Racial Bias Pulls Black Young Adults into Revolving Door
This briefing focuses on young adults who are, or are at risk of being, in the ‘revolving door’ of crisis and crime. As previous briefings have highlighted, these young adults come into the criminal justice system for relatively minor, non-violent offences. This is driven primarily by their profound, persistent experiences of trauma and poverty, but there are two other significant and exacerbating factors: racism and discrimination.
The evidence shows that Black young adults are more likely to be pulled into the revolving door than any other group of young adults. This paper therefore focuses explicitly on the racial disparities experienced by Black young adults. The evidence presented here helps us to understand the complexities, but it also raises further questions.
We believe that these are the issues we need to understand in order to effectively predict and prevent young adults entering the revolving door. If we can predict inequalities, we believe we can prevent the revolving door too.
