A pilot scheme that allows police to stop and search people without having any grounds for suspicion does not work to reduce serious violence and disproportionately targets people of colour, a report has concluded.
In the first comprehensive review of evidence on stop and search and serious violence reduction orders (SVROs), the racial equality thinktank Runnymede Trust found that there was no statistically significant link between existing police stop and search powers and violence prevention or reduction.
The study also showed that people from ethnic minority backgrounds, and particularly Black people, were more likely to be stopped and searched, and experience negative mental and physical health outcomes as a result.
SVROs are court orders that allow officers to search people who have been convicted of an offence that involved a “bladed article or offensive weapon”, even if there are no immediate grounds for thinking they are carrying one at that time.
This order, introduced as a pilot under the Police Crime Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, can last for between six months and two years, though it can be extended.
It is a criminal offence for someone with an SVRO to obstruct officers conducting a search or to deny having the order if asked. The orders are being piloted in Thames Valley, West Midlands, Merseyside and Sussex.
The Runnymede Trust said the court orders were “part of a broader expansion of police powers and the rolling-back of safeguards and avenues for police accountability”, citing the poor outcomes relating to stop-and-search powers used without reasonable suspicion.
Section 60 search powers, under which police officers can stop and search a person without reasonable suspicion, are particularly ineffective, the thinktank said, with an overall arrest rate of 0.5% for offensive weapons between 2001 and 2021.
Dr Tim Head, an author of the report and a criminology lecturer at the University of Essex, said: “One of the most striking things about the government’s introduction of serious violence reduction order powers is that next to no evidence has been cited to support their rollout.
“However you frame it, the vast majority of rigorous evidence on SVROs points towards a single conclusion: high-discretion police stop interventions like this do not ‘work’, even on their own terms. Instead, they produce harm, anxiety and misery among the communities they purport to ‘protect’.”
SVROs were proposed in 2019 by Boris Johnson in an attempt to tackle knife crime. The idea was first set out by the rightwing Centre for Social Justice thinktank and supported by the former Conservative leader and ex-work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith.
A report by the Home Office last year showed that people from Black, Asian and other minority ethnic backgrounds were likely to be targeted under relaxed stop and search rules, despite not having committed crimes.
In the 12 months to June 2020, Black people were 3.7 times more likely to be stopped than white people. This figure rose to 6.9 times for stops relating to weapons, points and blades and section 60.
The report also highlights that the stop and search orders are detrimental to the mental and physical health of those targeted, and called for the SVRO pilot to be scrapped and replaced by a community-led, evidence-based approach.
