Sophie has often spouted some bad takes, but advocating for police to continue oppressing black people on the false basis that it “saves lives” so, as usual, here’s a thread breaking down the fallacy of her argument https://twitter.com/sophiecorcoran0/status/1285243307694723072

The idea that stop and search save lives is propaganda for the police to justify bigotry and the institutionalized racism within the police force. Let’s think critically about what stop and search is, does and what negative effects it has. Stop and search means the police have

powers to stop and search someone if they have ‘reasonable grounds’ to suspect they are carrying drugs, weapons, stolen property or something which could be used to commit a crime. Stop and search allows the police to check their suspicions about an individual without having to

arrest them. Now that sounds great in a perfect society where the police aren’t a racist institution but unfortunately we don’t live in that perfect society. The bias against young black boys comes from the myth of the idea that black people

just commit more crimes which is once again a dog whistle to avoid dealing with the socioeconomic inequalities that black people face. The idea is that their race is in any way relevant in crime is to believe in the pseudoscience of eugenics and that black people have

a violent gene within them. Obviously a fallacy but police still disproportionately stop and search black people suggesting they buy into this myth. So how does stop and search help? Well it gets knives off the street, right? Right? No not really. Simply taking away a knife is a

very, very short term solution. “B-but it acts as a deterrent” again not really. A paper was recently released on the subject and the researchers found after a 10% increase in stop and search during a given month, recorded drug offences would be 1.85% lower during the next month

,while non-domestic violent crime (knife crime etc etc) was 0.01% lower. The paper also says “Overall, analysis shows that there was no discernible crime-reducing effects from a large surge in stop and search activity at the borough level during the operation.”

Although for the sake of fairness I will point out it does say “it does not necessarily follow that stop and search activity does not reduce crime. It is possible that there are localised crime-reducing effects of stop and search activity that are masked when

analysing data on such a large geographic area.” But solving the issues locally as opposed to these large areas doesn’t actually solve any issue. https://academic.oup.com/bjc/article/58/5/1212/4827589

But how can we reduce stabbings. Surely the answer is to be tougher and more aggressive within the law. Again this is in contrast to real life examples such as Glasgow, a city that once had a much higher stabbing rate than London. How did they reduce it? Through extra hard and

tough police officers arresting everyone they saw right? No. They took a very “radical” approach. Scotland's Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) was set up to stem the tide of knife crime which saw Glasgow become Europe's murder capital. From its formation in 2005 the VRU proposed a

fresh approach to tackling the problem. Its key message was that gang-related stabbings and slashings were not just a policing issue but a public health issue. The unit's motto was a simple one: "Violence is preventable, not inevitable." In 2004/05 there were 137 homicides (which

include murder and culpable homicide figures) in Scotland - in Glasgow, there were 40 cases alone, double the national rate. By 2016/17 the number had more than halved to 6. The VRU made bold statements to young people in simple, no nonsense terms. For example, chalk outlines of

a body and a knife once appeared in 15 areas identified as gang trouble spots. Officers also proactively visited suspected gang members, targeted their meeting places and monitored their activity on early social networking sites, such as Bebo.

In 2008 six surgeons who had witnessed first-hand the devastating impact of knife crime formed Medics Against Violence (MAV). One of its early projects involved sending senior doctors into schools to share their harrowing experiences. MAV also produced a 15-minute film, called

Your Choice, and devised lesson plans to help stimulate a debate. The VRU launched a mentoring project in schools which is designed to combat the emerging threat of cyberbullying and encourage children to stay safe online. The Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) initiative

teaches young people leadership skills to help them support their fellow pupils. The scheme, which was devised by US academic Jackson Katz, also coaches young people to challenge offensive behaviour. During workshops, pupils are asked questions such as:

"Is it sometimes ok to send a sexually explicit photo to another person?" The debates that follow aim to make teenagers think more carefully about their actions and what is acceptable behaviour. Meanwhile, VRU deputy director Will Linden has credited a dramatic reduction in

school explosions as responsible for the decrease in crime (42% of students permanently expelled from school end up in prison) https://www.ippr.org/files/2017-10/making-the-difference-report-october-2017.pdf

One of the VRU's key objectives was to offer young people an alternative path. In 2010, Brigadier David Allfrey, a former commander of 51 Scottish Brigade in Stirling, ran an adventure and leadership training scheme with former gang members. One more example is Street & Arrow in

Glasgow's West End , which launched in 2016. It offers modern street food served from an airstream truck and hires former offenders for 12-month blocks. Workers are paired with a mentor who can help them master everything from basic employment skills, like turning up on time,

through to debt management and relationship issues. Another way for the government to actually save lives would be to increase funding to these low income areas, improving job prospects, access to healthcare, living conditions etc etc and i promise you, there would be a

dramatic reduction in crime. There are clearly ways to reduce crime without subjecting black people to biased and unfair harassment from the police.

Appealing to emotion is a fallacious tactic when there are clearly more effective and ethical ways of doing it
https://twitter.com/sophiecorcoran0/status/1285257418524549123?s=21 https://twitter.com/sophiecorcoran0/status/1285257418524549123