This project aims to:

  • To consult and evidence the experiences and needs of minority ethnic service users who are subject to supervision of NPS North west.
  • To develop a reliable evidence base to inform the development of practice, services and programmes of interventions for minority ethnic service users across the NPS North west.

What is the need?

Whilst academic and political attention on ethnic disparity have concentrated on the agencies of the police, recent attention has turned toward magistrate and crown court sentencing and the supervision and management of offenders who are subject to probation orders.[1]  Given the position of probation services in the criminal justice process, it is increasingly difficult to isolate the role that the agency may contribute to ethnic disparity and disproportionality.  This problem has been further compounded by the marketisation and fragmentation of probation services and poor data recording and monitoring practices particularly in the CRC.[2]

According to the Lammy Review, trust, fairness and bias are noted as driving disparity across and within all CJ agencies.  However, the precise features of probation practice that facilitate ethnic disparity are complex and therefore difficult to isolate.

This project aims to contribute to addressing this knowledge gap.

What are we doing?

Design, develop and test a survey tool for use with BAME probation service users.  Our intention is capture responses from the 2180 BAME  service users who are presently under some form of probation supervision in the two probation regions: North West and Greater Manchester.

What will be the outcomes?

We will be producing a final report at the end of the project to present the findings from the survey and make recommendations for the future use of the survey tool.

What are the timescales?

March 2021 – October 2021

 

 

 

 

[1] Reference MOJ

[2] Lammy


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