Law Weblog

Increase stop and search – black and Asian

Saturday 2 May 2009 at 12:06 pm | In News | Post Comment The stop and search figures released this week by the Ministry of Justice reveal a surge in the number of black and Asian people stopped under counter-terrorism laws.

There was a 322% rise in the number of black people stopped, compared with an increase of 277% for Asian and 185% for white people. Justifying the huge rise the department quotes the “robust response by the Metropolitan police” since the Haymarket bomb in 2007 as one of the factors in the huge rise nationally.

Corinna Ferguson, a human rights barrister at Liberty, said the threefold increase in anti-terror stop and search operations was a clear sign that the powers were being misused: “Only six in 10,000 people stopped were arrested for terrorism, let alone charged or convicted,” she said. “The disproportionate impact on ethnic minorities is even greater than in previous years.”

Full details here