Black and Minority Ethnic People's Perceptions Of Fair Treatment By The CJS

The Criminal Justice System (CJS) Race Unit today publishes a MORI report detailing perceptions of ethnic minorities regarding whether they feel they would be equitably treated by the CJS.

The research found:

• The police were the most well-known agency of the CJS. Most people's opinions of the CJS tended to be based on what people thought of the police and most people knew little about the other agencies that are part of the CJS and , in the main, most people talked about their experiences of the CJS negatively.
• Many people felt the CJS does treat people from ethnic minority backgrounds unfairly. This was not the case across all the groups, but was most common among younger, male and Black participants. Even those who were more positive about the CJS felt that stories in the media highlighted that racism and unfair treatment does exist.
• Some groups felt there is a distinct pecking order in terms of fair treatment, with Black people likely to be treated most unfairly, followed by Asians and then White people. However, some Muslim respondents felt that they were most likely to be treated unfairly following the events of September 11th 2001.
• In the discussions we asked people to tell us what they meant by "unfair" treatment. The things people mentioned were: being targeted by stop and search, not being spoken to politely or treated with respect, and the CJS (particularly the police) not taking crime in areas where Black and Minority Ethnic communities live as seriously as elsewhere.

Technical details

16 focus groups were conducted across England, groups were homogeneous in terms of the ethnic backgrounds of respondents. All groups were conducted between 27th April and 1st June 2005. For further details see: www.cjsonline.gov.uk/the_cjs/whats_new/news-3217.html