19th April 2010
Stop and Search Use Spirals in the Past Year
Mark Hanson
Despite Lord Carlile, the Government reviewer of anti-terrorism legislation, heavily criticising the police over unwarranted searches of innocent people, new figures suggest that there continues to be widespread abuse of the stop and search powers.
The equivalent of 1 in every 35 people were subject to stop and search in the year 2008/09. The use of anti-terrorism stop and searches, which requires no suspicion of a crime and has been declared to be in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, was up by two thirds, to 210,013 people. Concerns have been raised that stops under this power are unfairly targetting black and Asian men.
Stops under public order offences were also up, to 150,174 people, and other powers resulted in 1.15 million people and vehicles being searched.
This has resulted in only 9 people being arrested for terrorism related offences, and the total number arrested as a result of stop and search was down on the previous year.
Chris Grayling, the Conservative shadow Home Secretary, commented that "Gordon Brown and Labour have trampled our civil liberties for far too long."
The far-reaching powers that Labour have introduced, ostensibly to fight terrorism, are again and again being shown to be ineffective in everything except the oppressive tendencies of the authoritarians.
