David Lammy Criminal Justice Review

Early this year Labour MP David Lammy was appointed by PM David Cameron to lead a government review of the UK’s criminal justice system and its discrimination of BAME people. This week he announced an open call for evidence from anyone who wants to contribute their own experiences.

Lammy penned an article for the Guardian discussing the current troubling statistics about Black people behind bars in the UK and the direction his review of the discrimination will take. He wrote:

I will examine whether the system treats people fairly – as well as what more can be done to help offenders from minority backgrounds turn their lives around.”

He described the incarceration rates for BAME people as an urgent problem in Britain where black people are four times more likely to be behind bars than white people, and the entire criminal justice system is lacking in diversity. Lammy visited Pentonville prison where a Muslim prisoner told him:

My solicitor was white, my barrister was white, the prosecutor was white, the judge was white, the jury was white, and when I first went to prison the governor was white and so were all the guards.”

Lammy called on the UK to look to the US, a country with a disturbing rate of minority incarcerations and crime, where although the problem is severe it is being seriously addressed by the US to the point that those rates fell for the first time in forty years.

The review will look into diversity within the system, the “implicit bias” around “white-sounding” names versus minority names, and discrimination within the police, the courts, and the legal support minorities receive. The report is scheduled to complete in spring 2017 and will hopefully provide the insight the government needs to tackle the discrimination within a branch of their institution. 

Share your experiences with the Lammy Review

Mary Schlichte