Building race equity into practice: lessons from the focused deterrence programme 

When a programme combines enforcement and support to prevent violence, the question of racial equity isn’t optional; it is fundamental. Since 2023, I been working as a Race Equity Consultant across the Focused Deterrence (FD) programme in Leicester, Coventry and Wolverhampton (CIRV), and Nottingham, and providing light-touch support to Greater Manchester, where the team had their own core race equity consultants. Over this period, we have achieved progress, navigated real constraints, and learned what it takes to attempt to embed a race-equity lens in high-stakes, time-limited delivery. 

This reflection shares key learning from that journey and offers considerations for future consultants and funders who want to make race equity integral, not incidental, to delivery. 

1. Relationships before results 

You cannot build race equity by ticking a box; you start through relationships. Race-equity work in the FD context has been deeply relational: it has required trust, time, and a willingness to engage honestly with power and identity. 

In Leicester, the programme’s Community Oversight Group (COG) exemplified this. Formed of community members with lived experience and local insight, the COG shifted the dynamic from “we’re checking your data” to “we’re working together.” Members were supported, encouraged and trusted to ask challenging questions. As the programme lead explained: 

“The group enables their space in their time… having a dedicated forum to obtain those insights is critical.” 

That commitment created a culture of transparency and mutual respect.  

In CIRV, my quarterly discussions with the programme lead and project management support / project navigator became spaces for reflective questioning: “What is the effect of our process on young Black and mixed-heritage men?” These exchanges helped teams move from enforcement-driven framing to more equitable analysis of impact.

This work was not easy. It involved navigating emotion, structural barriers and staff turnover. Yet, the relationships built now serve as legacy, showing that sustained dialogue and reflection are the real foundations for more equitable delivery.

2. Learning, iteration and quality over speed 

Race equity in practice doesn’t arrive fully formed; it is iterative. Each FD site was a learning environment where practice evolved through cycles of reflection, adjustment and review.

In CIRV, the project management support / project navigator progressively improved the dashboard from basic ethnicity counts to more layered age-ethnicity-exit analysis, building a clearer picture of whether there was any disproportionality and at what stages. 

Across all three sites, learning and development for practitioners, while not structured learning pathways, included a variety of one-off training, reflective sessions, lived-experience panels, interdisciplinary/partner dialogue and mentoring discussions that built shared understanding and confidence.

The YEF Race Equity Implementation Guidance underpinned this approach, highlighting data quality, community voice, and structural awareness as essential ingredients of equitable delivery. 

Crucially, we focused on quality over quantity. As one programme lead said, “your constant reminder to do fewer things but do them better” changed how the team approached progress. Even within short timescales, this commitment to reflection rather than speed created meaningful conversations that strengthen the approach to embedding race equity and understanding. 

3. Data, decision-making and structural awareness 

If race equity is a lens through which everything should be viewed, then data and decision-making are the mechanisms through which it becomes visible. Systems that ignore racialised inequities and intersectionality risk reinforcing them. 

The YEF’s review on racial disproportionality notes: 

“Children from some minority ethnic backgrounds are significantly over-represented in the youth justice system… Black children aged 10–17 make up 6% of the population, but represent 10% of arrests, 15% of stop-and-searches and 24% of the monthly youth-custody population.” 

Across the FD sites, data practice improved, ethnicity was better captured, and there were more regular trend reviews, but as expected, gaps remained. One programme lead noted:

“We mostly focus on analysing ethnicity data… because of small female or older participant numbers, we haven’t overlaid additional characteristics at this stage.” 

That tension is real: small samples make intersectional analysis difficult, but ignoring them risks hiding disparities. My role became helping teams turn reflection in to action by asking:

• How is ethnicity or context discussed when someone is flagged as high-risk? 
• Which groups leave support early, and why? 
• If mixed-heritage or Black participants face higher enforcement rates, what adjustments have followed? 

In Nottingham, a small pattern showing higher enforcement for Black participants led to a focused conversation in our quarterly review, exploring what factors contributed and what future data scrutiny might reveal. That willingness to question, not defend, is what turns data into change. 

4. Bridging enforcement culture with equity culture 

FD programmes sit in a dual space, enforcement and support, and the race-equity consultant must navigate both without losing balance (or undermining the evaluation). As a Black, neurodivergent consultant, I found that holding that tension between challenge and partnership, between structural critique and operational realism, was itself a core skill. 

Early on, I learned that one of the most useful questions to ask was: 

“What happens here that shows race equity in action?” 

It’s not about apportioning blame, but about revealing how everyday practices might reproduce inequity unless consciously reviewed. For example: 

• “Why is the referral panel majority white male, and how might that shape perceptions of risk or support?” 
• “Which specific Asian ethnic groups does this trend relate to, and what does that tell us about how responses should differ?” 
• “If certain decisions are made solely by police officers, what are the implications?” 

Positionality matters. I brought lived experience, Black neurodivergent insight and a background in child and family welfare to each site. Others – programme leads, data analysts, practitioners, evaluators and funder staff brought their own expertise. Together, we aimed to see beyond an “all-lives matter” approach and examine what genuine equity requires in practice. 

5. Considerations for future equity consultants – how can we… 

Drawing on two years of collaboration, here are five considerations for future consultants and the YEF: 

1. Embed from Day 1? Make race equity integral to programme design, not a retrofit. 
2. Prioritise data literacy and intersectionality? Design reporting and questions that reveal intersecting patterns, even with small samples. 
3. Facilitate community voice? Ensure governance includes local communities with real influence, not token consultation. 
4. Be relational and reflective? Invite honest dialogue, support curiosity, and balance challenge with care. 
5. Bridge cultures? Move comfortably between enforcement, support and community spaces, translating across languages of policy, practice and lived experience. 

Final reflections 

Time remains the biggest constraint. Many of the changes sparked by race-equity support will take root only as programmes mature beyond evaluation and funding cycles. Yet the value already lies in the process: the relationships built, the questions asked, the collaboration engaged, and the data strengthened. 

Working alongside police leads, programme managers, data analysts, and the funding team has reaffirmed to me that race-equity consultancy is not about adding a ‘race dimension’; it is about changing who leads, how decisions are made and whose voice counts.

As one programme lead reflected: 

“People need to feel like they can talk about it. People hear race equity and just hear racism. We need to move on from that limiting debate frame.” 

To funders and commissioners: if you want sustainable change, invest in race equity not as an add-on, but as the backbone of delivery.