Examination of Witnesses (Questions 590
- 599)
TUESDAY 13 MARCH 2007
RT HON
BARONESS SCOTLAND
OF ASTHAL
QC, MR VERNON
COAKER MP, MS
HELEN EDWARDS
CBE, MS URSULA
BRENNAN AND
MR SIMON
KING
Q590 Chairman: Thank you for coming.
This is the final session of the inquiry into Young Black People
and the Criminal Justice System. Baroness Scotland, it is quite
clear that the great majority of young black people are not involved
in the criminal justice system. However, in our evidence, we have
had Lee Jasper, who works for the Mayor of London, saying we have
quite literally a crisis in the black community amongst our young
people; Superintendent Leroy Logan of Hackney Police referred
to the "self-destruction" of some communities of young
people who "see their youth affiliations as more important
than the norms and values of society". Those are two quite
different witnesses saying that there is a real concern about
where we are with some young black people at the moment. Do you
accept that what these witnesses are describing is a reality?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: I
accept that there is a real issue in relation to violence and
indeed criminality amongst young people as a whole. I also accept
that in certain areas, particularly in the most deprived areas
in our country, there are features which reflect that dysfunction
and that black and minority ethnic young people are particularly
affected by that. I am not sure whether implicit in the suggestion
is that this is an issue which affects black young people and
not young people generally in the deprived areas of our country.
Q591 Chairman: The witnesses need
to speak for themselves but the evidence we have heard from quite
a number of witnesses to this inquiry, whilst they have said that
similar things happen, similar levels of crime take place amongst
groups of young white people, is that nonetheless there are some
quite specific features of the way in which crime is developing,
the way the response to crime is developing, amongst young black
people which are quite distinct and the fact they are not just
the same requires different responses. Are you saying you do not
think that is the case, that identifying young black people is
a problem in the way in which we approach this issue?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: I
am saying that what we have seen with all types of offenders is
that you have to look at the socio, cultural and economic factors
which influence their offending. For instance, if one were to
look at women's offending, it takes a different pattern, in the
main, to male offending. There are different parts of the country
where you will see different trends, which are influenced by the
culture in which those individuals sit. I think it is important
to identify whether there are significant cultural differences
and other socioeconomic differences which create criminogenic
factors, which draw you to a different conclusion. I am saying
that I am a little wary of the suggestion that those factors are
dependent solely on the colour of the individual's skin and not
the position in which they find themselves.
Q592 Chairman: Perhaps I could draw
you out. What would you say the cultural factors are we might
be looking at?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: If
you look at the questions of displacement, the length of time
that people have been in the country, the nature of the areas
in which they live, I know this committee is only too familiar
with the fact that around 70% of people from ethnic minorities
live in the 88 most deprived local areas. If you then look at
the criminogenic factors which are indicative of those who end
up in our prisons, we see that failure to get a job, failure to
get accommodation, failure to keep appropriate education, low
attainment, all of these features impact negatively on those who
end up in the criminal justice system. There is a disproportionality
in the representation there.
Q593 Chairman: Would you say that
those factors are sufficient to explain why young black people
are so overrepresented in the criminal justice system and indeed
that overrepresentation appears to be getting worse?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: We
have to analyse those factors. You know that we have been analysing
those for quite some time. What I am resisting, I suppose, is
the suggestion that there are separate distinct cultural factors
which are simply predicated on black and minority ethnic individuals'
culture which predisposes them to behave in a way which is criminal.
I do not know, Chairman, whether that is what you are suggesting
to me because, if you are, then I would be resisting it.
Q594 Chairman: Let me just look at
some of the work the Home Office has done. The Criminal Justice
System Race Unit was set up five years ago. One of the Ministers
responsible for that, Paul Goggins, said that the aim was to get
behind the surface of statistics and understand the process through
which discrimination may be occurring. That was set up five years
ago. The Home Office submission to us states that it is "unable
to say with confidence ... why disproportionality occurs".
It does not look, on the face of it, as though the Home Office
has made very much progress in understanding why disproportionality
happens, let alone any progress in reducing it.
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: If
I may respectfully say so, that would be unfair. One of the things
we have all had to try and do is to look at the datasets. We have
not always had the data as to how things actually occur. One of
the things that we have done is to look at the whole of the criminal
justice system, to look at every stage, because we know, from
the figures that we now have, that there is inexplicable disproportionality
at every stage of the process. We have disproportionality on arrest,
disproportionality in terms of charge, disproportionality in terms
of result in court, disproportionality in terms of sentence and
disproportionality in sentence length. What we have tried to do
is to unpack those systems to better understand where the change
occurs. We look at the work we have done on stop and search action
teams and at practical policies that we can implement to see whether
we can make a difference on disproportionality. As we roll those
out, we have seen that disproportionality has changed. In one
area where there was disproportionality of 4 to 1, as a result
of operating the stop and search action plan protocol, it is now
2 to 1, so it is coming down. I think it would be unfair to say
that we are not (a) addressing this issue aggressively, but (b)
starting—and I think there is a level of acute frustration
that we have not been able to get to the kernel of this more quickly—to
find the things that will make the difference and starting to
employ those tools to change the picture.
Q595 Chairman: The difficulty that
the Committee has is that disproportionality would be very familiar
to anybody who was looking at these issues five years ago. You
mention stop and search. I wonder if you can mention any other
areas where you say in the last five years the Home Office has
actually made real progress in reducing disproportionality.
