Measuring Stops and Searches: Lessons from U.K. Home Office Research

This article describes an evaluation of a new system of monitoring police stops and searches in five pilot police sites, along with related research on the disproportionate police stopping and searching of people from minority ethnic backgrounds (“disproportionality”). The evaluation shows that the new monitoring is characterized by a substantial underrecording of encounters, notably of stops. A comparison of data from officer-defined and self-defined ethnic categories on stop and search forms highlights different strengths and weaknesses of both types of ethnic monitoring. The article also explores public satisfaction with the new system of recording, noting that people typically did not understand the purpose of the form at the time they received it. The research into disproportionality explored the “available” populations on the street - using video cameras mounted in moving vehicles - and compared them with resident populations and with those stopped and searched. The research shows that available populations were very different from resident populations. Overall, the findings suggested no general pattern of bias in stops and searches against people from minority ethnic groups. The research also finds that while stops and searches tended to be targeted at areas that have higher than average proportions of residents from minority ethnic groups, this largely reflected patterns of crime.