Page 21 - JUSTICE Tackling Racial Injustice - Children and the Youth Justice System

II. SUSPICION OF BAME CHILDREN

We know the police treat Black people differently…it means that we do not feel safe
ever.

My next interaction after that was being pulled over because there were suspicions
that I had a knife on me; and I was about six years old coming home from the park.
34
– Children speaking to the Home Affairs Select Committee
Introduction

2.1 BAME children experience the YJS very differently from, and often more
negatively than, White children.

2.2 The history of Black people in the UK is rich and varied. However, it is marred
by a persisting context of discrimination in the CJS against BAME people, as
articulated in numerous reports and the voices of BAME people themselves.
This goes as far back as the post-war arrival of migrants from the Caribbean to
the ongoing Windrush scandal, as well as events such as the 1958 Notting Hill
riots, the Brixton riots, the Broadwater Farm riots, the murder of Stephen
Lawrence and its subsequent investigation, the 2011 Riots and the Home
Office’s hostile environment policy. A common theme is the experience of
injustice and mistreatment felt by Black people, which forms part of the
collective memory of the Black community’s children and young adults today.
Years of continued discrimination have meant that Black boys in particular are
often erroneously associated with serious violence and so-called ‘gang’
culture. Within this context, the CJS has failed to meet the expectations of
Black communities that they, and their children, will be treated fairly and justly
at each stage, for example, in policing and criminal justice responses that
negatively impact them.

2.3 Muslim people – and those who present as Muslim – face similar hardship to
other BAME communities. For instance, among 16-24 year-olds of Pakistani
and Bangladeshi origin, the unemployment rate in 2019 was 23%, compared

34 Home Affairs Select Committee, Serious youth violence, Sixteenth report of session 2017-2019,
(2019).

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