Page 24 - JUSTICE Tackling Racial Injustice - Children and the Youth Justice System

there continues to be a lack of support services available to help girls and young
women.
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2.8 These and other structural issues provide the necessary context for
understanding BAME children’s experience of the YJS. In the face of such
challenges, criminal justice agencies disproportionately suspect and focus on
punishing BAME children, while neglecting to provide adequate support and
resources. Key examples of damaging measures that impact on BAME
communities are well known: stop and search, gang enforcement and
PREVENT. We outline these below and make recommendations to mitigate
their effects.

Stop and Search

2.9 Stop and search is one of the principal contributors to the fractious relationship
between police and BAME communities. Reports from Stopwatch, Release,
the Criminal Justice Alliance and the Equality and Human Rights
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Commission, among others, have detailed stop and search’s disproportionate
use and impact on BAME people. It is also one of the main ways that children
are brought into the YJS. Combined with current drug laws, it is the largest
contributor to the disproportionate representation of Black people in the CJS.

2.10 Nevertheless, the police are known to praise its purported value in addressing
crime. The Metropolitan Commissioner of Police, Cressida Dick, has stated
that the tactic has been “an extremely important part of our success in the last
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few months in supressing violence in some areas.” Other officers have
expressed the view that although it may not be effective as a deterrent, “finding
one weapon means one life saved”. While some BAME people might agree
that stop and search is necessary when used appropriately, the evidence in
respect of its corrosive effect is clear, with three quarters of BAME children

45 Ibid.
46 Equality and Human Rights Commission, Stop and Think: a critical review of the use of stop and
search powers in England and Wales, (2010).
47 Home Affairs Committee, ‘Oral evidence: Serious Violence, HC 1016’, 2019, Q 312.

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