Abstract
In 2008, taking stock of the policing research agenda in England and Wales, Reiner and Newburn noted that police’s use of stop and search ‘has arguably generated more research than any other area’ (2008; 360). It is a striking observation, one that reflects both the fact that stop and search is one of ‘the most common forms of adversarial contact between the police and the public’ (Delsol and Shiner, 2015: 1), and the vexed nature of the tactic itself. As the editors of this collection observe, stop and search, and the ‘controversies that have stormed around it’ tap into the tensions that lie at the very heart of the policing process, between preventive policing, the exercise of coercive state authority, due process and crime control.
Still, despite the academic attention directed towards the use of stop and search, the evidence can seem disjointed, at least in thematic terms, with research falling into a number of camps, from the sociology of policing to counter-terrorism studies to work that focuses more exclusively on racial discrimination. In this regard, the book marks an important step by drawing together the key lines of argument and evidence.
As noted by the editors, most of the contributors are members of StopWatch, a coalition of civil society organizations, academics, lawyers, community workers, activists and young people, that campaigns for fair and accountable policing. As such, it is unsurprising that the collection has a clear sense of normative purpose, or praxis, essentially injecting robust academic evidence into what at times can be an ill-tempered and fractious debate. The fact that the same motifs reverberate throughout the collection, albeit from different outlooks and with different emphases, reinforces the clarity and strength of the arguments put forward as well as the ongoing need to ‘do something’ about stop and search.
The book consists of eight substantive chapters, which variously examine the history and development of stop and search, the challenges of regulation and reform, disproportionality, the effectiveness (or otherwise) of stop and search in tackling crime and its unintended consequences, including the impact on trust and confidence in the police.
Rebekah Delsol provides a comprehensive and theoretically informed analysis of the available evidence on effectiveness, which in many ways underpins the collection. As the narrative makes clear, despite decades of research, the question of whether or not stop and search ‘works’ in relation to tackling crime remains unresolved, in part, because it is unclear what effectiveness looks like, or indeed how it should be measured. Whilst stop and search can of course detect or disrupt crime, the wider preventative effect is uncertain. As Delsol puts it, ‘the effectiveness is largely assumed’ (2015: 100). The main thrust of the argument is that in order to assess the effectiveness of stop and search we must weigh up both the benefits, which at best seem limited, and the costs, which seem high. It is worth noting here that subsequent research by Weisburd et al. (2015) on the impact of stop, question and frisk (SQF) on recorded incidents in New York City provides some evidence of a statistically significant deterrent effect. Observing that around a 2% drop in recorded crime may be attributed to the 700,000 frisks recorded in the peak years of SQF, Weisburd et al. nonetheless caution that the number of SQFs needed to ‘produce meaningful crime reductions’ carries costs in terms of police resources, and ‘are potentially harmful to police legitimacy’ (2015: 2).
These observations segue into Ben Bradford’s chapter on unintended consequences, which provides a detailed analysis on the material costs of stop and search in relation to trust, legitimacy and public cooperation with the police. In addition to the unintended consequences in terms of the damaging impact on police legitimacy, which are reasonably well rehearsed, Bradford also examines social exclusion and the potentially criminogenic effects of stop and search. Drawing on McAra and McVie’s (2005, 2007, 2012) detailed analyses of the Edinburgh Study of Youth Crime and Transitions, the analysis unpacks how adversarial police encounters can ‘suck people unnecessarily into the criminal justice system; and perhaps cause, rather than prevent offending’ (2015; 2013).
The logical conclusion is that the fairer use of stop and search should make it more effective, in part, by minimizing the potential negative effects and relatedly, by increasing the probability of detecting unlawful items, through recourse to reasonable grounds. On the other hand, as Bradford points out, it may be that fairness and effectiveness run separately, which raises the awkward question, ‘how much unfairness is the public prepared to put up with for incremental increases in effectiveness?’ (2015: 121). The question might also be reframed in utilitarian terms, as per the recent Supreme Court judgement on section 60 of the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, which stated that there were ‘great benefits to the public in such a power, particularly to black people’. In other words, the court dismissed the inconvenience experienced by a minority by an appeal to the greater good. The counterargument, which runs quietly throughout the collection, is Rawlsian and premised on principles of equal citizenship or equality before the law (see also Peter Manning’s Democratic Policing in a Changing World (2010) that systematically applies Rawlsian principles to policing).
