How just is our justice system?
Moral Maze
BBC
4.5 • 609 Ratings
🗓️ 20 March 2025
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Proposed new guidance from the Sentencing Council for England and Wales – which is due to come into effect in April – would make the ethnicity, faith or personal circumstances of an offender a bigger factor when deciding whether to jail them. The independent body is responsible for issuing guidelines “to promote greater transparency and consistency in sentencing”.
Official figures show that offenders from ethnic minorities consistently get longer sentences than white inmates for indictable offences. Supporters of the guidance see it as an important correction of implicit bias within the justice system, leading to the most effective balance of punishment and rehabilitation for the individual. But critics – including the Justice Secretary – are concerned it will create "two-tier justice". As Shabana Mahmood put it: "As someone who is from an ethnic minority background myself, I do not stand for any differential treatment before the law, for anyone of any kind". How much should judges consider an offender’s background?
Questions about the “fairness” of sentencing are the symptom of a wider disparity within the justice system: the fact that black and Muslim men are disproportionately represented in the prison population, and how that might be addressed. How much is it the mark of a “rigged” society, which traps multiple generations in poverty and deprivation? How much is it about family and community dysfunction and a lack of role models?
How just is our justice system?
Chair: Michael Buerk Producer: Dan Tierney Assistant Producer: Peter Everett Editor: Tim Pemberton
Panel: Ash Sarkar Tim Stanley Inaya Folarin-Iman Giles Fraser
Witnesses: Kirsty Brimelow Henry Hill Sheldon Thomas Rakib Ehsan
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Good evening. It's the guiding principle of justice that all are equal before the law. |
| 0:05.3 | Some more equal than others, it's being said, as a result of new sentencing guidelines for judges, |
| 0:11.3 | still due to come into force on as it happens April 1st. |
| 0:15.1 | These would tell judges they should order special reports on defendants from minority groups before passing sentence. |
| 0:22.6 | The data apparently suggests these reports tend to reduce jail terms or make prison less likely. |
| 0:29.4 | Two-tier justice, according to the Justice Secretary, herself a Muslim, and her Tory shadow. |
| 0:36.3 | Two-tier justice is what some say the guidelines are designed to correct. |
| 0:39.3 | Some ethnic minorities are disproportionately represented in the dock and in the cells. |
| 0:45.3 | Black people are three times more likely to be imprisoned than whites, for instance, and tend to get longer sentences. |
| 0:52.3 | The system is skewed against them, say campaigners. |
| 0:55.2 | Look, young black men are ten times more likely to be stopped and searched than whites. |
| 1:00.6 | That's because, proportionately, they commit more crimes, goes the other side of the argument, |
| 1:05.7 | particularly serious ones like robbery, possessing weapons and drug offences. |
| 1:10.0 | The longer sentences, it said, |
| 1:11.9 | are because they're less likely to plead guilty, which reduces the jail term. And how can it be |
| 1:17.1 | racism when some ethnic groups, Chinese and Indians, for example, are convicted of far fewer |
| 1:22.8 | crimes than whites? Is our justice unfair? That's our moral maze tonight. The panel, the commentator and campaigner, Inaya Fulari Niman, Ash Saka, from the Navarra Media Group, the historian Tim Stanley, and the priest and polemicist, Giles Fraser. Inaya, which side of this argument are you on? I believe in equality under the law. And for example, men commit the |
| 1:45.3 | vast majority of crimes, yet no one seriously argues that anti-male discrimination is the cause. |
| 1:50.1 | But the idea that disparities must mean discrimination is often applied when it comes to other |
| 1:55.8 | identity groups that are overrepresented in certain crimes. I think this ignores the complex |
| 1:59.9 | factors and encourages a |
| 2:01.1 | culture of defeatism and victimhood amongst minority groups. Well, I think the first mistake is to |
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