Courts and Tribunals Bill — Written evidence submitted by Dr Clive Dolphin (CTB18)

Courts and Tribunals Bill (15th April 2026)

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Session 2021-22

Courts and Tribunals Bill

Written evidence submitted by Dr Clive Dolphin to the Courts and Tribunals Public Bill Committee (CTB18)

[1]

I am writing to you to express my severe concerns over the Courts and Tribunals Bill that is about to go through your committee. As a person of colour I already have grave concerns about the justice system. I am aware that I attract more attention from the police, and the arrest figures bear this out. But when people of colour go to court there is well documented racism. This happens both in the Magistrates Court and the Crown Court.

[2]

Ethnic minorities make up about 14%
[1]
of the UK population. That's a little over 9.5 million people. I mention this because I do not think our plight is minor nor insignificant. In fact I think it is highly significant.

[3]

I’m old enough to remember Teressa May's speech when she entered Downing street in 2016, "If you’re black, you’re treated more harshly by the criminal justice system than if you’re white."
[2]
. I remember the work David Cameron and Teressa May started looking racial injustice
[3]
. That work of course includes the commissioning of the Lammy Review in 2017.
[4]

[4]

The Lammy review found racial bias in amongst other areas, the judiciary. It found that Magistrates Courts disproportionately convicted people from ethnic minorities, sometimes by as much as 40% over the rate for non-ethnic minority people. In the Crown Court judges are more likely to give prison sentences to ethnic minorities, and those sentences are likely to be longer, in the case of drugs up to 240% higher. The only reason for such bias in Magistrates convictions and Magistrate and Crown Court sentencing is racial bias amongst the magistrates and judges, whether conscious or subconscious.

[5]

But the shining pillar of hope in the Lammy report was juries. The report showed that the conviction rate for juries was very similar between ethnic minorities and non-ethnic minorities. Ethnic minorities get significantly fairer justice with jury trials.

[6]

But fast forward to 2026 and nothing meaningful has changed with the ethnic justice deficit. In 2023 and 2024 the UN produced reports criticising the systemic racism within the UK Criminal Justice System
[5]

[6]
. In the 2022 report "Racial Bias and the Bench"
[7]
, multiple examples of racism by judges and magistrates are recorded by people working in the court system. And whilst considerable progress has been made in getting ethnic minority barristers to the bar
[8]
we do not see ethnic minorities becoming judges at the same rate
[9]
. As recently as March 2025 a political row broke out when the Sentencing Council tried to address sentencing disparities with ethnic minorities and other groups
[10]

[11]
.

[7]

Over 40% of cases appealed from the Magistrate Court are overturned. This high figure indicates that the quality of justice in the Magistrates court is low.

[8]

I personally have seen many cases at Magistrates Court, Crown Court, High Court and Court of Appeal, mostly protest related. I have seen first hand the chaotic nature of proceedings in Magistrates Courts. Having a single Judge or a panel of Magistrates make what felt like a very quick almost arbitrary and certainly racially biased decisions did not encourage me to believe that justice was actually being done. It looked like the Magistrate(s) allocated on the day was as influential as the evidence that was being presented.

[9]

In the Crown Court it looks like the court is more measured and the presence of the jury helped me to believe that the process was both well considered and fair. In many cases I think the only reason the court processes were being explained was to include the jury. Both the defendant and the victim, if they are represented, are side lined in a very dehumanising and elitist manner. I really felt for the people involved.

[10]

As a person of colour I often feel in court that the only role the court believes fellow people of colour can have is as a defendant. If I were on trial I would want someone with similar life experiences to me, someone that can understand my position, to be making decisions on my future. I would have no confidence that most Crown Court judges, being mostly white, male and private school educated, would do well making a decision about me.

