Diversity and ‘Anti Discriminatory Practice’: Towards 2020
| Author | Anthony Goodman, Charlotte Knight |
That the criminal justice system is discriminatory, is a fact that is probably disputed by very few in recent years (Knight, Dominey & Hudson, 2008). Statistics for the number of black and minority ethnic individuals who are either locked up or on supervision have been available since 1984 and section 95 of the Criminal Justice Act 1991 enshrined in legislation the duty on the Secretary of State to publish data annually to enable the judiciary to know the consequences of their sentencing decisions. To paraphrase the language from a Probation Trust, still cited in a link in a new Community Rehabilitation Company website: public sector duties have been outlined in the Equality Act 2010 to give due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimization. Organisations must advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between those who share a protected characteristic. This is a noble sentiment and we argue that the new forms of language need to incorporate the original concepts of discrimination, difference and equality.
The language used by probation staff can influence how offenders are perceived by the judiciary, with Whitehouse, back in 1982 warning that stereotyping of Rastafarian offenders resulted in court reports being damaging to the client in terms of prejudicial language. Gatekeeping of reports was a process that enabled staff to share and question suppositions made in the workplace. Denney (1992) in his research on court reports found that white probation officers tended to conceptualise black offenders more in a 'correctional' manner than an 'appreciative' one. The need to constantly revisit practice in terms of understanding and challenging unwitting prejudice was evident from the HM Inspectorate of Probation Report (2000) Towards Race Equality, written after the Macpherson Report had been published, and which found that a much lower percentage of reports on African/African Caribbean offenders were considered satisfactory compared to white offenders (49%-63%). Just as worrying was that equal opportunities had been translated into 'treating everyone alike' (p.22). The practice that emerged during this time to address the growing evidence of differential treatment, was referred to as 'antidiscriminatory practice' (ADP) and became embedded in training programmes and practice assessment at that time. Whilst this term has largely disappeared from the lexicon of probation, we choose to use it...
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