08/02/2023
Police Oracle
The Crown Prosecution Service has today published research which has found that Black and minority ethnic defendants are significantly more likely to be charged for a comparable offence than white British defendants in England and Wales.
We have known for many years that there is an over-representation of ethnic minorities within the criminal justice system with much of the evidence contained in the 2017 Review undertaken by David Lammy MP.
The review noted the greatest disparities appeared at the point of stop and search, custodial remands and the prison population. In its examination of CPS charging decisions from 2014 and 2015, Lammy concluded that these were broadly proportionate – the CPS prosecuted the same proportion of cases across all ethnic groups. In 2014/15 irrespective of a defendant’s ethnicity, the CPS decided to prosecute in approximately 70 to 72% of cases. The new research conducted by the University of Leeds contradicts these findings.
How charging decisions are made
The Crown Prosecution Service shares responsibility for making charging decisions with the police. In less serious cases, which account for around two thirds of all criminal offences, the police make the decision about whether a suspect can be charged with an offence.
In more serious cases, the charging decision is made by the CPS. In these cases, the police will conduct an investigation and send a file to the CPS only when they think the case against the suspect is strong enough that it has the potential to pass the CPS charging test.
There are two components to this charging test. The first (known as the “Evidential Stage") asks whether the evidence is sufficient to provide a realistic prospect of conviction against each suspect on each charge.
If a case passes the first stage of the test the prosecutor will then consider the second stage which asks whether it is in the public interest to prosecute this person for this offence. The criteria at this second stage include the seriousness of the offence, the harm caused to the victim and the suspect’s age and level of maturity at the time of the incident.
The research
The University of Leeds found that there is evidence of disproportionality in the outcomes of the CPS’ legal decision making. It found disproportionality relating to ethnicity with statistically significant differences in the outcomes of CPS charging decisions. The research is rigorous because ethnicity was isolated as a variable; in other words other variables such as age, sex and crime type were taken into account to ensure that like was compared with like.
White British suspects had the lowest charge rate compared to all other ethnicities with 69.6% of cases resulting in a charge. By contrast the charge rate for other ethnic groups ranged between 71.3% and 81.3% with people of mixed heritage most likely to be prosecuted. The researchers found that this pattern was relatively consistent across England and Wales.
Our chart below shows the findings in full.
