AS MANY as three-quarters of children from London are being held on remand in prison are black, LBC has revealed.

Children who are on remand have not been convicted of any crime, but instead a judge or a magistrate has decided that they must await their trial in prison.

As a result, children who are vulnerable and even innocent can be exposed to hardship and to hardened criminals.

Figures seen exclusively by LBC show that in February this year, 74% of the children from London on remand were black and an even higher percentage was recorded with 88%, or nearly 9 out of 10 children being from black or other minority ethnic backgrounds. 

Released under the Freedom of Information Act, the figures also show that for large parts of last year, numbers remained as high as 90%.

Although the number of black children rose markedly from around 60% for most of last year to 74% by February.

The data remains hugely disproportionate considering that the black population of London is around 13% while the black and minority ethnic population in London is thought to be around 44%, according to Greater London Assembly data from 2016.

The figures for black and minority ethnic children on remand in London are also much higher than in England and Wales as a whole, where the figure last year stood at 57%, and just 33% for black children alone. 

Director of Transform Justice, Penelope Gibbs, said: “I think it’s shocking, and we should remain shocked by these kinds of things. It’s probably the highest disproportionality rate that I’ve seen in the whole of the criminal justice system. We’re talking about children who have not been convicted of a crime, and may never be convicted.” 

Addressing the disparities, Labour’s Shadow Justice Secretary David Lammy pinpoints the failure to follow up on the recommendations of his Lammy Review in 2017, which was commissioned by David Cameron to look into the issues of race in the justice system.  

Describing the findings as “appalling and extreme”, Mr Lammy said: “The government has not implemented my recommendations, they’ve been half-assed at best”.

“Of the 35 recommendations I made, they’ve implemented about 6 or 8 in full, and the situation has got worse since I did my review, as this story underlines.” 

Commenting on the investigations findings, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice said: “While the number of black and ethnic minority children entering the youth justice system for the first time has fallen by 76% since December 2009 – we know we must do more to tackle the deep-rooted causes of over-representation.

“We are making changes through the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill to tighten the tests courts use to remand children to custody and we are reviewing race disparity in the youth justice system.”