Islington Council to analyse link between school exclusions of Black and minority ethnic students and involvement in crime, gangs and serious violence as part of innovative action plan

Islington Council is to analyse the correlation between school exclusions of Black and minority ethnic students and their involvement in youth crime, gangs and serious youth violence in a bid to strengthen the evidence base for the positive action Islington is undertaking.

Data shows that this group of young people in Islington feature disproportionately in both permanent and fixed-term exclusions at school, and are disproportionately represented in the youth justice system. Discussion nationally around the evidence for a link between the two has been mixed. But this further analysis will allow Islington to make a conclusive statement on the local picture, as well as strengthen the case nationally to take steps to address the issue.

The fresh analysis is part of an action plan drawn up by Islington Council, following its involvement in a project that uses academic research as the basis for improving the life chances of young people from Islington’s Black and ethnic minority communities, in relation to their involvement with the judicial system.

This work will build on the comprehensive and detailed analysis of school exclusions led by the council’s Children’s Services Scrutiny Committee, which has already led to reductions in school exclusions in recent times.

Cllr Kaya Comer-Schwartz, the council’s Deputy Leader and Executive Member for Children, Young People and Families, said: “Our approach places young people at the heart of everything we do, and builds on recent successes that have seen fewer Black and minority ethnic students excluded from school and entering the criminal justice system.

“But this cohort still features disproportionately relative to their numbers in the wider community, and this is a deep-seated, complex and often challenging area, so we need to think differently and be innovative about how we address that.

“This action plan is the result of collaborative working with colleagues at Haringey Council and criminologists at City University. Together with local police, the courts and voluntary sector organisations, we are leading on this work and are passionate about tackling disproportionality in the justice system.

“Islington’s commitment to fairness is really what underpins radical work like this; having honest discussions, identifying bias wherever it is found – whether it’s structural, unintentional or otherwise – and focusing on solutions that help eliminate it.

“In the long term, this work will strengthen trust and improve community relations, and help address the reasons for over-representation – rebalancing our society for a fairer Islington.”

Islington’s action plan will also see the council set up a scrutiny panel to analyse the fairness of court sentences and outcomes for young people from Black and minority ethnic backgrounds – the first of its kind in the country.

The council is in the process of setting up the panel, which will analyse data gathered on remand outcomes and custodial sentences handed to members of this cohort of young people in the borough, who are the most likely to receive custodial sentences.

Islington Council’s action plan also commits to:

• Better use of one-to-one work and service user forums to capture the experiences of discrimination and disproportionality from both the young people themselves and – via a new parenting project – their parents, helping to boost parental trust and engagement;
• Improving the council’s youth work offering in its open-to-all youth hubs and clubs;
• An ongoing commitment to tackling implicit and unconscious bias within the council, through the work of staff equalities forums at departmental level and council-wide;
• Identifying and sharing good practice and the project’s key findings at all levels in the council, from practitioners to corporate directors.

The council’s action plan was drawn up in response to recommendations made in The Disproportionality Project report. Funded by the Youth Justice Board, the project is the first in the country to be carried out in this area, with the aim of finding innovative ways to tackle youth crime.

The project saw criminologists from City University analyse workshops between practitioners in Islington and Haringey councils on how to improve best practice among the various teams and agencies working with young people in the justice system and their parents, including Islington’s Integrated Gangs Team, Youth Offending Services, Children’s Services and the local police.

The practitioners also considered wider causes and factors that may feed into that over-representation, such as school exclusion rates and parental trust in, and engagement with, local youth services.

Notes to editor

The council’s action plan can be found at https://democracy.islington.gov.uk/documents/b12676/Second%20Despatch%2028th-Sep-2020%2019.30%20Childrens%20Services%20Scrutiny%20Committee.pdf?T=9

City University’s The Disproportionality Project can be found at https://yjresourcehub.uk/evaluation-library/item/download/938_1e524286bc4a226444fda2f3c1b8db7e.html