Last Updated on September 25, 2025 by Karl Thompson
Official Statistics on Ethnicity and Crime shows that ethnic minorities, especially black people are over-represented at many stages of the criminal justice process.
Proportionate to the overall numbers in the adult population as a whole…
- Black people are approximately FOUR times more likely to be stopped and searched and THREE times more likely to be sent to jail;
- Asian people are almost TWICE as likely to be stopped and searched than White people, but have a similar chance of being sent to jail.
- Between 2018 and 2023 there have been improvements: there are relatively fewer Black people being stopped and searched and sent to prison today than there were five and ten years ago, for example.
The main publication documenting this data is ‘Statistics on Ethnicity and the Criminal Justice System‘, the latest publication date being March 2024 which shows data up to 2022.
Stages of the criminal justice process
The Home Office records statistics on the ethnic backgrounds of people as they ‘progress’ through the criminal justice system, such as:
- Stop and search
- Arrest statistics
- Prosecutions
- Convictions
- Custodial remands
- Custodial Sentences
- Prison Population
The rest of this post provides a little more detail on how the stats vary at different stages of the criminalisation process.
Stop and Search Statistics by Ethnicity
Stop and search has long been an issue of concern by Human Rights campaigners in England and Wales. Historically there have been very significant differences in the rates of stop and search by ethnicity with black people being much more likely to be stoppped and searched than white people.
However, more recent data up to 2022 shows that the differences are decreasing, although maybe not as rapidly as they should be.
Historical data on ethnic differences in stop and search
According to this BBC summary (2013) The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said in some areas black people were 29 times more likely to be stopped and searched. The commission said the disproportion between different ethnic groups remained “stubbornly high”.
The highest “disproportionality” ratios were found in the following places:
- In Dorset black people were 11.7 times more likely than white people to be stopped
- In West Mercia, Asian people were 3.4 times more likely than white people to be stopped
- In Warwickshire, people of mixed race were 4.4 times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched.
The report also looked at the use of Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act under which police can stop and search someone for weapons, without suspicion that the individual is involved in wrongdoing, providing that a senior officer has a reasonable belief that violence had or is about to occur.
Under section 60, In the West Midlands, black people were 29 times more likely than white people to be targeted and Asian people were six times more likely than white people to be targeted, which is what the above spoof advert mush be drawing on.
EHRC chief executive Mark Hammond said “the overall disproportionality in the use of the powers against black, Asian and mixed race people remains stubbornly high.”
The figures (from the 2018 report above) note that things have got worse:
“The proportion of stop and searches conducted on White suspects decreased from 75% in 2014/15 to 59% in 2018/19 and increased for all minority ethnic groups.
The largest increases were from 13% to 22% for Black suspects and from 8% to 13% for Asian suspects.”
As the table below shows the overall number of people being stopped and searched by the police declined between 2014 and 2019, but the proportions of Black and Asian people stopped and searched compared to whites increased.
It seems that when the police are asked to use Stop and Search more selectively, they select to stop and search less white people and more ethnic minorities.
Stop and search by ethnic group in 2023
The latest data suggests there is more proportionality in Stop and Search by ethnicity.
Between 2018 and 2023 the numbers of people stopped and searched fell slightly. The proportion of black people stopped by the police fell from 21% to 14%. That is a significant decline!
The number of Asian people stopped by the police fell from 13% to 11%.
Arrest Statistics by Ethnicity
The overall number of arrests remained stable between 2019 and 2023.
The proportion of black people arrested fell slightly from 10% of all arrests in 2019 to just 8% of all arrests in 2023.
As with stop and search this suggests the police are being more proportionate when it comes to ethnicity.
Offence types by ethnicity
The main differences here are that both Black and Asian people are more likely to be convicted for drug offences compared to White people.
Black offenders are twice as likely to be convicted of drug offences compared to white offenders.
White offenders are more likely to be convicted of violence against the person and Theft compared to Black of Asian people.
White people mainly get convicted for theft and violence, Black and Asian people for Drugs.
And a lot of those convictions for drugs are merely for possession, in which case there are no obvious victims. The crimes of white people are more serious overall than those committed by Black and Asian people.
There’s a significant link to interactionism here!
Prosecution and trial statistics
The Crown Prosecution service (CPS) is responsible for deciding whether a crime or arrest should be prosecuted in court. They base it on whether there is any real chance of the prosecution succeeding and whether it is better for the public that they are prosecuted.