[11]

Personally, I have spent 30 years working as an engineer. I’ve done safety engineering where people might be injured, or even killed, if the system fails. In safety engineering we accept that no-one is perfect so we use multiple protective layers. Every line of code, electrical circuit, or mechanical piece would be checked by multiple other engineers and independently tested. The only errors that will get through would be those that have avoided a handful of engineers all looking at the part from a different perspective. This is why planes don’t fall out of the sky and trains very rarely crash even though every minute of the day there is a plane flying somewhere in the UK and a train running on a track somewhere. A single layer would be too fragile. In engineering terms the change to a single judge is madness. Moving from 13 (a jury and judge) to 1 (a single judge) represents a massive degradation of quality. The decisions that a jury makes are on the facts rather than the law so they are no better or worse placed to make those decisions than a judge. In reality a jury is local citizens so their local knowledge actually puts them in a better position. If you ran aircraft or trains with single untested engineering changes very soon people would stop flying or taking trains. What is the quality level that we require to make a decision about three years of someone’s life? What do you think a single judge will do to people's confidence in the legal system?

[12]

A lot of articles and texts I’ve read refer to judges as if they were all uniform. From my experience judges are very very different. A defence one judge would allow another will not. An issue one judge would not allow a different judge would leave to the jury to decide. Where the judge is a neutral umpire then that difference is partially mitigated by the presence of the jury. If there is only a judge then the allocation of a judge becomes massively significant. Is it OK to have a system where you are desperately trying to get a "good" judge, and where the person that gets the bad judge gets an unfair trial? And what will correcting those decisions do to the Court of Appeal? And what about the people that cannot afford the Court of Appeal?

[13]

What future is there for me in this country as a person of colour? I can't buy my way out of this institutional racism. No amount of study, a worthy job or popular status can grant me the same status in the Criminal Justice System that a non-ethnic minority person would have. One accusation and a racially biased judge, whether by malice or lack of insight, and that's potentially my next three years gone. Over Christmas I celebrated the birth of my nephew's son, but what future will he have in such a system?

[14]

We have a Criminal Justice System that is proven to have racial bias. With the partial removal of juries and additional restrictions on the right of appeal from the Magistrates court we are doubling down on that injustice. We can do the maths and work out how many extra unsafe convictions we are creating, how many extra prison places, how many ruined lives. This is the very definition of the systemic racism that Teresa May, David Cameron, the United Nations, and the Manchester University report were fighting against. This is racist. This is unfair, immoral and almost certainly illegal. I implore you on behalf of the nine and a half million ethnic minority people in the UK to reject these changes. Justice for all requires juries and an easy means to correct unfair decisions.

March 2026

[1]
https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/uk-population-by-ethnicity/national-and-regional-populations/population-of-england-and-wales/latest/#by-ethnicity-5-groups

[1]

[2]
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/statement-from-the-new-prime-minister-theresa-may

[3]
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/prime-minister-orders-government-audit-to-tackle-racial-disparities-in-public-service-outcomes

[3]

[4]
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/lammy-publishes-historic-review

[5]
"Systemic racism within UK criminal justice system a serious concern: UN human rights experts"

[5]
https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/01/1132912

[5]

[6]
"It further highlighted concerns about institutional racism within policing and the criminal justice system."

[6]
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/08/un-committee-elimination-racial-discrimination-publishes-findings-belarus

[6]

[7]
https://documents.manchester.ac.uk/display.aspx?DocID=64125

[8]
https://www.barcouncil.org.uk/static/f1da4b31-7adb-475b-900b6a0f20cf1530/2d0ba62c-4e1e-4d2c-aecf7fc44b0781cf/Race-at-the-Bar-three-years-on.pdf

[8]

[9]
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/diversity-of-the-judiciary-2025-statistics/diversity-of-the-judiciary-legal-professions-new-appointments-and-current-post-holders-2025-statistics--2#ethnicity-1

[9]

[10]
https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/political-row-over-sentencing-guidelines

[11]
https://news.sky.com/story/anger-over-two-tier-sentencing-as-justice-secretary-shabana-mahmood-rejects-new-guidelines-13322444

[11]

Prepared 15th April 2026

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