An investigation into racial bias in court case outcomes in England and Wales

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Black Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) citizens in England and Wales are overrepresented at almost every stage within the criminal justice system, this is particularly so for black citizens. The primary aim of the proposed research is to use the newly available magistrates' and Crown Court datasets to increase understanding of racial disparities within the criminal justice system. Understanding these disparities, and identifying potential explanations, is a crucial step in addressing them.The Lammy Review revealed that BAME overrepresentation within the criminal justice system costs around 309 million per year. Hence, there is an economic as well as a moral imperative to better understand and ultimately reduce BAME overrepresentation within the system.Lammy highlights the lack of trust in the criminal justice system amongst BAME communities. The recent Black Lives Matter racial injustice protests in Britain, were fuelled by long-standing racial inequalities. They were, in part, a consequence of lack of trust in the police and criminal justice system amongst BAME citizens. Lack of trust means BAME defendants are more likely to plead not guilty, if then found guilty this will increase the severity of their sentence, further fuelling inequality. At the same time, conviction ratios are lower for BAME defendants. This may mean that BAME suspects are being charged on a lower standard of evidence. It may also be due to BAME defendants being more likely to be tried in the Crown Court, which has a lower conviction rate compared to the magistrates' court.One of Lammy's recommendations is the principle of 'explain or reform'; if there is not an evidence-based explanation for apparent disparities, then reforms should be introduced to address them. Lammy points out that there continues to be a tendency to dismiss disparities between racial groups by suggesting they may be due to other factors, such as a group's age profile, rather than ethnicity itself. Currently available statistics relating to potential bias within the criminal justice system are not sufficiently developed. They tend not to control for other factors. The proposed research project will address these issues, statistically controlling for other factors that are available within the magistrates' and Crown Court data, such as age and offence, unfortunately it will not be possible to control for variables that are not available, such as religion. The project will include the following:Appropriate regression analyses will be conducted using the separate magistrates' and Crown Court datasets to examine relationships between race and outcomes of cases, controlling for other factors available in the datasets. In addition, the project will examine whether race and gender interact in relation to case outcomes. As the same people will appear in each dataset on a number of occasions and as defendants are nested within courts, there may be a case for multilevel modelling. This will be used if appropriate.SQL programming will be used to produce a dataset with one row per defendant with additional variables, such as the number of prosecutions per defendant. This dataset, which will be made available to other researchers, will be used to further investigate lower conviction ratios for BAME defendants. The project will examine race in relation to: the extent to which the same defendant is prosecuted on multiple occasions over a time period (repeat use); and the proportion of cases for each individual defendant which result in a conviction or otherwise. This would be broken down for the magistrates' and Crown Court, throwing further light on the lower conviction rates for Crown Courts.The project will also compare outcomes of triable either way cases in the magistrates' and Crown Court, taking account of other factors, such as offence type, and consider the effect of this in relation to BAME defendants being more likely to be tried in the Crown Court.