Cross Justice Working Group on Race Data and Evidence: Collecting and using staff equality data in the justice sector

Background

This note sets out our shared ambition for justice organisations in Scotland to take a consistent and transparent approach to collecting staff equality data. The Cross Justice Working Group on Race Data and Evidence and the Cross Justice Group on Race and Workforce have drafted and agreed this note.

This note is relevant to all protected characteristics, not just race.

The wider context of concerns raised by the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as the differential impacts of COVID-19 on people from minority ethnic backgrounds, demanded an increased focus on issues of race and the experience of minority ethnic individuals in Scotland’s justice system.

As a result, two cross sector groups were established in 2020. We set up the Cross Justice Group on Race and Workforce to provide a strategic and cohesive approach to tackling barriers to employment across the justice system and to support cross system learning. We created the Cross Justice Working Group on Race Data and Evidence to improve evidence and understanding of the experience of minority ethnic individuals in Scotland’s justice system. The two groups have been independent but have worked together on workforce data and evidence.

Our work has shown that organisations within the justice sector are at different stages in how they approach and address issues around equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) within their workforce. The workforce race data and evidence that is currently collected varies in terms of quality and completeness, and is often not comparable across different organisations.   

We summarised the available data on the ethnic composition of the workforce in justice organisations in Scotland in the Ethnicity in the Justice System: Evidence Review published in April 2023. The key findings from this review were:

• There is inconsistency in the level of ethnicity workforce data published by justice organisations.
• Overall, minority ethnic groups appear to be under-represented in justice organisations. 
• Minority ethnic staff appear to be evenly distributed across roles and seniority within the justice organisations who report on this.

Collecting EDI data on our workforce is the first step in ensuring that our workforce is representative. This data can also identify gaps in representation, including across pay bands and responsibilities in the organisation. Collecting and analysing more and better data means that we can take more effective action, and monitor our progress in becoming a more diverse and inclusive workforce.

Within Scotland’s justice sector, we want to increase the diversity of our workforce so that it better represents the communities we serve. We also want to make the justice sector an appealing career choice for people from all backgrounds. This includes both increasing representation and improving the experiences of staff with protected characteristics.

We collect and analyse staff equality data in order to monitor our progress and design better policies. This note explains more about our approach which aims to ensure consistent collection and analysis of equality, diversity and inclusion data across the sector.

We acknowledge that justice organisations are not homogenous and vary considerably in both their scale and in the activities that they undertake. Accordingly, individual justice organisations have different levels of resources and are in different places on their journey towards realising this ambition.