In this article, we used ten years of police, crime and other data from London to investigate the potential effect of stop and search on crime. Using lagged regression models and a natural experiment, we show that the effect of stop and crime is likely to be marginal, at best. While there is some association between stop and search and crime (particularly drug crime), claims that this is an effective way to control and deter offending seem misplaced. We close the discussion by suggesting that, first, in a legal sense the key issue is that each and every stop should be justified in itself, not in that it has some putative wider effect on crime, and, second, in a sociological sense, our findings support the idea that stop and search is a tool of social control widely defined, not crime fighting, narrowly defined.
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CfP European Journal of Policing Studies - Special Issue: The Dynamics of Police Stops
European Journal of Policing Studies Special Issue: The Dynamics of Police Stops Guest editors: Mike Rowe Sofie de Kimpe Vincenzo…
Read morePolstops Newsletter n4 (June 2022)
At last, we have been able to meet again. And we can now begin to identify what we have missed…
Read moreSpecial issue on POLICE ENCOUNTERS
A Special Issue on POLICE ENCOUNTERS of the Journal of Organizational Ethnography guest edited by Megan O’Neill, Mike Rowe, Sofie…
Read moreDoctoral and Early Career Training School 'Writing about Police Stops' - Call for Expressions of Interest
Location: Florence Dates: 2 – 6 May 2022 The EU Cost Action on Police Stops (CA17102) invites applications from Doctoral…
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