I agree with every word that you and PrestonLad wrote... the problem is that every time the Police try to introduce stricter stop and search methods people cry foul about civil rights etc.....
I have always held the view that if you have nothing to hide, then you
should not have a problem being searched.....
Data suggests that stop and search is not particularly effective at reducing crime by deterring potential criminals.
Does stop and search work as a deterrent?
The evidence on stop and search suggests it is not a particularly good deterrent.
A recent paper by Professor Bradford and colleagues Dr Matteo Tiratelli and Dr Paul Quinton
says:
“We used ten years of police, crime and other data from London to investigate the potential effect of stop and search on crime.
“We find that S&S has only a very weak and inconsistent association with crime. While there is some correlation, most notably in relation to drug offences, we conclude that the deterrent effect of S&S is likely to be small, at best…
“We struggled to find evidence of an effect of S&S on violent crime.”
They found that after a 10% increase in stop and search during a given month, recorded drug offences would be 1.85% lower during the next month, while non-domestic violent crime was 0.01% lower.
Another study into stop and search’s deterrent effects was the Home Office’s analysis of the outcomes of Operation BLUNT 2.
It
said: “Overall, analysis shows that there was no discernible crime-reducing effects from a large surge in stop and search activity at the borough level during the operation.”
However the paper does note that “it does not necessarily follow that stop and search activity does not reduce crime.
“It is possible that there are localised crime-reducing effects of stop and search activity that are masked when analysing data on such a large geographic area.”
Slightly more positive findings come from New York City, where an
evaluation of Operation Impact, an initiative where more police were deployed to high crime areas (“impact zones”) and encouraged to conduct investigative stops, found:
“Impact zones were also significantly associated with increases in investigative stops for suspected crimes, but only the increase in stops made based on probable cause indicators of criminal behaviors were associated with crime reductions.
“However, probable cause-related stops were a relatively small fraction of the total number of investigative stops, suggesting that there were excess stops that had little crime suppression benefits.”
Discussion of stop and search focuses on its use as a crime deterrent. But this ignores its use as an investigatory power.
fullfact.org