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: We
have made progress in reducing disproportionality in staffing
levels across the criminal justice system, and I think the Committee
has seen the figures where we have a much more representative
workforce; the work that we are doing through the CPS in terms
of the charging of offences has made a difference. If you then
look at the ability that we now have to address issues of race
and disproportionality in the police force and the approach that
we are taking there, all of these have an advantage, but I think
we need to look more broadly. We know that those who come into
the criminal justice system are affected by factors which are
outwith the criminal justice system. If you then look at what
we are doing across the Government and at disproportionality in
terms of outcome and performance there, it would be fair to say
that we have made a significant step change.
Q596 Chairman: It would be fair to
say, would it not, that in terms of the actual outcomes of these
processes, there are relatively few places you can point to where
we have made significant improvements across the board?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: One
of the most important, surely, is in relation to confidence. One
of the things we have been grappling with for a long time is the
confidence black and minority people have in the criminal justice
system.
Q597 Chairman: We are talking about
young black people in the criminal justice system and reducing
disproportionality there. As far as we can see, there has not
been any significant reduction in the overrepresentation of young
black people in the criminal justice system five years after the
specialist unit in the Home Office was set up to address this
issue. I am trying to get an accurate picture of where we are.
The Committee will acknowledge the changes in the composition
of the police force, staffing and so on. How much positive progress
have we made?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: That
is why I say that one of the issues of real frustration is that
we have identified a whole series of things which needed to be
changed, which we are changing. Notwithstanding the fact that
we have changed the systems, we are getting better datasets, better
analyses, the changes that we would like to see are not happening
as quickly as we would like. We now have the beginning of that
change. I gave you an example of the work that the stop and search
action team is doing and the implementation of that, I think we
should acknowledge, over the last 12 months, is already starting
to show real differences and real changes. It is our approach
towards neighbourhood policing, the involvement of communities,
the Safer Schools Partnership which involves the community and
the aftercare, the common quality of service standards, the police
performance assessment framework, all of those are contributing
to changing the template.
Q598 Chairman: You are, quite rightly,
keen to make it clear that people do not offend because of the
colour of their skin, which the Committee would entirely accept.
However, the Committee has had a lot of evidence as to what is
happening within certain sections of the black community: black
school exclusions, parenting, all those sorts of issues, the things
which take a particular form in those communities. You seem to
be reluctant to get into that area of debate. I wonder whether
this is not leading the Home Office not to look at some important
issues. We know, for example, that between 1997 and 2003 the number
of black male prisoners of British nationality increased by 21.5%
and there was a 5% rise in the number of white male prisoners
with British nationality. We have been told by your officials
that the Home Office has not conducted any detailed research,
which looks specifically at the causes behind that growth in the
minority and ethic population. Do you worry that in your understandable
desire not to say there is a particular problem with the black
community, we are failing to examine what is gong on to see if
there are particular causes, particular trends and particular
factors that need to be tackled?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: I
do not think so, for this reason. If we look at what we need to
do to change patterns of criminality, we have to better engage
communities. One of the things that we have failed to do in the
past is properly to include communities in some of the problem
solving. If you look at the things that have been successful,
the operations which have been successful to curtail criminality
in all communities, if you look particularly in relation to black
and minority ethnic communities, where we have really engaged
local communities, we have made dramatic changes. That involves
understanding the culture, understanding the intelligence in terms
of how crime operates in that area, and engaging people in a way
that makes sense. Many of the people who have spoken to you will
have talked about the fact that many communities have withdrawn
from this. If you look at what happens in many Caribbean communities,
historically there was an unwillingness to engage or combat authority.
That is changing. Lots of the quite exciting things that are happening
are happening as a result of community engagement with the services.
So the local criminal justice boards as part of their confidence
agenda have a specific target to better engage all our communities,
which includes BME communities.
Q599 Chairman: If I may, that does
not necessarily say that it would not be worthwhile asking the
question as a Home Office: why is the proportion of minority ethnic
prisoners increasing at a much more rapid rate than those of male
prisoners? Many of the witnesses we have had to this inquiry have
welcomed the inquiry because they regard it as an opportunity
to air issues that are going on in their community that they feel
have been neglected for too long. Your position seems to be one
of defending a position of saying, "We do not really want
to assert these issues for fear of alienating the communities
and not getting them on our side"?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: If
I am giving that impression, that is the antithesis of what we
are actually doing because what we have looked at, and we have
looked at very boldly, is to say, "This disproportionality
is unacceptable". We cannot understand why this is happening.
There is no justification for it when you strip away these issues.
The issue of why the black community is so concerned is absolutely
right. If you look at the victims, why are there more black victims
than white? That is not an acceptable position for us. Why are
the numbers in our prisons of black and minority ethnic people
going up? Why do we have sentencing which seems to impinge more
trenchantly on black young people than others? Why is there this
difference on the ground? These are very hard-edged questions
that we are asking again and again and again at every stage because
we do not accept that the disproportionality we currently see
is explicable and therefore acceptable. If it was disproportionality
based on a sound series of reasons, then we would be much more
comfortable but we are not comfortable. If this Committee has
gained the impression that that is not at the forefront of the
work we are doing, then I very much regret that and would apologise
if I, in anything I have said, have added to it because that is
the antithesis of what we are trying to do. We are absolutely
determined that we will change this because it is not acceptable.
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