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Essay: IS Stop and search a legitimate means of deterring street crime?

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  • Published: 1 June 2019*
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The Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 section 1 provides a power for the police to “Search any person or vehicle; anything which is in or on a vehicle for stolen or prohibited articles and may detain a person or vehicle for the purpose of such a search.” This power can only be exerted as long as the constable has reasonable suspicion that they will find stolen or prohibited items. According to Bradford & Loader (2015, P 6) “Perhaps because of, the extent of the power it grants to police, stop and search is one of the most commonly used formal police powers in England & Wales”. The question being addressed is whether stop and search is a legitimate means of deterring street crime, but with it on the decline, could it really be deterring such crime? This essay will address factors that show that stop and search does not have a large deterrent effect with regard to street crime and it also, raises questions concerning this form of social control and whether it can be seen as legitimate by the public and by the police themselves? This essay will conclude that stop and search may have a small deterrent effect on some elements of street crime but by conducting these searches it largely affects the legitimacy of the police as seen by the public.

   “One of the long-standing sources of contention in relation to criminal justice has concerned the use of stop and search powers by the police.” (Newburn, 2017, P 848). Stop and search became very controversial as it was seen as discriminative and heavy handed after operation ‘Swamp 81’. Operation Swamp 81 was directed at the problem of street crime. It used three methods of policing which were: special patrol groups, the use of ‘SUS’ law and the exercise stop and search (McGhee, 2005, P19). This saw more than 1000 black people in London stopped within 6 days under the so called ‘SUS law’. Section 4 of the Vagrancy Act 1824, which was known as the ‘SUS’ law, gave the police power to stop and search individuals suspected of loitering with intent to commit an arrestable offence within a public place. This law was seen as controversial due to it being 160 years old meaning this was not seen as legitimate and was seen as outdated. This further fuelled the Brixton riots of 1981 which became a vital event in the further development of stop and search. This law was then replaced as stop and search in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE). Stop and search falls under section one of PACE and it states that “The primary purpose of stop and search powers is to enable officers to allay or confirm suspicions about individuals without exercising their power of arrest.” (Home Office, 2014, P 4).

    Statistically stop and search has drastically declined over the past 9 years in England and Wales with 1,150,153 recorded search’s taking place in the 2009/10 financial year Povey, Mulchandani, Hand & Panesar (2011, P 33) and in the financial year of 2016/17 there was only 298,949 (Home office, 2018). In a study conducted by College of Policing (2017) it states that the more stop and searches that are conducted occasionally were followed by lower rates of crime. Although this may be the case in this study, this isn’t a generalised concept as it varies between different boroughs and even though this study showed a small deterrence effect they state that “It would suggest that extremely large increases in stop and search, of a scale likely to be unacceptable to some communities, would only deliver modest reductions in crime.” (College of Policing, 2017, P 4). In relation to the statement above, ethnic disproportionality is one of the main factors that can affect the legitimacy of stop and search and has also affected the number of recorded stop and searches. It appears that the way in which stop and search is currently being used is extremely illegitimate in regards to how it is being exercised for ethnic minorities.

   An influencing factor to whether street crime can be deterred as a result of stop and searches, relates to deterrence theory. Deterrence can be separated into three separate categories: General, specific and incapacitation. Ball (1955, P 347) states “Deterrence is usually defined as the preventive effect which actual or threatened punishment of offenders has upon potential offenders.”. To relate this back to the question in hand, two factors of this theory need to be considered: that the potential offender is aware of the police activity around them and then whether they update their perception of potential threat from seeing this police activity. First to be considered is whether the offender could be aware of police presence and with stop and searches on the decline, could police presence be adequate? In a poll conducted by Ipos Mori (2016) for the HMIC it was shown that 31% of 26,000 people had seen less uniformed police officers within their local community and only 7% of them had seen some sort of improvement in police presence. Although one third of people within this poll had seen an improvement, 51% had seen no change at all in police presence. This shows that police presence is not extensive enough to provide such a threat to potential offenders. In a study conducted by Rosenfeld et al. (2014, pp 428–449) there was evidence from the US that showed some types of police contact may have an increasingly positive effect the amount of crime occurring.

   Bradford, Quinton & Tiratelli (2018, P 1215) state “If police change the objective risk of sanction by increasing the level of S&S in an area, this will not necessarily lead to changes in the behaviour of people in that area, since they do not ‘notice’ police activity in such a way that would lead them to reassess how risky they thought certain behaviours were.”

   Although Bradford et al (2018), showed that stop and search and police presence could not have an effect on the risk levels of potential offenders, their study did show that stop and search did have a small deterrent effect on different categories of street crime, especially drug crimes. Drug searches are the most common reason for PACE searches to be conducted. Drug stop and searches accounted for 60% of all searches conducted in the year of 2018 which matched the year of 2017 (60%) (Home office 2018, P 23). Although these statistics show that 60% of searches were for drug offenses, this doesn’t mean that any arrests from these were for possession or dealing of drugs, it could be for weapon offenses or theft offenses. A possibility of these statistics being so high relates back to rational choice theory. The possible gain from carrying or dealing such drugs can influence the potential offender’s choice and risk levels to carry such items. Potential gains from this could be happiness from taking such drugs and financial gain from selling such prohibited items.

