Shabana Mahmood (centre) at a Downing Street gathering (Picture: UK Government)
Labour minister Shabana Mahmood has blocked attempts to challenge racism in the prison system. Her move is also a major blow to those campaigning for pregnant women to be kept out of jail.
Mahmood, who is the justice secretary and lord chancellor, has forced the Sentencing Council to withdraw its new sentencing guidelines. They instructed judges to undertake pre-sentencing reports on defendants who are from ethnic minorities, are pregnant or are carers.
Blocking the new guidelines has been denounced as “dangerous” and a “deliberate step backwards” by legal figures and prison campaigners.
Peter Herbert, the chair of the Society of Black Lawyers, said, “We have experienced racist two-tier policing for over 500 years.
“If we achieve equal treatment that is not two-tier as it is long overdue. We have never asked for special treatment—only equal treatment.”
Pavan Dhaliwal, the head of the charity Revolving Doors, said Mahmood’s decision would block recommendations for pre-sentencing reports for minorities.
Dhaliwal said, “The lord chancellor’s decision to block the Sentencing Council’s guidance is a deliberate step backwards. The claim that recognising race and inequality in sentencing undermines fairness is not just wrong, it’s dangerous.
“To suggest that acknowledging these facts undermines equality is to ignore lived experience, evidence and the reality of disparity in our courts. Pre-sentence reports are one of the few tools we have to challenge those disparities by giving courts the full context: poverty, trauma, racial discrimination.”
The Sentencing Council suspended plans for the guidelines in England and Wales on Monday.
The guidelines highlighted the need for pre-sentencing reports depending on age, sex and ethnicity.
The Sentencing Council withdrew the new guidance following a standoff with the Ministry of Justice, which planned to use emergency legislation to override the guidelines.
Mahmood also told MPs that the council would have its role reviewed in light of the row.
Janey Starling, co-director of gender justice campaign group Level Up, said that Mahmood had chosen to “perform a populist pantomime instigated by the shadow justice secretary, Robert Jenrick”.
“When the sentencing councils announced the guideline last month, Jenrick labelled it ‘two-tier justice’,” she said.
“This echoed Tommy Robinson’s ‘two-tier policing’ slogan from last summer’s riots which claimed that far-right protesters were treated more harshly than ethnic minorities.
“What is truly appalling is that Mahmood decided to play along in an attempt to win over Conservative and Reform UK voters.”
Black and minority ethnic communities are overrepresented at almost all stages of the criminal justice process in England and Wales. And they are more likely to be imprisoned and receive longer sentences than white people.
The Council said the guidelines would have helped address disparities between how different ethnicities are treated in the justice system.
The Sentencing Council was established in 2010 to try to ensure consistency in sentencing. Keir Starmer, who was director of public prosecutions, was one of its founding members.
Mahmood has been cheered on by far right bigots like the right wing columinist Melanie Phillips. She claimed Mahmood is right to “take on legal ideologues” who call for special treatment for ethnic minorities.
Labour has caved in to far right arguments.
19 homes have been destroyed and at least 19 more damaged
Another Blairite gimmick
Human rights groups say the sentences are 'torture'
