Why it matters when 42% of children sentenced have no recorded ethnicity
Official figures published this week raise fresh concerns about youngsters in prisons, the subject of Dame Rachel de Souza’s recent Longford Lecture, according to our recently graduated scholar, Will Pendray. Without accurate recording of ethnicity, he argues, inequality is harder to see, measure and contest, while claims of progress ring hollow
Newly released Youth Justice Statistics reveal that 42 per cent of children sentenced for indictable offences have no recorded ethnicity. For the second consecutive year, the ‘Unknown’ category is the single largest group in the data. Despite a long-term fall in the overall number of children in custody, the scale of missing ethnicity data is alarming, leaving the system increasingly unable to account for who it is sentencing, and on what basis. A decade ago, in 2014–15, just seven per cent of sentencing occasions involved children recorded as having an “unknown” ethnicity, falling to three per cent the following year.
The Ministry of Justice cautions that year-on-year comparisons should be treated carefully, citing the sharp rise in cases where ethnicity is recorded as unknown. But a change in presentation does not explain why ethnicity is now missing in more than four in ten cases, or why this gap has persisted for a second year running.
In the year ending March 2025, sentencing for indictable offences included approximately:
- 3,800 cases where a child’s ethnicity was unknown, accounting for 42 per cent of the total
- 3,800 involving White children (42 per cent)
- 730 involving Black children (8 per cent)
- 430 involving Mixed-ethnicity children (5 per cent)
- 300 involving Asian children (3 per cent)
When nearly half of all children sentenced for serious offences fall into an undefined category, the justice system loses the ability to properly measure, challenge, or correct unequal outcomes. This matters in a system where minority ethnic children have long been over-represented at multiple stages of youth justice.
In that context, a reported fall in the proportion of Black children sentenced for indictable offences (from 11 to 6 per cent) cannot be confidently interpreted. With the “Unknown” category now so large, it is unclear whether this reflects real change or statistical distortion.
Remand – punishment without conviction
The concern deepens when sentencing data is viewed alongside the continued use of custodial remand. In the year ending March 2025:
- almost two-thirds of children remanded to youth custody did not go on to receive a custodial sentence;
- children on remand accounted for 44 per cent of the average custodial population, nearly double the proportion a decade ago;
- children from minority ethnic backgrounds were over-represented among those remanded.
Remand is one of the most restrictive powers available to the courts. That it is being used so frequently, and so often without leading to custody, raises serious concerns about proportionality, particularly in a system where ethnicity data is increasingly incomplete. Previous reporting has shown that racialised outcomes extend beyond who enters custody. In 2022, the Guardian reported that Black defendants, including children, spent an average of 302 days on remand, compared with 177 days for White defendants; a difference of nearly 70 per cent.
Yet the latest Youth Justice Statistics do not provide a breakdown of average custodial sentence length by ethnicity. As a result, it is not currently possible to assess whether similar patterns persist for children sentenced today. The Ministry of Justice notes that, despite year-on-year decreases in the number of Black and Mixed children in custody, both groups remain overrepresented. What the data cannot show, however, is how far any apparent decline reflects genuine change, or how much is concealed by the continued reliance on an “Unknown” ethnicity category in official reporting.
‘When justice systems fail to record race consistently, inequality does not disappear’
International comparisons suggest this is not an isolated issue. In the United States, incomplete ethnicity data has been linked to under-reporting of racial profiling. In France, human rights organisations have criticised data gaps that make discrimination in policing and sentencing harder to challenge. When justice systems fail to record race consistently, inequality does not disappear, it becomes harder to see, measure and contest.
Independent experts and equality advocates have previously highlighted the need for greater clarity in how ethnicity is recorded in the criminal and youth justice systems. While the government has acknowledged the rise in “Unknown” ethnicity cases and their inclusion in recent statistics, further explanation is needed on:
- why the proportion of cases recorded as “Unknown” has reached such a high level;
- whether recording practices have changed;
- and what steps are being taken to ensure ethnicity data is captured accurately and consistently.
Without answers, it remains unclear whether this reflects an administrative failure or a structural blind spot that has been allowed to persist. Accurate data is the foundation of fair justice. Without it, reforms risk being built on partial or misleading information. While the inclusion of the “Unknown” ethnicity category may reflect an attempt to acknowledge rising numbers, it does little to resolve the deeper problem. By obscuring who is being sentenced, the system weakens its own ability to confront inequality, and allows longstanding imbalances to continue without meaningful scrutiny.
Until ethnicity is consistently and transparently recorded, claims of progress in youth justice will remain impossible to verify, and impossible to trust.
WS Pendray’s poetry collection, Overgrown, is out now.