Youth Justice Statistics

Lord Woolley of Woodford Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for her question. The number of children being sentenced has decreased considerably over the past 10 years. However, we recognise that this decrease has fallen unevenly for children of different ethnicities—which is a matter of concern, as I have said. I do not have the data for different localities at this time, but I will be very happy to respond in writing to the noble Baroness.

[Lord Woolley of Woodford (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I sat on the David Lammy review into racism within the criminal justice system in 2017, which that laid bare the shocking data that 45% of youth incarceration was black, Asian and minority ethnic. Fast forward to 2021, and that has increased to 55%—going the wrong way. Given that we have a thoroughly discredited Dr Sewell race report, I make a plea to the Government to sit down with me and other interested parties and begin to formulate a comprehensive race equality strategy to deal with this and other issues.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I am very happy to take that offer to sit down with the department back to it, and I will be in touch with the noble Lord.