Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what recent assessment he has made of the extent to which BAME people are over-represented in the prison system.

Disparities in the number of minority ethnic men, as well as women and young people, in the justice system is monitored and the data, including analysis of relative differences between groups, creates a detailed picture of where over-representation occurs. A comprehensive assessment of the ethnic population across the criminal justice system, including in prisons, published on 2 December, can be found in the Ethnicity and the Criminal Justice system. This now includes data-sharing on the educational background of offenders, broken down by ethnicity. The Youth Justice Board’s report Understanding Racial Disparity was also published on 2 December.

Operational agencies covering criminal justice undertake their own analysis and develop measures to address differences where they cannot be explained or justified by other factors, such as offence type or geography. Detailed accounts of the steps being taken to improve the outcomes of Ethnic Minority men in the criminal justice system can be found in the published updates Tackling Racial Disparity 2018 and 2020.