Embedding race equity in Focused Deterrence: lessons from delivery 

Focused deterrence programmes sit at the sharp edge of violence prevention, combining enforcement and support in ways that can either reduce harm or reinforce existing inequalities. Building on the Race Equity Implementation Guidance for Focused Deterrence, this blog shares delivery-level learning from the Nottingham-based Another Way programme about where race equity shows up in practice, and learning for future delivery. 

This work was informed by Laurelle Brown Training and Consultancy’s (LBTC) Fairness Framework for child and family systems, which supports organisations to move from intent to implementation. Across the programme, this Framework helped structure conversations about where race equity sits within governance, data, workforce development and decision-making, rather than treating it as a standalone issue. 

In an earlier blog, I reflected on my wider journey as a race equity consultant across the FD programme, including what it takes to build momentum, trust and shared ownership of race equity in time-limited, high-pressure contexts. This second piece builds on that reflection, zooming in on practice-level learning from programme leads, police colleagues and delivery partner practitioners in Nottingham, to explore how race equity is experienced, applied and sustained on the ground. It is not an evaluation output, but implementation learning for anyone designing, funding or delivering violence prevention programmes. 

Good intentions are not the problem 

Across Nottingham, there was no shortage of commitment to doing the right thing. Practitioners described highly relational, voluntary and person-centred approaches. Young people were supported even when engagement was slow, or when offending continued. Programme leads and frontline staff spoke thoughtfully about power, trust, stigma and criminalisation. 

In several examples shared, race and identity were already part of these conversations, particularly when young people raised experiences of racism, mistrust of police, or feeling treated differently because of how they are perceived. 

The issue was not a lack of care or awareness. It was that race equity was often carried by individuals, rather than consistently scaffolded by the systems around them. 

When race equity depends on individual confidence 

A consistent theme across the Nottingham discussions was that race equity entered direct practice when someone felt confident enough to raise it. Black practitioners described young people explicitly naming race and discrimination, often because they felt safe to do so. White practitioners spoke honestly about uncertainty: wanting to acknowledge race, but worrying about getting it wrong or causing harm. 

Without structured prompts, supervision frameworks or governance requirements, race equity became optional. It was present in some cases, absent in others, and rarely reviewed systematically. 

This matters because equity cannot depend on who happens to be in the room. If we rely solely on individual confidence or lived experience, we create uneven practice and risk reproducing the very disparities programmes like FD are trying to address. 

Training helps – but translation is what changes practice 

Across delivery partners, practitioners had received a range of training related to race equity, bias and inclusion. Much of it was described as valuable for increasing awareness and reflection. However, training was rarely followed by structured opportunities to translate learning into direct practice. 

What was often missing was structured translation from learning into day-to-day decision-making: 

• prompts in case reviews and discussions 
• race equity questions built into panel agendas 
• supervision that routinely explores identity, power and discrimination 
• feedback loops that connect learning to decisions and outcomes 

Racism and discrimination are not static; they shift with context, policy and practice. One-off training cannot keep pace with that reality. What supports change is ongoing, supported reflection, especially when it is normalised rather than treated as exceptional. 

This mirrors learning across the wider programme: race equity progress accelerated most where learning and development were linked directly to operational decisions, not left at the level of individual insight. 

Data shows some things – and hides others 

Data featured heavily in Nottingham, particularly at strategic and police-led levels. There were genuine efforts to improve ethnicity recording and to review trends over time, including proactive deep dives, even where numbers were small. Limitations were openly acknowledged. 

Small cohort sizes made intersectional analysis difficult. As a result, data often stopped at broad ethnic categories, masking important differences within groups. Practitioners, meanwhile, could point to patterns they were seeing on the ground – such as who disengaged earlier, who was more likely to face enforcement, or who required different forms of support – that were not visible in dashboards. 

This is not a failure of data. It is a reminder that quantitative monitoring alone cannot capture how race and inequality operate in real lives. Structured qualitative insight – practitioner reflection, community feedback and young people’s voices – is essential if data is to inform equitable action rather than simply describe activity. This mirrors learning from LBTC’s wider work across safeguarding, youth justice and violence reduction systems, where we consistently see that equity blind spots emerge when data is divorced from lived experience. In practice, this means pairing dashboards with structured reflective spaces that ask why patterns are emerging, not just what they show. 

Referral is where race equity often begins – or ends 

One of the most significant race equity risks identified in Nottingham sat upstream, in referral processes. Practitioners often received limited information: names, addresses and offence labels. Errors were common. Context was thin. 

This matters because first impressions shape everything that follows. Limited, police-led data increases the risk of bias, particularly where young people from racialised communities are already over-policed. 

Several practitioners described this as a power imbalance: decisions about risk and eligibility being shaped before delivery partners had meaningful opportunity to interrogate context or challenge assumptions. 

If race equity is not considered at referral and panel stages, it becomes much harder to correct later. 

The emotional labour of race equity work 

Another theme that cut across discussions was emotional labour. Practitioners spoke about the weight of holding young people’s experiences of racism, exclusion and trauma, often without consistent spaces to process this themselves. 

Access to counselling and reflective support was described as “transformational” by one practitioner. Yet race equity was rarely explored explicitly in supervision unless practitioners initiated it. 

This has implications for sustainability. Equity work cannot rest on personal resilience alone, particularly for practitioners from Black and minoritised ethnic backgrounds who may carry both professional responsibilities, and for some, lived or living experience of violence and discrimination. 

What this means for future programmes 

The Nottingham learning reinforces a simple but challenging truth we see repeatedly in LBTC’s race equity consultancy: race equity does not embed itself. It requires deliberate design choices, clear accountability and sustained leadership attention. 

If violence prevention programmes are to reduce harm rather than reproduce it, race equity must be built into infrastructure, not left to goodwill. That means: 

• making race equity explicit at referral, panel and review stages 
• designing supervision and case discussion prompts that routinely explore identity, power and discrimination 
• valuing practitioner insight as data, not anecdote 
• supporting workforce wellbeing, recognising the emotional labour involved 
• asking better questions, even when sample sizes are small 
• using practical implementation tools to test where race equity is enabled, constrained or missing, across systems and not just individual practice. 

Perhaps most importantly, it means moving beyond the idea that raising race equity concerns is about blame. As one colleague reflected during the visit, people often hear “race equity” and think “racism”. Shifting that frame towards shared problem-solving and learning is essential for progress. 

A final reflection 

As with my wider reflections on this programme, what stood out most in Nottingham was not resistance, but openness. Practitioners and leaders were willing to reflect honestly on gaps, constraints and uncertainty, alongside strengths. That willingness is not a weakness; it is the foundation on which meaningful, race-equitable practice can be built. 

Race equity work in programmes like FD is not about having all the answers. As our work at LBTC consistently shows, it is about creating the relational, structural and organisational conditions for better questions, clearer decisions and more equitable outcomes over time. Where those conditions exist, the hard work already happening on the ground has a far greater chance of leading to lasting, equitable impact.