Page 105 - JUSTICE Tackling Racial Injustice - Children and the Youth Justice System

Cultural shifts can be engendered through better data collection, ensuring
proper records are collected at every stage of a child’s interaction with the
youth justice system, mandating that its agencies always prioritise the welfare
of a child over any punitive response, and implementing effective training
programmes. Where we have seen policies that are fundamentally
discriminatory, we have called for their abolition or review, from the Gangs
Violence Matrix to the regrettable use (and expansion) of stop and search
powers under section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994.
These recommendations are not made lightly, and are firmly grounded in
evidence, analysis, and BAME communities’ lived experiences.

5.9 It is clear that a number of our recommendations may have some modest, up-
front cost implications. For instance, the establishment of a National Diversion
Framework, piloting of restorative practice circles or the expansion of welfare
hubs at police custody suites. However, we cannot shy away from investing in
children’s futures. It is our considered view that each proposal would more
than pay for itself, both in terms of reducing the pressures on the criminal
justice system by improving community relations, fairly identifying and
investigating crime, decreasing levels of crime, keeping children out of
custody and most importantly by helping children grow up to fulfil their
potential, removed from endless cycles of criminalisation. A failure to make
such investments will reap more significant costs in future, at both a financial
and human level.

5.10 The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has provided a devasting context in which
much of this report was written and published. During the first lockdown in
March – June 2020, the use of stop and search rose by 40% in London alone,
with the tactic used roughly 1100 times a day, mainly against BAME
individuals, many of whom were key workers or those otherwise unable to
work from home. With the issue of racial disparity all the more apparent in this
light, we hope this report can do justice to those who risk their lives, and ensure
that the full attention of the State is directed to righting the manifest wrong that
is continued racial discrimination in the criminal justice system.

5.11 Finally, we fully recognise that it is impossible to capture all voices, thoughts,
and proposals in one report. Rather, we wish to highlight what we see as a way
forward, an outline toward a system that can work better for each child. While
this report is written with the experiences of BAME children and young adults
at its heart, we expect its recommendations to have wider resonance. For

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