About three years I posted a bit of a thread about stop and search. I think it’s time for a reminder...

Since 1829 the primary role of the police has been to prevent crime. Whilst we now look at root causes, target-hardening, preventative measures etc. too, this was primarily conducted by deterring offenders with police presence.

Most measures were more about dealing with offenders after the offence had been committed or mid-offence, by which time the harm has been done. Despite the primary purpose of the police, they had little in the way of powers to prevent crime.

Prior to 1984 the main power to try and stop crime before it happened - which I think we can all agree is a good idea - was the Vagrancy Act 1824 - which probably wasn’t a good idea, especially to still be using it 160 years after it was written.

Under the Act, any person could arrest a ‘suspected person’ frequenting it loitering in a long list of public places, including the street, with the intent of committing a felony. It was not necessary to show that the person was guilty of any specific crime.

‘Suspected person’ included anyone with previous convictions, although it wasn’t necessary for the police to know of those convictions at the time of arrest. ‘Intent’ was demonstrated through the arrested person’s previous character.

Disproportionate use of the power of arrest under the ‘sus laws’, commonly known as ‘loitering with intent’ in relation to ethnic minority communities was the source of much tension and a key factor leading to the inner city riots of 1981.

So along came the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, designed to make police powers consistent across the country (rather than variable local laws), to safeguard the rights of suspects and the public; the very first section of the Act being concerned with ‘stop and search’.

‘Stop and search’ was designed to prevent arrests, to allow officers to determine at the roadside (or wherever) that a person was not in possession of whatever illegal item, and allow them on their way - ensuring that the innocent weren’t criminalised.

Trying to find out where PACE went wrong is difficult as most works eg Delsol & Shiner (2006) and Van Bueren & Woolley (2010) cite concerns about stop and search as starting in the early 1980s, and the Met’s misuse of the power in Op Swamp ‘81 as a major contributor to the riots.

These misused powers were under Section 66 of the (local to London) Metropolitan Police Act 1839 which allowed officers to search people who they reasonably believed to be in possession of stolen goods. As a note other national powers existed to search for drugs and guns.

So whilst the MP Act and PACE are both very similar in that they allowed officers to search where reasonable grounds were present, and on face value both powers appear to be about catching people in possession of evidence, the motivation for the latter Act was very different.

PACE was, in part, intended to give police nationwide the power to search in order to prevent harm before it happened in but also to prevent unnecessary arrests and redress the disproportionate application of the Vagrancy Act.

Looking back now, and even in modern academic writing on the subject, it seems that S1 PACE searches were viewed as a continuation of MP Act searches in London, and no distinction could be made between the two, and so the motivation for PACE to address inequality was never seen.

At some point in time (at least twenty years ago as recalled by @pkquinton), and presumably resulting from continued concerns over the disproportionate application of stop and search we began to look at it in the context of being a targeted intervention, and rightly so.

After all, the officer must have reasonable grounds to suspect they’ll find something - not the highest of bars in fairness, but still meaning that there have to be documented grounds, not just random application of the power.

What appears to have grown from this though is a ‘conversation rate’ ie that x% of searches should lead to police finding things and therefore arresting people as a sign of success - this for a power that was partly intended to negate the presence of items and prevent arrests!

Yes, search is meant to find things and thereby prevent crime, but PACE search is also designed to prevent unnecessary and disproportionate arrests by negating the presence of an offending item.

To view success in stop and search in terms of arrest is to fail to understand its origins and provide fuel to the fire that would burn it - demonstrating its apparent failure through a measure that does not measure a critical part of its raison d’etre, in fact the opposite.

The ability to prevent harm through the discovery of items prior to harm being committed is, I think, the right thing to do and commensurate with the primary aim of policing, and to do so without arresting and criminalise the innocent seems imminently sensible.

However as Lord Scarman (author of the report on the causes of the 1981 inner city riots) said, the climate of suspicion held by the black community of the police was such that it would only take one incident a year to keep the mistrust alive.

It is clear that lawful ‘stop and search’ is still viewed with this mistrust, and that the unfortunate occasions when it may be misused, or perhaps even where there is a perception that it is misused - even if it’s just that once a year - is enough to maintain and fuel mistrust.

I don’t propose an answer. Based on what Scarman said it’s near impossible to irradicate that mistrust. It is also beyond my experience to comment on the misuse of search, or understand the impacts on people of being stopped and searched.

However in our discussions on stop and search I think it’s important to remember where it came from and what the purpose is - both of which seem sensible and reasonable. How it’s implemented and perceived are where the work is required, not the destruction of the power itself.

Disclaimer: I’m a distinctly average copper, not a legal expert or historian. All errors in fact and interpretation are entirely my own!

Stop and search threads by @gmhales (on disproportionality) and @themetskipper (on practical application to prevent harm) are well worth a read.

And for a history of preventative measures in policing, this 2016 article is a really interesting read - provides a lot of historical context https://watermark.silverchair.com/azw008.pdf?token=AQECAHi208BE49Ooan9kkhW_Ercy7Dm3ZL_9Cf3qfKAc485ysgAAAowwggKIBgkqhkiG9w0BBwagggJ5MIICdQIBADCCAm4GCSqGSIb3DQEHATAeBglghkgBZQMEAS4wEQQM_b-B8D7CAI1Q_RCGAgEQgIICP35HAFKJy39VIB_l7wIMzHkCZNsrSa0x0OLNdwGSMuH-fxbW2Lp1AXgd2g72AWv6Bt0HgUxlSsKvZNUucp8d6xo9dpAFog4HJZb33jWxQhcK2VCAbjS3Cy-KUDSQtdtIZ3lpBQgII0CeinB9IPpe3wYD8jyEch2g2RyP4t0Jt3alXhB4pc79BCKjJGj2o4R70tEqMG_KMIJO93TvFzvU7_X0AMe1vTdI3ugoMFbjowUyuSul3c_YENew5qhKeFwDZv9iDKUrwmfioHmCFzJLV7wXoeHDRsaBbA6Ha3v4wyfA8o_c9as9mTWUEOc6PXv8acFsm84Xhmik0y4OcRqDjDcHL9HlMG4mburglwJ27m22VcJCD-g-d04HYRDfQRL819_yy_ojiKpiV28E95C5kBtqgs4N9dWazikiEFhxSyOUPW6h7U4ANCiGJpzCrMamici0f8cQoI5Erv0ndE3rc2S_Fir4JrPeUT74cZeCOb5e5HX3K1yg8v7-o-6bQivjZlkkZixTmIQvUl1HnoohcjxM2DMH1j86dnD2mxckHIzv6ZxXuGp1lLmrcHN-JTwYeGiaRMRomP2bFk_w1LSrQrkP4SCVkKXy25Y1of7KFXivl_FfrnjA785jABCsFqY2pOovdZ-EVA8Te2A3IbsajXOc39DLgOvcA-q0YHCHCuMJg-yTPAxdW9Uiu7rihGwRIi1-g_qRxNawj80SY--kp8W46fwhj6hRDe4LCPjNfNWw7XC88jZQEcRfyUMWSH8a