In January 2026, Action for Race Equality, in partnership with Clinks, convened policymakers, practitioners, and community organisations at the Houses of Lords to reflect on progress ten years after The Young Review and to ask why outcomes for Black, Asian, Mixed Heritage, and Muslim people in prison remain so poor.
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Hosted by Baroness Lola Young, the event followed the publication of our Young Review: 10 Years On briefing in late 2025, which examined what action has been taken over the last decade to address the racial disparities identified in the seminal review.
While there was agreement that some progress has been made, the dominant feeling in the room was that change has been slow, fragile, and too often dependent on short-term political will rather than sustained structural reform.
A system under strain
In a system where priorities shift with every political cycle, long-term reform has felt stilted, and a lack of continuity in policy, leadership, funding, and institutional memory was recognised as a significant barrier to making progress.
Against a backdrop of the capacity crisis, high staff turnover and shortages, and crisis-driven management mean that even well-intentioned staff struggle to deliver rehabilitative support. Several speakers at the event noted that with prisons and probation operating at or near full capacity, the focus inevitably narrows to basic requirements: feeding people, maintaining order, and preventing immediate harm. This left attendees wondering where in the list of priorities tackling racial disparities lays.
By and for organisations
Strong consensus emerged around the importance of organisations led by and for Black, Asian, Mixed Heritage and Muslim people and those with lived experience in supporting necessary change. Our panellists from Zahid Mubarak Trust, Maslaha, Spark2Life, and the Alliance for Youth Justice noted that these organisations are often under-resourced, operating with short-term funding, limited infrastructure, and heavy compliance burdens.
Several contributors warned that large, well-resourced institutions frequently receive funding to deliver services to communities they are not part of, while grassroots groups struggle to survive.
If community organisations are expected to play a central role in reform, participants argued, they must be funded not just to deliver projects, but to build resilient and sustainable organisations.
Data and AI
Despite repeated commitments to evidence-led policy, several speakers described a decline in publicly available equality data. Where detailed breakdowns were once published across many protected characteristics, now only a small number of headline indicators are routinely accessible.
This has pushed researchers and charities toward Freedom of Information requests to obtain data, which means that without consistent, disaggregated data, it becomes difficult to track progress, identify harmful practices, or evaluate whether reforms are working.
Concerns were also raised about the increasing use of data-driven tools and AI in justice decision-making. Participants warned that systems trained on biased data risk automating and entrenching existing racial inequalities at scale and more invisibly than existing decision-making processes – particularly in instances where religious and racial identities are conflated with risk in ways that reinforce discrimination.
Short and long-term reforms
Some instances of change were noted as important successes in the last 10 years – including the significant reductions in the number of children being held in custodial settings, the implementation of a race action programme in HMPPS, and the Wales anti-racist criminal justice plan.
However, even successes remain impeded. In the youth justice system, racial disproportionality is now more pronounced than ever, and the long-term legacy of the race action programme is unclear.
While much of the discussion focused on improving existing systems, others questioned whether incremental reform can ever fully address harms rooted in the structure of punishment itself.
Some argued that communities have long built alternative forms of support to survive the damage caused by criminalisation, and that alongside reforming prisons, society must invest in community-based responses that prevent people entering the system at all.
Several panellists described a pattern of “activity replacing impact”: initiatives, pilots and consultations continue, but without clear targets, accountability mechanisms, or evidence that disparities are actually narrowing.
Speakers called for clearer national leadership, cross-departmental coordination, and transparent targets for reducing disproportionality – not just monitoring it.
Call to action
The event closed with a sobering recognition: that it is deeply troubling to still be having the same conversations a decade on, but it also ended with determination that collective action, honest accountability, and sustained political will can still shift outcomes.
Calls were made for:
- Published, co-produced action plans with measurable outcomes
- Clear leadership responsibility for race equality
- Independent scrutiny with consequences
- Legal frameworks with real enforcement power
- Funding aligned with stated commitments
- Stronger engagement with lived-experience leadership
- Long-term investment in community infrastructure
Without confronting race directly, in data, policy, funding, leadership and culture, this risks meaningful reform remaining out of reach.
Author
Meka Beresford
Head of Policy
