Geoff Monaghan is a retired detective from the Metropolitan Police Service and New Scotland Yard. He has written a response to a recently released publication by Release/London School of Economics with respect to disproportionate numbers of, in particular – black people, being the focus of stop and search practices by police.
The Release/London School of Economics publication titled ‘The numbers in black and white: ethnic disparities in the policing and prosecution of drug offences in England and Wales’ highlighted the following statistics:
The figures in black and white
- Over 50% of stop and searches are for drugs, 10% are for offensive weapons and less than 1% are for guns.
- The police in England and Wales stop and search someone for drugs every 58 seconds.
- Of the more than half million stop and searches for drugs carried out in 2009/10 only 7% resulted in arrest.
- In 2009/10 black people were stopped and searched for drugs at 6.3 times the rate of white people, while Asian people were stopped and searched for drugs at 2.5 times the rate of white people.
Read the full publication Release – Race Disparity Report
In response to the above publication, former Detective Monaghan argued that the study failed to take structural factors into account when measuring disproportionality of stop and search with respect to black and Asian people, callings into question the study’s methodology.
Read Geoff Monaghan’s response here: Stop and Think
Both publications make for interesting reading. Please share your thoughts with us using the comments section below.