Core indicator
Disproportionality
Proportion of children in custody who are Black
Last updated March 2023
(March 2023)
Last reviewed: July 2024
How are we measuring disproportionality?
It’s widely accepted that there are significant racial disparities in the youth justice system and who’s affected by violence, particularly when it comes to Black children. It’s important that this remains central to our thinking about violence. For this reason, one of our core focuses is racial disproportionality. One of the areas where this disproportionality is most stark is in the ethnicity of children serving custodial or prison sentences. To track this, we’ve used the proportion of children in custody on an average month who are from any Black background.
What does our core indicator show?
Overall, this measure shows a mixed picture. The overrepresentation of Black children in custodial settings worsened through the mid-2010s. In the past two years, it has started to fall again. In 2022/23, 26% of children in custody on an average month were from Black backgrounds. This share has fallen slightly recently and is down compared to the previous year (28% in 2021/22) and the year before Covid-19 (28% in 2019/20). However, the proportion of children in custody who are Black remains higher than 10 years ago. Black children remain over four times more likely to be serving custodial sentences compared to their share of the population.