Data Insight: Ethnicity, sex, and community orders

This Data Insight by Dr Angela Sorsby focuses on the relationships between ethnicity, sex, and community orders. It explores whether there are differences in the types of requirements imposed on individuals based on their sex and ethnic background, after considering factors such as age and offence category. Additionally, it investigates whether these differences impact the successful completion of community orders.

The analysis also seeks to determine whether disparities in community order requirements or completion rates contribute to ethnicity differences in the number of previous convictions that people have before receiving a short prison sentence – as found in previous research.

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What we found

• A rehabilitation activity requirement is more likely to be included in the order for both men and women in the white group, compared to other ethnic groups.
• Unpaid work is less likely to be included in the order for both men and women in the white group, compared to other ethnic groups.
• Men and women from some ethnic minority groups are less likely to have a curfew included in the order compared to white men and women.
• Compared to white men, Black and Asian men and men from the ‘Other’ ethnic group are significantly more likely to have a successful completion.
• Compared to white women, Asian women are significantly more likely to have a successful completion.
• Men compared to women are less likely to have a successful completion (odds 17% lower).

Why it matters

HM Inspectorate of Probation conducted thematic inspections in relation to sex (HMIP, 2016) and ethnicity (HMIP, 2021). They identified that there is a lack of information on the relationships between ethnicity, sex, and the requirements and effectiveness of community orders, and that better understanding of these relationships is crucial.

The above findings indicate that, compared to other ethnic groups, white people are more likely to have rehabilitative requirements and are less likely to have the punitive requirement of unpaid work.  These findings are in accordance with findings produced by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ, 2021), which indicated that higher proportions of white and mixed ethnicity offenders received rehabilitation, while higher proportions of Black, Asian, and ‘Other’ ethnicity offenders received unpaid work. 

However, the analysis reported in this Data Insight controls for other variables, while the MoJ analysis does not. The current analysis indicates that differences exist even after controlling for: offence category, referral year, age, deprivation, number of previous convictions, plea type, the length of the order, and whether the offender had previously received a prison sentence. At the same time, the current analysis indicates that white people are more likely to have a punitive curfew compared to some other groups.

It should be noted that, while the analysis points towards differences in the administration of justice, it is not clear at this stage what is causing these differences. Care must be taken in interpreting the findings as it is not possible to control for all additional variables, such as the risks and needs of offenders, which means causation cannot be implied.

The findings of this Data Insight also indicate that outcomes are, on the whole, more successful for ethnic groups other than white, or there is no significant difference. It therefore seems unlikely that findings from my previous Data First project – that men and women from ethnic minority groups receive short prison sentences with fewer previous convictions compared to white men and women, even after controlling for other variables such as age and offence category (Sorsby, 2022a, Sorsby 2022b) – are due to ethnicity differences in the successful completion of community orders. In my previous analysis I, for example, found that after controlling for plea type, court type, type of offence, and age, Asian men receive a short immediate prison sentence with 19% fewer previous convictions compared to white men. The analysis for this Data Insight indicates that the odds of successful completion of a community order are 33% higher for Asian men compared to white men, after controlling for other variables.