Stop and search: An open letter to Theresa May MP, Nick Herbert MP and Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe

We are a collective of organisations that believe police stop-and-search tactics are damaging the relationship between young people and society. We are calling for the police to change their approach.

Our work with young people, and in-depth research into last summer’s riots, shows that stop-and-search was a key causal factor in the violence that swept the country.

The Metropolitan Police will soon release figures to demonstrate a reduction in the number of stop and searches conducted as well as an improvement in effectiveness. Disproportionality will also be shown to have reduced.

We acknowledge these developments but believe this is still not enough. Young people remain angry about stop-and-search – they believe that it continues to be a discriminatory and dehumanising imposition. Some feel that if they are to be treated as suspects, they may as well commit crime.

We believe that stop-and-search is the embodiment of the negative relationships young people have with the police. It is often carried out with little reason given and makes no differentiation between criminal and victim. Between you, you three have the power to change this.

We are calling on you to take steps to further reduce the use of stop-and-search with young people, to increase effectiveness of stop-and-search and to reduce disproportionality in stop and search.

Specifically we are asking for:

1)    The suspension of Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act (1994) which allows officers to stop and search young people without even the safeguard of reasonable suspicion.

2)    Interested parties: civil liberties groups and community organisations to scrutinise and comment on ACPO’s forth coming review of “Best Practice” in the use of Stop and Search. We are sceptical that a review of best practice is sufficient to deal with the gravity of the issues at hand, and communities must be allowed the chance to read it and deliver their verdict.

3)    The Metropolitan police to reveal the details of their forthcoming stop and search policy “STOP-IT” and allow space for consultation with communities. If stop and search is ever to be a positive force for community safety communities must support it. This will not happen if they feel it is simply imposed upon them from above.

We make this call for three good reasons:

1. Stop and search is not effective. Only 1/10 stops under Section 1 of the Police and Criminal Evidence act (1984) results in an arrest, and 0.4% of stops under Section 60 result in an arrest for a dangerous weapon. Yet we know that negative interactions with the police destroy trust and make young people more likely to resent police. For every knife Section 60 takes off the streets many more young people lose their trust in the police and turn to weapons to make them feel safer.

2. Police and community relationships are better without it. The Equalities and Human Rights Commission report Stop and Think report highlighted that when stop-and-search was reduced in Staffordshire and Cleveland crime levels also dropped and public confidence in the police increased.

3. It is discriminatory. Black people are 37 times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched under Section 60 by police in England and Wales. Black and Asian people are more likely to be stopped across all forms of stop and search than white people.

In relation to this last reason based on discrimination you are required to take corrective steps if you are to comply with your obligation to have due regard to the three equality aims in Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010.

Young people have a right to be on the street, unchallenged, unless there is good cause to believe they are involved in crime. Please support us in asking the police service to reduce the use of stop-and-search and to improve their relationships with young people.

Sign up to the campaign for better and fairer engagement between the police and young people at www.stopandtalk.co.uk.

Yours faithfully,

-       Just for Kids Law

-       Mediorite

-       Young Hackney World

-       StopWatch

-       What We’ve Done

-       Fully Focused Community

-       Catalyst Gateway

-       Stop and Search Legal Project

-       Release

-       Poached Creative

-       Off Centre

-       Stop and Search UK Mobile App

-       Art Against Knives

-       Haringey Young People Empowered (HYPE) Release

-       Newham Monitoring Project

-       Netpol

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• http://www.facebook.com/people/Peter-Snelson/557035971 Peter Snelson

  All those who disagree with SUS must therefore be happy for people not to be searched when boarding a plane.

• bogwart

  Oh, right.  That must be why Kings College London and UCL have departments of political and constitutional studies and why there exists an organisation called the Constitution Unit, a UK based think tank that specialises in constitutional affairs.

  If you have opinions on matters like this you would be well-advised to spend a couple of minutes checking your facts before writing.

  Do you suppose that countries with written constitutions have them set in stone?  The mere fact of a piece of paper is irrelevant.

• bogwart

  Usually. When I lived in West London there was a drive-by at a local school where the buildings were peppered with 9mm rounds. Luckily the kids were in class and nobody was hurt.
  On another occasion an eight-year old girl was killed by stray bullets, and I do not have to mention the ethnicity of the assailants.
  PC is right. Whenever I see stuff like this I smell incense and hear a heavenly chorus accompanied by the wagging of fingers. But of course profiling is necessary.
  The alternative is the TSA in the US who, in their desperate attempts to avoid the tag of profiling, carry out body searches on half-naked 80-year old women in wheelchairs and sexually assault (because that is what grown men groping females’ groins is called) four-year old girls.
  If the sanctimonious do-gooders stopped blaming the police for once and concentrated on the area that matters, ie educating these louts that running around with knives and guns wil result in jail time maybe we’d see some progress.

• MBGPW

  As a youth, I was sufficiently savvy
  to tell any sympathetic ear
  that police stopping and searching me
  made me antisocial.

  I daresay most youths are.

• Yoyo

  Fully back this attempt. The state routinely dismisses our lawful right to go about our business unhindered. We are treated with the utmost contempt by authorities if we challenge legal statutes. Indeed we are threatened if we disagree with a policy officers attempt to prevent us from going about our lawful business. Generations have sacrificed themselves to ensure we are innocent until proven guilty, present legalese dishonors their sacrifice with mindless double speak such as ‘well if you haven’t done anything wrong then you have nothing to be worried about’. The states attempt to criminalise normal behavior is as relentless as it’s legal amendments. There is only one recourse, non compliance.

• loftytom

   The article gives no detailed stats of criminality, no mention of sample size, no mention of selection of sample, it’s unscientific tosh. Basing action on such pseudoscience is madness.
  Their place in society? Marx had a name for it, lumpenproletariat, criminals who prey on working people

• MarkItZero

  What I was saying is that disproportionately harsh sentencing doesn’t make a place nice to live. I’d rather live in a country with the crime rate we have now (which isn’t as bad as many places that have harsher sentences, e.g. the USA) than live in a country where there’s no trust between races, generations or social groups. This ‘throw enough sh*t at a wall’ tactic causes more crime than it prevents.

• elln

  of a good charachter lol. like the members or Bullingdon club.

• elln

  of a good charachter lol like the members of bullindon club.

• elln

  you forget the figures of poverty and illiteracy between black people. Ah! and you seem to forget the fact that no one can survive with the minimum wage in london not even with tax credits.