The Lammy Review


The Lammy Review is a 2017 review on discrimination within the policing and criminal justice systems in the UK, led by David Lammy and commissioned by David Cameron and Theresa May. The Lammy Review found significant racial bias in the UK justice system.

Key findings

Understanding BAME disproportionality

Gaps in CJS data impacting accountability

The Lammy Review called for the UK criminal justice system to have more scrutiny in their data on ethnicity and religion, in order to move towards fairer treatment. It highlighted some gaps in information recorded. These gaps in reporting make it impossible to analyse whether disproportionalities are a result of charging rates, sentencing decisions or reoffending rates. The review concluded that fair treatment was more likely when institutions are open to scrutiny.
The courts and Crown Prosecution Service do not record religion, which makes it harder to hold them accountable for discrimination. Prisons do record religion and have seen an increase in the number of Muslim prisoners by 50% in the prior ten years, from 8,900 to 13,200, but the lack on data at the courts and CPS obscure this fact. Muslims make up 15% of the prison population despite making up only 5% of the prison population. Since information on religion is not recorded at the earlier stages of the CJS, too little is known to determine the true cause of this disproportionality. The Lammy Review proved that this significant increase in prisoners could not be linked to terrorism offences, because only 175 Muslims were convicted of terrorism-related offences between 2001 and 2012.
Despite this the most prominent frustration of Muslim prisoners has been found to be stereotypical portrayals of Islam, leading to unfair treatment and higher levels of restraint and segregation being used against them by staff.
Gypsies, Roma and Irish travellers are estimated to account for 5% of male prisoners, despite accounting for only 0.1% of the UK population, however this is not covered in the official CJS monitoring systems. Leaving this information out could be particularly damaging to a vulnerable group, since the Lammy Review also found that 27% of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller prisoners reported feeling depressed or suicidal on arrival compared with 15% of all prisoners. Furthermore only 35% received information on what support was available to them compared to 44% of all prisoners.

Relative Rate Index

The Lammy Review proposes that the UK should adopt a similar system to the US for attempting to gain insight into why there are disproportionalities in ethnicity at each stage of the CJS and tracing the impact of decisions made at each stage. A relative rate index is effectively the number of people experiencing an event or outcome out of the total number who were ‘at risk’ for experiencing the event or outcome. The comparison to previous stages is particularly useful because proportionality numbers alone do not pinpoint which stages of the CJS are particularly influenced by ethnic bias.
The Lammy Review uses the example of rates of proceeding women's cases at the Crown Court or Magistrates' Court to demonstrate the method used and found that once charged Black women were 63% more likely to be proceeded to the Crown Court than White women, and Asian women were 108% more likely than White women.

Recommendations

Plea Decisions

This section presents the significant difference in plea decisions between BAME and White ethnic groups and explains the disproportional effects of the justice system on these groups.

The role of plea decisions

Plea decisions are critical to Criminal Justice System, by providing incentives for those who have committed crimes to admit guilt, in order to prevent the stress placed on victims. Those who plead guilty can see sentences reduce by a third, or gain access to interventions which seek to keep them out of prison altogether. An example case study can be found in the Humberside Adult Female Triage pilot.

BAME plea decisions

Several older and more recent studies have found that BAME defendants are less likely to enter guilty pleas, in most types of offences. The Relative Rate Index analysis of 2014/15 data found that:
The primary reason for this difference in plea decisions is a lack of trust in the Criminal Justice System among BAME communities. This makes BAME defendants less likely to cooperate with the police or trust the advice of legal aid solicitors, who can be seen as part of the ‘system’. At the same time, Black, Asian and Mixed ethnic defendants are all more likely to request legal advice in police station than their white counterparts. Instead, it is that many BAME defendants neither trust the advice that they are given, nor believe they will receive a fair hearing from magistrates. In some cases, this means defendants pleading not guilty and then electing for a jury trial at the Crown Court, rather than be tried in a Magistrate’s Court, despite the higher sentencing powers available at the Crown Court.
The suggestions as part of this section were that:
In England and Wales, an innovative scheme named Operation Turning Point was piloted from November 2011 to July 2014. It was designed with racial disparities in plea decisions in mind, and saw offenders participate without the requirement that they first admit an offence. Defendants were given the opportunity to go through a structured intervention, such as drug treatment, instead of facing criminal charges. The latest published information indicates that almost as many BAME offenders took part in the scheme as White offenders. Early evaluation of the scheme indicates that the risk of reoffending is reduced and that the cost is lower than traditional prosecutions.
The suggestions as part of this section were that:

Rehabilitation

This section found that there had been a lac of improvement in rehabilitation for BAME groups.

Probation

The report found that Criminal Rehabilitation Companies, private sector companies tasked with rehabilitation low to medium risk offenders, are not giving BAME groups the specialized services that they require. Furthermore it found that offenders managed by the National Probation Service, public sector organization dealing with high risk offenders, are more likely to receive the types of support needed than with the CRCs and that CRCs were not involving specialist BAME organizations in the way that they were intended to.
The suggestions as part of this section were that:
The report found that there has been a history of knowledge regarding BAME children being disproportionately effected by the Criminal Justice System, specifically Youth Offending Teams.
This previous work found that:
This report found that there had been no substantial follow up of the previous findings.
The suggestions as part of this section were that:
The report found that work reduces dependency on crime and that training increases self-respect and stake in society. Therefore work is key to reducing re-offending. Despite this, previous convictions have a hugely detrimental effect on future work prospects and BAME groups are disproportionately effected as they are already more likely to be discriminated in employment. The report finds that the Criminal Record system is key in this system and needs reform.
The suggestions as part of this section were that:
The Lammy Review was published in September 2017 and the Conservative government published the first Race Disparity Audit in October 2017. The RDA found that children in Black and Asian households were around twice as likely to be in persistent poverty, with 1 in 4 children in Asian households and 1 in 5 children in Black households in persistent poverty, compared to 1 in 10 children in White households. It stated that Black, Pakistani and Bangladeshi people were especially likely to live in areas of deprivation.
The government then issued a response document in December 2017, setting out how they hoped to responde to each of his 35 recommendations. In June 2020 David Lammy questioned the progress of the Government's implementation of the Lammy Review. Alex Chalk responded that "Sixteen recommendations have been completed. Two have been rejected and seventeen are in progress. Of those seventeen in progress, eleven will be completed within twelve months and six thereafter." David Lammy responded that he was "disappointed 16 of the recommendations I made in the Lammy Review, had been 'implemented'. When in fact the majority of them had not." He added that there is a "huge difference between implementing and completing the actions you committed to following my recommendations". He further stated how injustoices highlighted in the review had got worse since, saying "When I completed the review, 41% of children in prison came from a Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic background. Now the figure is 51%. The proportion of all stop and searches on black people has increased by 69% over 5 years. The average custodial sentence for a black person is almost 10 years longer than a white person."