Issue 182  27th February 2021

Report - Disproportionate Use of Stop and Search

Black people are nine times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched, according to a report published today by the inspectorate of constabulary, which says police forces still cannot fully explain why the controversial power is being used disproportionately... According to the inspectorate's report, in 2019/20, black, Asian and minority ethnic people were over four times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people. For black people, this was nine times more likely. Black people were 18 times more likely than white people to be searched under section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. The report says a failure to record ethnicity data in an increasing proportion of records means some forces are not seeing the full picture.

The full report can be read here.

Report - Tackling Racial Injustice: Children and the Youth Justice System

This Working Party of JUSTICE, which publishes its report Tackling Racial Injustice: Children and the Youth Justice System on 25 February 2021, seeks to examine the causes of BAME disproportionality in the Youth Justice System (YJS) of England and Wales...

Key recommendations include:

• Suspending blanket use of ‘section 60’ stop and search powers for serious violence in a locality, until the Home Office has evaluated its impact and effectiveness;
• Abolishing the ‘Gangs Violence Matrix’, which indiscriminately includes thousands of BAME children and young adults, threatening their access to education and jobs;
• Preventing the unfair use of Drill music as bad character evidence in court, to tackle the corrosive effect of portraying a genre of music as innately illegal, dangerous and problematic;
• Creating a national framework for diversion, to ensure children everywhere can receive specialist support not prosecution;
• Expanding initiatives that give children a voice, through access to translators where there is a language barrier, as well as other innovative methods.
• Enforcing mandatory specialist child-focused training for lawyers, as well as high-standard cultural competency training for all criminal justice agencies, so that all those who work with children are able to do so effectively;
• Urgently improving information available to magistrates at bail hearings, so that remand in custody is significantly reduced;
• Requiring all complaints concerning children to be investigated by the Independent Office for Police Conduct; and
• Mandating the police turn on their body worn video cameras before every stop and search, so that improper conduct is prevented or caught.

Report - Remote Advice at the Police Station

Fair Trials, Transform Justice and the National Appropriate Adult Network are calling for an end to remote legal assistance in police custody, which should take place with immediate effect for children and mentally vulnerable adults. In “Not remotely fair? Access to a lawyer in the police station during the Covid-19 pandemic”, the criminal justice charities have raised concerns that remote legal assistance is threatening people’s fundamental rights and putting police investigations at risk... Today’s report is based on the findings of a survey of appropriate adults, who continued to attend police custody to support children and vulnerable adults. It shows that remote interviews are having a negative impact on children and vulnerable adults who have been detained in custody. The charities are calling for PACE rules, which require legal advice to be in person, to be applied with immediate effect for children and vulnerable adults and as soon as possible for all suspects.

The full report can be read here.