The Lammy Review confirmed in 2017 that racial disproportionality exists at every stage of the criminal justice system, yet official data on women’s diversion and ethnicity has never been easily accessible or collated in one place. Commissioned by the Centre for Justice Innovation and funded by the JABBS Foundation for Women and Girls, this scoping study by our Associate, Russell Webster, brings that data together for the first time, covering stop and search, custody after arrest, cautions and remand. Because no ethnicity data is published for community resolutions, the most common form of diversion, the study also gathered new data through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, completed by 35 of the 43 police forces in England and Wales. As far as we are aware, this is the first publicly available data on how community resolutions are used for women from different ethnic groups.
The initial findings show disparities affecting Black women at every stage examined. Compared with White women, Black women were 1.9 times more likely to be stopped and searched, 1.2 times more likely to be held in police custody after arrest and 1.3 times more likely to be remanded in custody at magistrates’ court. They were also 1.9 times less likely than White British women to receive a community resolution. Women of mixed ethnicity faced similar disparities in custody and remand decisions. These figures come from different datasets, and the report sets out significant limitations in how ethnicity is recorded, but together they suggest that women treated differently at one stage may face compounding disadvantage as they move through the system.