Core indicator
Disproportionality
Proportion of children in custody who are Black
Last updated March 2025
(March 2025)
Data published: January 2026
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. In 2024/25, the share of Black children in custody fell for the fourth consecutive year. It’s now 22%, down from 24% the year before (2023/24) and 28% the year before Covid (2019/20). But it still remains higher than it was ten years ago (21% in 2014/15) and Black children remain nearly four times more likely to be in custody compared to their share of the population. And while the share of Black children in custody has fallen, the share of Mixed ethnicity children has risen. Children from Mixed ethnic backgrounds now account for 18% of the average monthly custodial population, despite making up only 6% of all 10-17-year-olds in England and Wales.