Suffolk Stop and Search Reference Group

Making the most of Section 95 data

Michael ShinerLondon School of Economics

Community engagement as damage limitation

If somebody asks for that information then, obviously, we would give itbut it’s not something we pass out just for the sake of it. In fact –because I’ve never even considered it before to be honest - it’s neverraised as an issue. It’s never been raised with me and most of thecontact I have is with African Caribbean and Asian people…I supposeother issues are raised in association with that…There’s sometimescomplaints that they feel their children are stopped and checked orstopped or spoken to simply because they’re in gangs of youths andthey’re wearing hooded tops and they’re masked up. And my answerto that has got to be that ‘we target priority crime and the mainsuspects for our robberies and our violent crime are groups of AfricanCaribbean males masked up with hooded tops on’…Q: What kind ofreaction do you get when you say that? Well, there’s no answer to thatreally.

Chief Inspector, case study

External scrutiny as mystification

I don’t think we understand disproportionality and we regularly ask …the police force tell us ‘we are not acting in any way that we go outand look out for black Caribbeans or Africans or Asians’, so why arewe consistently getting more of one type of people being stopped thanothers?…And no one gives us an explanation. The only thing youkeep hearing is this argument about street populations, [but]…I don’tthink the police actually do know…I still feel we don’t know as a forceand if we don’t know as a force, then we don’t know as an Authority…we hear but we remain to be convinced…[there’s some research that]seems to want to support this view, but the reaction from the BlackPolice Association is that this is close to heresy, so there are stillsome very strong polarised views…I do sit somewhere in the middle,trying to understand the two points of view and at the moment I can’treally reconcile them

Police Authority Member

Analysis

Section ’95 data 2001/2 to 2008/9

Work in progress

Geographic variation

Focuses on ‘Black’ category

The art of the possible

Science does not aspire to godlikecertainty: that would be morecharacteristic of religious fanaticism. All it provides is the best explanationsin the light of the available evidence

David J. Smith (1994: 1046)

Geographic variation

Marked variationsfrom 0.49 to 6.41 2001/2from 1.19 to 10.98 2008/9

General increase in disproportionaility – an artefact of the data?

Relative consistency over time

Z-scores show how an area is doing relative to the average not the aggregate

Where is disproportionality highest?

Consistently in top 25%

Avon and Somerset

DorsetEssexHampshireNorfolkNottinghamshireSussex

Where is disproportionality lowest?

Consistently in bottom 25%

ClevelandCumbriaDurhamLancashireLincolnshireNorthumbriaNorth YorkshireDyfed-PowysNorth Wales

Ups and Downs (Z-scores)

-1.5

-1

-0.5

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

01/02 02/03 03/04 04/05 05/06 06/07 07/08 08/09

Thames Valley

Merseyside

South Yorkshire

Gwent

What about Suffolk?Rate of disproportionality

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

01/02 02/03 03/04 04/05 05/06 06/07 07/08 08/09

England & Wales (aggregate)

Suffolk

England & Wales (average)

Suffolk (Z-scores)

-0.8

-0.6

-0.4

-0.2

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

01/02 02/03 03/04 04/05 05/06 06/07 07/08 08/09

Suffolk

Making better use of the data

Local applications

Good and bad practice

Drivers of disproportionality

Targets