Member

Our principal objection to this Bill is that it misguidedly seeks to tie the hands of the Sentencing Council. Its introduction followed the intervention of Robert Jenrick, who argued that the proposed new guidelines advocated a system of two-tier justice. Black and ethnic minority offenders, he said, would get pre-sentence reports, which would be likely to keep them out of prison, while white people would not. But that argument ignores the overwhelming evidence that black people are more likely to go to prison, and for longer, than white people, and that ethnic minorities face widespread discrimination right across the justice system—witness the well-respected and well-researched report prepared by David Lammy in 2017. The other cohorts mentioned in the proposed guidelines face similar disadvantage in the criminal justice system.