UK: Stop and search figures (2)
01 January 1991
UK: Stop and search figures ....
Introduction
In the late 1970s and early 1980s most local authorities in
England and Wales, following the example set by the Greater
London Council, established ethnic monitoring systems. It was
argued at the time, that police forces should establish similar
systems to monitor the use of their powers. There were numerous
allegations, particularly from police monitoring groups, that the
criminal justice system as a whole, and the police in particular,
discriminated against ethnic minorities and it was therefore
essential to monitor every aspect of the criminal justice
process. Police forces, however, were reluctant to follow the
example of local authorities.
With the passage of the Criminal Justice Act in 1991 the police
were forced to take action. Section 95 places a duty on all
persons working in the criminal justice system to avoid
discriminating against anyone on the grounds of race, sex or
other improper ground and the Home Secretary is obliged to
publish information that he or she considers expedient to monitor
this duty. In 1992 the Home Office sent a circular to all Chief
Constables drawing their attention to the requirements of Section
95. The following year Her Majesty's Inspector of Constabulary
(HMIC) begun collating statistics for stops and searches but only
on the basis of a white/nonwhite split and no ethnic information
was collected on arrests.
In March 1995, following discussions within the Home Office,
HMIC and the police, a more extensive system of ethnic
monitoring was agreed. It now covers four main areas:
stop/searches, arrests, cautions, and homicides. The system,
described in Race and the Criminal Justice System 1997 published
by the Home Office, requires a police officer to made his or her
own judgement about the ethnic origins of the person. They are
required to use, "a 4-point scale", i.e. "White, Black, Asian
and Other." (p8).
The use of the word "scale" is totally inappropriate and
implies a graduated series or order and suggests that the Home
Secretary and the Chairman (sic) of the Criminal Justice
Consultative Council, who sign and commend the Report, as well
as a number of Home Office civil servants, have a long way to go
in racism awareness.
The classification, apart from being based on a police
officer's assessment of a person's ethnic identity rather than
how the individual would describe themselves, fails to include
a separate category for Irish people. They form the largest
ethnic minority group in Britain and, moreover, there is
increasing evidence that they are discriminated against by the
police and in the criminal justice system. Yet most academic and
government research continues to ignore their presence within
British society. Notwithstanding these points, however, the new
system of ethnic monitoring is a significant step forward and
goes a long way to meet the demands of those who have been
arguing for many years for some systematic monitoring of police
powers.
This system of ethnic monitoring began in 1996 and the first
set of figures were published by Home Secretary in Race and the
Criminal Justice System 1997 in December last year þ some six
years after the section 95 provision in the Criminal Justice Act.
The Report's findings
The Report presents a range of statistics on the four main areas.
It records for all police force areas, the total number of people
stopped and searched under section 1 of Police and Criminal
Evidence Act (PACE), the number of arrests, and the number
cautioned broken down by ethnic appearance. The small number of
homicides þ 671 in 1996/97 þ prevented any sensible analysis of
the statistics by police force area. An appendix contains a
statistical update on racial incidents, the proportion of ethnic
minorities on probation and in prison and the ethnic breakdown
of those working in the criminal justice system.
Some police forces are stil