Ethnic minority cases are more likely to be dropped than whites, and blacks and Asians are less likely to be found guilty than whites. Bowling and Phillips (2002) argue that this is because there is never enough evidence to prosecute as it is mainly based on racist stereotyping. In 2006/7 60% of whites were found guilty, against only 52% of blacks, and 44% of Asians.
When cases go ahead members of ethnic minorities are more likely to elect for Crown Court trail rather than magistrates (even through Crown Courts can hand out more severe punishments), potentially because of a mistrust of magistrates.
Punishment by ethnicity in 2023
Personally my takeaway is that there seems to be broad equality in the way different ethnicities are treated.
Harsher prison sentences for drug offences?
There is some evidence that Black, Asian and Mixed Race people are more likely to be sent to jail for drug offences compared to white people.
In 2022 black people were 24% more likely to be sent to jail for drug offences compared to white people, and Asian people 22% more likely.
However, as the 2024 ethnicity and criminal justice report notes these differences could be because of the micro differences in each case.
Maybe Black and Asian offenders commit more serious drug offences overall compared to White offenders which could explain these sentencing differences.
Prison Population by Ethnicity
Overall 12% of the prison population was Black in 2022, meaning Black people are three times as likely to end up in jail compared to White people.
The younger the age group, the higher the proportion of ethnic minorities in jail….
More than half of children in jail are ethnic minorities
The latest report also has stats on children moving through the criminal justice system.
The figures are even more skewed against ethnic minorities compared to the adult statistics.
It’s more than a little disturbing to note that 51% of children in prison are from ethnic minority backgrounds.
Victim surveys
The Crime Survey of England and Wales suggests significant changes in patterns of victimization between 2018 to 2023.
In 2018 6% of both Black and Mixed Race people reported being victims of crime, compared to only 4% of White people and just under 3% of Asian people.
In 2024 only 3% Mixed Race people reported being victims of crime, compared to 2.5% of White people but less than 2% of both Black and Asian people reported being victims of crime.
This shows that overall rates of victimisation have halved in the last five years and they have decreased most rapidly for Black people.
Reporting of offender characteristics in victim surveys
The 2018 British Crime Survey indicated that 44 per cent of victims were able to say something about the offender who was involved in offences against them. Among these, 85 per cent of offenders were said by victims to be ‘white’, 5 per cent ‘black’, 3 per cent ‘Asian’ and 4 per cent ‘mixed’.
However, these stats are only for the minority of ‘contact’ offences and very few people have any idea who was involved in the most common offences such as vehicle crime and burglary. Therefore, in the vast majority of offences no reliable information is available from victims about the ethnicity of the criminal.
Self-report studies
Though not ‘official statistics’ because they’re not done by the government routinely, it’s interesting to contrast the above stats to this alternative way of measuring crime. Self-report studies ask people to disclose details of crimes they committed but not necessarily been caught doing or convicted of. Graham and Bowling (1995) Found that blacks (43%) and whites (44%) had similar and almost identical rates of crime, but Asians actually had lower rates (Indians- 30%, Pakistanis-28% and Bangladeshi-13%).
Sharp and Budd (2005) noted that the 2003 offending, crime and justice survey of 12,000 people found that whites and mixed ethnicity were more likely to say they had committed a crime, followed by blacks (28%) and Asians (21%).
Signposting
You should also like these two further posts on official statistics, ethnicity and crime….
- Criminal, Ethnicity and Racism – Selected Key Statistics
- Racism in the Criminal Justice System – Selected Evidence
It is kind of hard to ignore the sheer volume of evidence that suggests there is racial bias in the way the police conduct themselves!
“One stand-out trend for reasons for arrest is that Black people are less likely to be arrested for ‘violence against the person’ and more likely to be arrested for drugs than other ethnic groups – drugs is also the main reason for stop and search, so the two could be correlated.”
Then explain thishttps://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/stop-search-black-ethnic-asian-racist-police-bame-disproportionate-risk-public-confidence-trust-hmic-a8104376.html
Let’s face it, the police are racist. If stop and search was more proportional, considering drug offences make up a large sway of prosecutions, then there’s be more whites and less blacks in the criminal justice system. If you put 8x more resources into a particular area, then outcomes will be higher. Whites are more likely to be carrying drugs but get away with it more often because they are subjected to less stop and search. White privilege.
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