Turning to demographics, it is clear that debate around stop and search in England and Wales, as well as the attendant crisis of legitimacy, has coalesced around race and ethnicity (Delsol and Shiner, 2006: 244). Drilling beneath the headline statistics on disproportionality, Quinton examines race discrimination in terms of officer decision-making, drawing in part on his ethnographic research undertaken as part of the seminal Home Office Research Unit studies on stop and search. The analysis neatly dispatches the ‘availability’ argument (MVA and Miller, 2000; Waddington et al., 2004), namely, the fact that certain structural factors make young Black men more available for policing, with evidence that shows stereotyping remains central to police practice. Looking to other demographic categories, Shiner and Delsol further highlight a lack of specific safeguards in relation to stopping and searching children (2015: 195). These concerns also chime with recent research in Scotland, which shows that stop and search disproportionately falls on children and young people (Murray, 2015). More generally, it seems clear that there is a need to widen the analytical lens on stop and search to address different forms of discrimination, for instance, gender, socio-economic class, and crucially, the intersectionality between these different forms (Delsol and Shiner, 2006; Murray and Lennon, under review).
In a cogent chapter on regulation and reform, Shiner addresses the seeming inability of successive administrations and bodies to regulate what is a highly discretionary, low visibility tactic. Barriers to reform run from organizational resistance within the police service, to structural inequalities that remain conducive to stereotyping, to the larger politics of denial. Drawing lessons from the unpopular and contested implementation of the Macpherson recommendations on stop and search, Shiner sets out the case for a regulatory model that draws on both ‘consensus’ and ‘conflict’ approaches. In the first instance, police forces should put forward a persuasive case for exercising powers both lawfully and fairly, and if necessary, introduce dialogue with those unfairly targeted. However, if persuasion and dialogue fail, misconduct should trigger more punitive measures, from disciplinary action, through to dismissal. It is, he suggests, ‘perhaps time to talk more softly and to carry a bigger stick’ (2015: 169, citing Ayres and Braithwaite, 1992).
Despite the relatively pessimistic prognosis in relation to the efficacy of existing regulatory mechanisms, it is worth noting here that recent events in Scotland tell a slightly more optimistic story. Exacerbated in part by a lack of regulation and scrutiny – by the unfettered ability of officers to stop and search on a non-statutory basis, without reasonable suspicion or legal authority, and a lack of published statistics – by 2012/2013, recorded search rates in Scotland had outstripped those in England and Wales sevenfold. This divergence in recorded search rates between the two jurisdictions goes at least some way to demonstrating the value of scrutiny, regulation and reasonable suspicion, despite its evident flaws (Murray, 2015). Similarly, in his forward to the collection, Reiner (2015; xii) acknowledges the ‘stalwart monitoring and campaigning’ work undertaken by StopWatch, and the related impact on the use of suspicion-less statutory searches in England and Wales.
The concluding chapter by Bowling and Marks puts forward the case for a transnational and comparative approach. Despite differences between jurisdictions in legislation, recording practices and standards of scrutiny, it is clear that common themes prevail, notably the persistence of disproportionality towards the ‘usual suspects’, from Mexican immigrants in Arizona, to Roma communities in Hungary, the adverse effects, and relatedly, the significance of robust accountability in keeping police conduct in check.
It is worth adding to this the inherently slippery or opaque character of stop and search. Looking to the cycle of crisis and reform, it is clear that the ‘preventive’ rationales that underpin stop and search have been appropriated for different, and usually, politicized purposes (p. 31) from zero tolerance policing, deployed under the banner of ‘crime control’, to more parsimonious approaches that give weight to due process and fairness. Written in clear, uncluttered prose, in many ways the collection reads as a counterweight to this sense of slipperiness; a powerful and informed attempt to sharpen up the discursive space that surrounds stop and search, and nail down the key debates.