 

Our Criminal Justice projects

Alliance for Police Accountability

ARE is delighted to be the Secretariat of the newly formed Alliance for Police Accountability. Made up of a collective of Black-led organisations and dedicated individuals

learn more about the apa

EQUAL: national independent advisory group

In recent years much of our work addressing the poorer outcomes for Black, Asian and Minority ethnic communities in the CJS was through the EQUAL initiative which had its roots in the Young Review, 2014.

Discover equal
read the young review

Policy Engagements

Action for Race Equality is a critical friend to a range of initiatives geared towards criminal justice reform. Our active engagements include:

  • Alliance for Police Accountability
  • The National Independent Advisory Group
  • HMPPS’ Race Action Plan advisory group
  • The Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime
  • FOME working group
  • Transition 2 Adulthood member
  • Alliance for Youth Justive member
  • Criminal Justice Alliance member
  • Better Justice partnership

Meka Beresford

Head of Policy

“Taking an intersectional and grassroots approach reflects how ARE carries out all of our work. This approach ensures that individual experiences will be considered as part of the overall project, and rather than a ‘one size fits all’ solution, we will have developed a unique understanding about the varying experiences of discrimination within policing.”
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    Taking action on racial injustice

    A short history…

    Our work in criminal justice started in 1991 when we saw how employment and life opportunities were being denied to young Black men nationally, leading to socio-economic exclusion and increased risk of entry into the criminal justice system. Since then we’ve gone on to develop targeted initiatives that support frontline workers and organisations specialising in youth and racial justice, and criminal justice reform.

    One of the key legacies of our drive to improve outcomes for Black, Asian and Minority ethnic people in contact with the criminal justice system has been the creation of a National Independent Advisory Group, as part of our EQUAL initiative, which had its roots in the Young Review.

    Through EQUAL, we lobbied for the scrapping of the Gangs Matrix in London; supported the Criminal Justice Alliance in their calls for police to scale back Section 60 Stop and Search powers; the removal of discriminatory elements in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, and co-delivered Legal Action workshops to grassroots organisations with Liberty.

    Discover our #ScrapTheMatrix campaign

    We continue to pursue new campaign areas, and are working productively with the MOJ/HMPPS in implementing the Lammy agenda, to challenge injustice whilst building partnerships across civil society and academia to further our aims. We have recently taken on the responsibility of secretariat for the Alliance for Police Accountability, which is seeking to develop workable and sustainable forms of police accountability for Black communities to increase trust and confidence and reduce serious violence through a public health approach.  

    Better Justice

    The Better Justice partnership brings together four major UK charities – Action for Race Equality, the Howard League, Nacro and Transform Justice – to drive government support for justice system reform. ARE is delighted to be a part of this.

    Discover research
    discover our advisory group

    Ethnic inequalities in sentencing and remand

    Download the briefing, which takes a comprehensive look at uniquely linked data from Crown Court and magistrate’s databases from the Ministry of Justice’s Data First programme.

    Written by Dr Kitty Lymperopoulou as part of an ESRC-funded research project, supported by EQUAL, Clinks and the MoJ.

    Download

    Explore more

    Looking for information on a completed ARE project? If you can’t find it on our website, let us know.