Criminal justice sector charities are concerned about increasing use of racist narratives around their work, particularly on social media.

Charity Clinks latest annual state of the sector report found that “several organisations raised significant concerns around the increasing profile of anti-immigrant and racist narratives”.

One respondent “described feeling that social media and the movement to raise the flags ‘whips the public up into a sort of negative frenzy’”.

Growing racist narratives are also impacting on the safety or beneficiaries, which another respondent said is “a growing area of their work” to support “people from diverse communities in terms of their physical and psychological safety”.

Concerns around racism in their sector come amid further fears around the risk of embedding racism and discrimination through the use of facial recognition technology and the rise in populism in UK society.

Lack of clarity on transgender ruling

Another challenge raised among criminal justice charities is around last year’s Supreme Court ruling on the definition of ‘sex’ in equality legislation.

“One reported having encountered a lack of clarity from the probation service around the implications of the ruling for support for transgender women,” Clinks found.

“Another described feeling ‘on the back foot ... trying to muddle our way through’. A couple of organisations said that they had received negative or challenging communications querying how their organisation was responding to the ruling; one of these had received phone calls from people using derogatory comments about transgender people.”

These concerns have emerged as charities in other sectors have sought to amend their equality procedures in the light of the Supreme Court ruling that equality legislation refers to biological sex. Last month, Girlguiding announced that from September trans girls and women cannot become members or volunteers in a role open to women only.

Financial concerns

Elsewhere in its report Clinks found widespread concern among criminal justice charities around their financial sustainability.

One in four lack confidence in their charity’s financial health over the next two years.

Almost three in ten said their funding level from contracts or grants for delivering services had fallen between 2023/24 and 2024/25. This rises to two in five among smaller charities, with an income below £500,000.

Probation service community support contacts are another concern.

“Some explained that the proposed contract sizes meant that only large organisations would be able to bid to become prime, lead providers, with limited opportunities for smaller organisations to be involved,” said Clinks.

---