A study has found that people with working-class accents are more likely to be suspected of committing a crime, raising "serious concerns" about bias in Britain's criminal justice system, researchers said.

People with accents from Liverpool, Newcastle, Bradford and London are at risk of being stereotyped, according to a study by the University of Cambridge in partnership with Nottingham Trent University.

Researchers say this stereotype can affect every part of the system, from arrest to sentencing, harming not only suspects and defendants but also witness testimony.

The study focuses specifically on the incorrect selection of accented speakers from speech recognition cohorts.

The findings, published in Communication Frontiers, say that despite progress towards equality and diversity in some aspects of British life, including 'working class' and regional accents becoming more prominent on TV and radio, harmful Stereotypes persist.

Lead author Alice Paver, from the University of Cambridge's Speech Laboratory and Jesus College, Cambridge, said: "Our findings provide a clear reminder of the challenges that speakers of certain accents may still face in the criminal justice system. Unfavorable situation.”

"Voice plays a powerful role in the criminal justice system, with police, lawyers and juries all prone to judging voices based on stereotypes, whether they are aware of it or not. As it stands, listeners think certain accents sound better than Other accents are more guilty and we should all be worried about them."

Researchers asked 180 male and female participants from across the UK to listen to recordings of 10 male voices with regional accents: Belfast, Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, Liverpool, London, Newcastle and Standard Southern British English (SSBE), also known as RP (Received Pronunciation).

Participants were then asked to rate the voices on 10 social characteristics: educated, smart, wealthy, working class, friendly, honest, kind, trustworthy, motivated and confident; and 10 morally good, bad and ambiguous behaviors, including a range of crime types.

These include: returning a lost wallet to its owner, standing up for someone who is being harassed, cheating on a romantic partner, reporting a relative to the police for a minor crime, dangerous driving, assaulting another person, shoplifting, sexually touching another person Destroying a store without consent.

Accents similar to RP were considered the least likely to lead to criminal behavior, with Liverpool and Bradford accents the most likely.

However, non-British accents, particularly Belfast and Glasgow accents, are much less likely to be considered criminal than almost all other accents. They were also considered the most likely to stand up for someone who was being harassed and the least likely to exhibit morally bad behavior.

London and Liverpool accents were considered most likely to suggest sexual contact with someone without consent, but closely followed by RP accents from the South of England. Participants rated the RP accent as more likely to commit sexual assault compared to other offenses tested.

Users in Glasgow and Belfast are thought to be the least likely to commit such sex offences.

Previous research has found Newcastle accents rated highly on traits such as friendliness, but this study recorded positive ratings on kindness, honesty, friendliness and trustworthiness.

In contrast, the Birmingham accent, which had scored poorly on these measures in previous research, outperformed Bradford, Bristol, Liverpool, London and Newcastle in this study.

Speaking about the impact on criminal justice, Paver said: "Currently, jurors are not aware or warned not to let bias based on voice or accent influence their decisions. If we are asked to judge whether someone is guilty or not and they have a specific Accents, we need to make sure we don't make judgments because we think they sound like a bad person."

The research was conducted in collaboration with Professor Natalie Braber and Dr David Wright from the School of Arts and Humanities at Nottingham Trent University and Dr Nikolas Pautz from the Department of Psychology at Nanyang Technological University.