Racially Determined Case Characteristics: Exploring Disparities in the Use of Sentencing Factors in England and Wales

This data was obtained from the Sentencing Council through a Freedom of Information Request. It combines Crown Court Sentencing Survey data with data on Ethnicity from the Ministry of Justice Court Proceedings database. The dataset covers the period from the 1st January 2013 to 31st March 2015, and is restricted to principal offences for cases of assault and drugs, and includes adult offenders only. The data covers the frequency each sentencing factor was ticked by judges filling the Crown Court Sentencing Survey, broken down by ethnic group. The ethnicity variable used is the offender’s ethnicity as perceived by the police officer dealing with the case. The ethnicity categories used in the data are: White, Black, Asian and Other.

The dataset was used in the article ‘Racially Determined Case Characteristics: Exploring Disparities in the Use of Sentencing Factors in England and Wales’ by Dr Eoin Guilfoyle and Prof. Jose Pina-Sánchez. The R code used as part of the analysis in this article is also accessible here.