By The Criminal Justice Alliance

Recommendations from the Women’s Justice Reimagined partnership and the APPG on Women Affected by the Criminal Justice System.

Key points • Racial disproportionality underpins deep disparities within the criminal justice system. Radical and systemic change is urgently needed to address this. Antiracist practices must be embedded in the criminal justice system. • Black, Asian, racially minoritised, and migrant women face systemic racism and intersectional discrimination throughout the criminal justice system, including over-policing, harsher sentencing, and limited access to support. • Improved, disaggregated, and publicly available data on race and ethnicity in the criminal justice system is needed. It is essential that this data is disaggregated by gender. Data analysis should use an intersectional lens to capture nuanced identities.• The Women’s Justice Board and policy makers must ensure that women with lived experience have a central role in their work. This must include attention to communication, access barriers, and diverse representation. • Many Black, Asian, racially minoritised, and migrant women in the criminal justice system are victim/survivors of violence against women and girls (VAWG), human trafficking, and trauma. This often underpins their offending, however there is inadequate support. A woman-centred model and improved use of protective legislation are needed to address this. • Women’s offending is often linked to socioeconomic factors and support needs. However, these needs are not addressed within the criminal justice system. Sustainable and ring-fenced funding is needed for culturally competent, trauma-informed, and specialist services.

London: Criminal Justice Alliance, 2025. 15p.