{"id":1716,"date":"2010-10-17T08:07:31","date_gmt":"2010-10-17T07:07:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/?p=1716"},"modified":"2010-10-17T08:07:31","modified_gmt":"2010-10-17T07:07:31","slug":"are-black-people-more-likely-than-whites-to-be-stopped-and-searched","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/?p=1716","title":{"rendered":"Are black people more likely than whites to be stopped and searched?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Blacks are stopped more often by the police<\/div>\r\n<\/div>An article in today’s Observer, claims that black people are 26 times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched by police in England and Wales.\u00a0 This is based on evidence in a report by The Open Society Justice Initiative which makes international comparison and reveals”staggeringly high” levels of what is said to be racial profiling among British police using Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994.<\/p>\n

US civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, who arrives in London today to launch a campaign aimed at curbing what he says is stop-and-search discrimination, described the figures as “astonishing”.<\/p>\n

The figures have to be treated with caution, for example they only relate to stop-and-search under Section 60, which allows police to search anyone in a designated area without specific grounds for suspicion, and the Observer article combines figures from different reports.<\/p>\n

Under section 1 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, which requires officers to have reasonable suspicion for a stop search, black people are seven times more likely to be stopped than white people.<\/p>\n

Although Home Office guidance states care must be taken not to discriminate against ethnic minority groups, it says there are times when officers should “take account of an individual’s ethnic origin in selecting persons and vehicles to be stopped”.<\/p>\n

A Civitas repor<\/a>t published today, concludes that disparity in stop and search numbers is not necessarily unfair.<\/p>\n

Today’s Observer <\/a>takes a different view, but confines its ‘evidence’ to Sec 60 stops.<\/p>\n

Other reports show that Asians were 6.3 times more likely to be stopped than whites, according to the analysis of Ministry of Justice figures for 2008-09, and that new draft Home Office guidance will allow police to stop and search on the basis of ethnic origin under Section 60.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blacks are stopped more often by the police An article in today’s Observer, claims that black people are 26 times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched by police in England and Wales.\u00a0 This is based on evidence in a report by The Open Society Justice Initiative which makes international comparison and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1716"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1716\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1718,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1716\/revisions\/1718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/lawblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}