   Highly popularised by the media in recent years is the severe problem of knife crime. Operation Blunt 2 was conducted from 2008 until 2011 and was an initiative to tackle knife crime, youth violence and more serious cases of violence within London. It was run by using stop and search mixed with ‘hotspot’ policing tactics such as intelligence-led searches in certain geographical areas, groups of individuals and events. If this operation was to be successful, then a large drop in knife crime would be expected as a result from the influx of stop and search’s conducted. In reality this was not the case as in a study conducted by McCandless, Feist, Allan and Morgan (2016) It showed that there was no statistically significant crime deterrence effect across the difference offense types as a result of the increase in search, when they compared the boroughs that had the largest increases in searches to the boroughs that had lower number of searches.

   “Hot spot policing was more effective for drug offences, violent crime and disorder than it was for property crime.” (College of Policing, 2017). Although hotspot policing varies in its effectiveness, it can also be the influence on other issues regarding crime such as displacement. Displacement is “the idea that the impact of such measures tends to be geographically limited and simply to mean that crimes that would have been committed are now more likely to be committed elsewhere.” (Newburn, 2017, P 619). With the cases of knife crime and drug offenses, it could potentially be that stop and search measures are not deterring crime but merely displacing it to other areas.

   According to Beetham (1991, P 16) “Power can be said to be legitimate to the extent that: It conforms to established rules, the rules can be justified by reference to beliefs shared by both dominant and subordinate, and there is evidence of consent by the subordinate to the particular power relation”. The ideology of policing by consent as stated by Myhill and Quinton (2011, P4) is “the idea that the police can only function because of the support given to it by the public.”. To be able to control crime, we have to comprehend why individuals comply with the law and participate with lawful policies and authorities. In the event that crime policies are to induce and deter, they have to resound with individuals' feeling of ethical morality. To follow on from this, procedural justice places a large role in police legitimacy. Tyler (1990, P5) states “According to a normative perspective, people will be concerned with whether they receive fair outcomes, arrived at through a fair procedure, rather than with the favourability of the outcomes.”. To improve police legitimacy effective methods of policing within culturally diverse communities has to exist and such relationship between procedural justice, legitimacy and ethnicity has so far been ignored (Murphy & Cherny. 2011).

    In the study conducted by the Home Office (2018) it stated that within the United Kingdom “in 2016/17, there were 4 recorded stop and searches for every 1,000 White people, compared with 29 recorded stop and searches for every 1,000 Black people.”. In a statement by Waddington (2004, P 890) he proposes that this ethnic disproportionality has acquired widespread credibility. In relation to the idea of the police being institutionally racist, the MacPherson report (1999) credited the disproportional levels of stop and search to accidental stereotyping, yet this in any case is a declaration of the subjectivity of officers but is socially shared.  

  According to Sanders and Young (2000, P 87) the reasonable suspicion factor is too vague and has space for interpretation. This allows room for conducting discriminative searches. Although official statistics show that stop and search is disproportionable between ethnic groups this cannot be completely trusted due to numerous factors. One of these factors as mentioned by Waddington (2004, P 890) includes the residential population uses of various public spaces. He uses the example of women seem to be put off by going out onto the streets especially after dark whereas young men of all ethnic groups tend not to be bothered by such things so have greater availability to be stopped and searched. So, with this considered these statistics should not be seen as legitimate figures. Ethnic disproportionality factors as mentioned above can lead to ‘bad blood’ between the police forces and the communities in which they serve for.

  It is expected that the relationships between legitimacy and compliance should be consistent around the world, and the US complies with this. According to Tyler, Fagan, and Geller (2014) in last 20 years, the New York Police Department has contracted in a series of policies and practices which were named controversial in its dealings with the public. These have included saturation of non-white neighbourhoods with aggressive stop and frisk tactics.

    In conclusion, there is very little evidence to prove the ideology that stop, and search can deter street crime. Although I have provided evidence showing stop and search can deter certain crimes, I have also provided evidence that it does not deter crime but merely moves it. Public perceptions of the police are an important element of legitimacy. Ethnic minorities often are targeted for stop and search’s and the public's perceptions about the legitimacy of the police can be compromised. A relationship between the police and the public is a vital component to conduct stop and searches. I would like to refer back to a study that sums up the deterrence effect of stop and search in regard to the legitimacy. “Finally, in a much broader sense, regardless of any direct crime reduction effect there is the potentially adverse impact on the public’s willingness to help to tackle crime that may result from negative experiences of stop and search.” (McCandless 2016 et al, P 12).

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