Differential treatment in the youth justice system - Equality and ...

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DIFFERENTIAL TREATMENT IN THE YOUTH JUSTICE SYSTEMControlling for case characteristics and the YOT area, Asian girls had lower odds ofbeing prosecuted when compared with whites, while the odds for mixed race girlswere higher than for whites. Again, as with boys, all areas were more likely to havecases recommended for prosecution than given a pre-court disposal compared withArea B (see Table D4 in Appendix D).Pre-court decisionsControlling for case characteristics and YOT area:• The odds of a mixed race young male being prosecuted was 2 timeshigher than the odds of a white young male.• The odds of a mixed race young female being prosecuted was 2.1 timeshigher than the odds of a white young female.• The odds of an Asian young female being prosecuted was half the odds ofa white young female.Decision to acquit/ dismiss/withdrawIt has already been discussed that prosecutions were more likely to fail in casesinvolving black defendants than whites. Feilzer and Hood (2004) suggested thatblack boys were more likely to be acquitted at least in part because they weremore likely to plead not guilty. For the current sample, a higher proportion of blackdefendants pleaded not guilty. However, the proportion of young people pleadingnot guilty whose cases were dismissed was similar across ethnic groups (seeTable D5 in Appendix D).Controlling for age and case characteristics, 50 black boys were more likely to havetheir cases dismissed than white boys (see Table D6 of Appendix D), with ‘not guilty’pleas producing the largest odds for having cases dismissed. Controlling for age and50Case characteristics include: whether the young person was remanded prior to sentence, whether theywere sentenced in Crown Court, if they pleaded not guilty, number of previous convictions, whether theyhave had a previous custodial sentence, if they are classed as a persistent young offender, if the caseinvolves a breach of an order, number of different offences involved in the case, type of offence,seriousness of offence and an interaction between seriousness of offence and violence against the personand seriousness of offence and drugs. Area was not included in the model for young males, as thisviolated the assumptions of logistic random effects and was not a good fit of the model as tested with theHosmer and Lemeshow test. If the violations were ignored, Areas E, I and L increased the odds whileAreas G and J decreased the odds of having a case dismissed when compared with Area B. The sameethnicity findings resulted when areas were not included in the model.81
PASSING THROUGH THE YOUTH JUSTICE SYSTEMcase characteristics, 51 black girls were also more likely to have their casesdismissed. However, when the YOT area was included in the model, this findingbecame insignificant (see Table D7 of Appendix D).Dismissed casesControlling for case characteristics:• The odds of a black young male having their case discontinued was 1.57times higher than the odds of a white young male.Decision to remandThe decision to remand a young person into secure accommodation has beenviewed as a ‘critical decision point in the criminal justice system since defendantswho are remanded in custody pre-trial subsequently are more likely to receive acustodial sentence if found guilty’ (Bowling and Phillips, 2002:170). Feilzer and Hood(2004) found evidence of differential treatment of young black men, but were unableto establish whether this reflected discriminatory practices as their data did notcapture salient factors in remand decisions, such as stable home environment.This same caveat applies to the current dataset.Six per cent of black boys were remanded into secure accommodation comparedwith 3% of young Asian, mixed race and white men. The proportion is smaller thanthat presented by Feilzer and Hood, which could be due in part to the stage at whichdetails of the remand status were taken. 52 In the current court sample, 40% of allcases were sentenced, with the remainder bailed (39%), receiving an undefined‘other’ outcome (15%), or issued with a warrant without bail (3%).Controlling for case characteristics (see Table D8 of Appendix D) with a pooledsample of boys and girls, 53 Asian and black offenders were more likely to be givena remand than whites. This is a slightly different finding from Feilzer and Hood’sresults, which showed significant differences for young black and mixed race boyscompared with whites.515253Case characteristics for girls were the same for boys excluding the interactions between serious offencesand type of offence.Information on remand comes from the last stages recorded from Youth Offending Information System(YOIS). It may be that decisions made earlier but not captured in the database would increase theproportions of remands.Only 18 girls from the sample of 1420 were recorded as being remanded into secure estate.82
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Equality and Human Rights Commissio
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© Equality and Human Rights Commis
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Appendix A: Area profiles 97Appendi
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Tables and figuresPageTables3.1 Pop
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GlossaryBCUBasic Command UnitCJSCri
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARYAssessing the reas
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARYPolice training•
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INTRODUCTIONover-represented in rob
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INTRODUCTIONthe increase in prosecu
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INTRODUCTIONIn contrast, a MORI sel
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INTRODUCTIONexplanation is that you
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INTRODUCTIONin itself, if the socia
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RESEARCH METHODS2. Research methods
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RESEARCH METHODS29% was white; 6% b
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RESEARCH METHODSfor several differe
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YOUNG PEOPLE’S ENTRY INTO THE YOU
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Page 45 and 46: YOUNG PEOPLE’S ENTRY INTO THE YOU
Page 51 and 52: UNDERSTANDING THE POLICING OF YOUNG
Page 81 and 82: PASSING THROUGH THE YOUTH JUSTICE S
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Page 105 and 106: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS6. Discus
Page 107 and 108: DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONSdefendant
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Page 113 and 114: APPENDICES10- to 17-year-old popula
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Page 117 and 118: APPENDICESAppendix B:Tables of offe
Page 119 and 120: APPENDICESCustody record dataTable
Page 121 and 122: APPENDICESTable B7Area C custody re
Page 123 and 124: APPENDICESAppendix C:YOT data sampl
Page 125 and 126: APPENDICESTable C3ONS estimated 10-
Page 127 and 128: APPENDICESTable C5Profile of crimes
Page 129 and 130: APPENDICESTable C6 Profile of crime
Page 131 and 132: APPENDICESTable C7aCase profile% Ma
Page 133 and 134: APPENDICESTable C8Proportion of off
Page 135 and 136: Table C10Proportion of disposals gi
Page 137 and 138: Table C12Proportion of sentenced di
Page 139 and 140: Appendix D:Multivariate logistic re
Page 141 and 142: APPENDICESTable D3Model of prosecut
Page 143 and 144: APPENDICESTable D6Model of dismissa
Page 145 and 146: APPENDICESTable D8: Model of Remand
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APPENDICESTable D10Asset sample, mo
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APPENDICESTable D11Asset sample, mo
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Table D13Model of community sentenc
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APPENDICESTable D15 Model of custod
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APPENDICESTable D17Length of custod
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REFERENCESReferencesAudit Commissio
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REFERENCESMirrlees-Black, C., Budd,
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ContactsEnglandEquality and Human R
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