Equality Data in Criminal Justice provides an analysis of the methodology and findings of a pilot study implemented in Belgium, Bulgaria, Greece, and Romania.
The EU is actively encouraging and supporting Member States to collect equality data across different policies including in the area of criminal justice Partners piloted a methodology intended to support NGOs to collect equality data in relation to pre-trial criminal proceedings – namely, to evidence how unequal access to EU-protected procedural rights from arrest to sentencing results in people being disparately impacted by criminal justice outcomes based on their ethnicity, race, or other ‘foreign’ perceived status.
The results confirm that justice does not apply neutrally and equally, and that
criminal justice systems carry the biases of the wider society, exacerbated by the weight and authority of policing and criminal law in enforcing social control. The study also brings to light some of the many challenges in relation to equality data collection in criminal justice, which this report seeks to identify and analyse. It ultimately opens up the conversation to the importance of amplifying the voices of people impacted by injustice and reimagining our systems in ways that respond to the need of all people to be free from injustice.
