Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what estimate he has made of the proportion of offenders in youth custody who are black, Asian and minority ethnic in each year since May 2010.
The Youth Justice Board for England and Wales (YJB) is working in partnership with a wide range of public, private and voluntary and community sector organisations to seek to take preventative action to ensure that young people do not end up in custody. This includes programmes to work with certain ethnic groups and disadvantaged young people, to prevent them from becoming involved in crime.
The estimated proportions of black, Asian and minority ethnic (BME) offenders in youth custody are shown in Table 1 below:
Proportion of under-18 BME offenders (including Asian, black, mixed and other ethnicity) in custody based on the average number of offenders in the 12 months starting May 2010 to the 12 months starting May 2013.
BME | Average no. of BME offenders in youth custody | Average no. of offenders in youth custody | Percentage proportion of BME offenders in youth custody |
2010/11 | 600 | 2,023 | 30% |
2011/12 | 568 | 1,953 | 29% |
2012/13 | 564 | 1,499 | 38% |
2013/14 | 465 | 1,217 | 38% |
More detailed figures showing the number of offenders in youth custody who are black, Asian and minority ethnic in each month from April 2005 to August 2014 can be accessed via following link (see tab 2.6 Ethnicity):
The data provided is a monthly snapshot of the custodial population in the secure estate for children and young people, taken on the last Friday of the month or first Friday of the following month, depending on which is nearer to the actual month end.
From April 2012, the under-18 custody population data comes from the eAsset database. This is the booking system the Youth Justice Board's Placements Service uses to book young people into custody.
The information prior to April 2012 comes from the Youth Justice Board's (YJB’s) Secure Accommodation Clearing House System (SACHS) database.