ABSTRACT

This keynote lecture examines the extraordinary rise and fall of police powers to stop-and-search people without suspicion in public places in England. Suspicionless searches, targeted disproportionately on people of colour, rose to a peak of 360,000 in 2009 and then declined radically to  fewer than 1,000 in 2015. The lecture explains the change in the use of stop-and-search powers drawing on a theory of the police ‘working environment’ comprised of three structures: law, politics and occupational culture. The paper concludes with a consideration of attempts to reform stop-and-search powers in other jurisdictions.