Criminal justice has among the lowest proportion of senior staff from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. Research published last week by consultants Green Park found that while 6.6% of leaders in NHS trusts and on average 4.2% in local government are from a black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) background, only 3% come from this background in the criminal justice system. This compares to 12.8% of the working age population who described themselves as BAME in the 2011 census, 7.3% of senior leaders in FTSE 100 companies and 7% of senior leaders in public services.

Last week’s analysis follows a government-commissioned interim report by the Labour MP David Lammy last year, which found that people from minority backgrounds are more likely to be jailed for certain crimes than those who are white. They are over-represented at almost all stages of the criminal justice system. So defendants from minority communities appear more frequently than the population average while those who pass judgment on them are older and whiter than their peers.

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That stark disparity in the courtroom has spurred on two experienced magistrates, Jacqueline Macdonald-Davis and Jessica Baldwin, to try and improve the ethnic diversity of the bench.

As members of the London magistrates’ advisory committee, they are coordinating the search for 350 new justices of the peace, volunteers prepared to spend at least 13 days a year unpaid in the capital’s 23 magistrates courts.

But Macdonald-Davis and Baldwin fear their efforts are being hampered by cuts to the Ministry of Justice’s advertising budget and social changes which appear to be narrowing the class and professional range from which the magistracy is drawn.

On a recent Wednesday morning, Macdonald-Davis and Baldwin sat in the back of a Westminster magistrates court. A Chinese defendant, described on the charge sheet as a man, turned out to be a woman. A Lithuanian, with a string of aliases, pleaded guilty to stealing a Transit van from a delivery driver. A gay woman, accused of punching her partner in a hotel, was remanded.

“It’s a snapshot of London,” says Baldwin. “If you treat people with respect sometimes their demeanour changes. That’s why you need magistrates who live and work in the community.”

Around 23% of magistrates in London and 11% nationally are from minority communities, whereas 40% of London’s population and 14% of England and Wales is non-white.

Penelope Gibbs, a former magistrate and director of the organisation Transform Justice, says: “However good they are, we need magistrates to be truly representative of the communities they serve if trust in the criminal justice system is to be maintained. We don’t have enough BAME magistrates, and those we have are overwhelmingly middle-class and middle-aged. Where are the magistrates from the Somali, Roma and Romanian communities? Nowhere to be seen.”

There is also concern about the slow progress of ethnic minority candidates being appointed as judges. In June, figures from the Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC), which oversees selection of legally qualified judges, showed that BAME candidates made up 23% of deputy district judge applicants but only 6% of recommendations for appointment. “The rule of law requires a fully diverse judiciary,” says Robin Allen QC, the chair of the Bar Council’s equality and diversity committee. “Once again the figures reveal the urgent need for positive action to make BAME applicants more successful.”

The lack of a diverse judiciary is having a detrimental impact on defendants’ confidence that they will have a fair hearing. In a report earlier this year, Transform Justice found that ethnic minority defendants have little faith in the criminal justice system. It quoted one teenager recalling his experience: “It was me against them. Coming from an Asian Muslim background, I didn’t see anyone with a common background. My mistrust started with the police ...

“As for judges and magistrates, they were the last people I trusted – elderly, white English people and that’s not what I see in society outside. They don’t understand what I’ve gone through or my culture. They don’t take into account anything you say, no common ground at all.”

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Macdonald-Davis, who works in health education, is determined to change that: “When you work in London, it’s important that anyone who appears before the bench feels that it’s representative,” she says. “We would like to feel that people who are coming in here are being listened to and ... that the bench might have an understanding of their world.”

In the absence of an advertising budget for magistrates’ posts, Macdonald-Davis is working with organisations such as Black Vote to widen the pool of candidates.

But she fears the magistracy is becoming more middle class. “It’s increasingly difficult to get time off,” she observes. ”Much of the training is in the evening. We should be encouraging people to do voluntary work. More employers could be accommodating.”

Baldwin, a journalist, agrees: “We have a preponderance of lawyers. The number of people who say to me: ‘I thought I had to be a lawyer’… No, you don’t. We are missing people in the army, we are missing nurses, there are a lot of occupations not represented. The nature of all jobs makes it more difficult. The backgrounds have become slightly more narrow.”

The Magistrates’ Association, however, does not believe that there is a major problem with a lack of ethnic representation. “We take the view that the bench [does not need to be] representative of society,” says a spokesman. “Justice is blind, after all. [But] we do want to see a bench that ... engenders confidence in it. One under-represented group is age rather than ethnicity. The majority of magistrates (52%) are, in fact, women. We need to broaden the age range. We want employers to be flexible enough so their staff can contribute to the administration of justice.”