Stop and Search

Police Power in Global Context

Leanne Weber, Ben Bowling

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138944107
• eBook ISBN: 9781317981138
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Police powers to stop, question and search people in public places, and the way these powers are exercised, is a contentious aspect of police-community relations, and a key issue for criminological and policing scholarship, and for public debate about liberty and security more generally. Whilst monitoring and controlling minority populations has always been a feature of police work, new fears, new 'suspect populations' and new powers intended to control them have arisen in the face of instability associated with rapid global change. This book synthesises and extends knowledge about stop and search practices across a range of jurisdictions and contexts. It explores the use of stop and search powers in relation to street crime, terrorism and unauthorised migration in Britain, North America, Europe, Australia, Africa, and Asia. The book covers little researched practices such as road-blocks and ID checking, and discusses issues such as fairness, effectiveness, equity and racial profiling. It provides a substantive and theoretical foundation for transnational and comparative research on police powers in a global context.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Policing and Society.

Introduction

 

Stop and search in global context

Police, Stop! Halte! Igazoltatás! Thamba! Tomare! Pare! Alto! Halt! Arrêtez-vous immédiatement! The command – issued verbally or in the form of a road sign, a roadblock, or a flashing light on the top of a police car – is universal. Police officers around the world have the power to stop, question and search people, their clothing, bags and vehicles in public places. This ranges from street stops of people suspected of possessing prohibited items; ‘suspect passengers’ passing through ports, airports and railway stations; and proactive stop and search carried out in an attempt to prevent serious crime and terrorism. The power to stop, check, interrogate and search, and the way it is exercised, is a contentious aspect of police–community relations and a key issue for criminological and policing scholarship. It offers a fascinating case study in the state use of legal powers. It is a visceral manifestation of coercive and intrusive power and the most publicly visible interaction between state agent and citizen or, increasingly, between state agent and non-citizen. This collection examines the power to stop and search in the context of police studies from various parts of the world. The diversity of geographic examples in this collection of essays is echoed in diverse forms of stop and search and in where, how and why it is used. The similarities and differences in the everyday use of stop and search in different countries enable us to look at some key issues.

While the pressure to monitor and control minority populations has always been a feature of police work, new and renewed fears about emerging and existing ‘suspect populations’ – often accompanied by new powers and technologies intended to control them – have arisen in the face of instability associated with rapid global change. This special issue synthesises and extends knowledge about stop and search practices across a range of social, political and cultural contexts. Starting from specific socially, geographically and historically situated locations, the contributions engage with globally relevant themes such as the resurgence of nationalism in the face of globalising pressures; patterns of ethnic and racial targeting; increasing reliance on surveillance and identification technologies; and the convergence of criminal, migration and security paradigms. It is now evident that things happening in one part of the world are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa (Held and McGrew 2002). The world economy has integrated. Transport and telecommunications networks have thickened and widened. Global flows of all kinds have become more extensive, intensive and faster-flowing. Global interconnectedness has created new possibilities for police and criminal justice cooperation and the sharing of technologies, policies and practice (Bowling 2008, Bowling and Sheptycki 2011). Through sharing of information, nodes and networks of power are emerging that involve a range of different organisations – locally, nationally and globally. Ironically, because of their dispersed nature, these globalising processes may be best understood through situated studies of the local. As Sassen (2007, p. 6) has observed, globalisation does not always manifest at a self-evidently global scale but may involve ‘transboundary networks and entities connecting multiple local or “national” processes and actors, or the recurrence of particular issues or dynamics in a growing number of countries or localities’.

Although they may manifest in different forms, and be directed against different suspect populations, police stop and search powers are undoubtedly a recurring dynamic across the globe. Powers to stop and search often provide the starting point for exclusionary projects aimed at people occupying the social, legal and economic margins. In many parts of the world these powers developed from laws against vagrancy. In others they emerged as strategies to control colonised or subjugated populations. Historically, they have been directed towards those perceived to be outsiders. Globally, it seems, the task of policing is increasingly to select, immobilise and eject suspect populations, not just from public spaces or localities, but increasingly from national territory (Weber and Bowling 2008). An important focus for the study of police practice is therefore to examine the policing of border crossing, and the policing of peoples, in ways that connect local, national and transnational mechanisms (Weber and Bowling 2004). Street policing intersects with migration controls through informal questioning at the border and within the domestic sphere. Assisted by new information technologies, once a person has a criminal record, or an irregular migration status, the capacity for police to exercise control and surveillance multiplies rapidly. Globalised counter-terrorism measures also criminalise diverse transnational connections between migrant communities and contribute to social exclusion.

The articles in this collection explore the use of stop and search powers against a range of suspect populations, and in a variety of contexts. Collectively, they develop recurring themes about the search for security and the fluid boundaries of belonging in a rapidly changing world. Contributions are drawn from Japan, India, Australia, South Africa, Hungary, the Netherlands and from Britain, Canada and the United States. By juxtaposing perspectives from the ‘periphery’ and the ‘metropole’, the special issue responds to calls by Australian sociologist Raewyn Connell to reconceive social science as a ‘mutual learning process on a planetary scale’ (Connell 2007, p. 222). According to Connell, long-lasting patterns of inequality in power, wealth and cultural influence resulting from European and North American imperialism have produced a North Atlantic stranglehold on mainstream social science and blinded its practitioners to the potential benefits of intellectual engagement with knowledge from the periphery. Despite the global scope of its ambitions, Connell’s vision is predicated on an intellectual workforce engaged in intimate and essentially human forms of dialogue: ‘Once an overlapping problem area is defined, a common interest in truth and depth of understanding can be discovered … voluntary association, goodwill and mutual liking are not trivial bases for intellectual cooperation. They provide a basis for shared labour that points forward to emerging shared interests, rather than backward to interests founded in structures of inequality’ (Connell 2007, p. 229).

The production of this special issue has followed this prescription in many respects. The first step was defining the exercise of stop and search powers by police as an overlapping problem area of mutual concern. The second was to come together at a workshop held in London – an iconic metropolis – to mobilise the knowledge and experience of academics, lawyers and activists from 10 countries in an act of shared intellectual labour. The resulting collection reflects our collective concerns about police stop and search practices across a range of differing contexts and our mutual interest in harnessing the ‘deep understandings’ produced by this dialogue to move beyond existing structures of inequality. At the same time the contributions highlight diversity in the scope of police powers; public acceptance of police stop and search practices; and expectations for accountability arising from deep cultural, political and historical differences. Attention to context ensures that these global themes are given a distinctively local inflection. The view from the periphery – exemplified by contributions from post-Soviet societies such as Hungary (Tóth and Kádár); post-colonial societies such as India (Belur) and South Africa (Marks); and Australia with its continuing colonial dynamic (Weber) – complements the more extensively researched and debated views from the metropole. Adding to the diversity, contributions come from human rights activists and legal practitioners, as well as academics.

The papers also represent a range of criminological traditions, from the sophisticated quantitative analysis reported by Wortley and Owusu-Bempah to the fine-tuned qualitative approach exemplified by Quinton. Authors have looked beyond reviews of the established stop and search literature to find appropriate theoretical frameworks. Van der Leun and van der Woude draw on Garland’s culture of control thesis to contextualise their discussion of the policing of immigrants in the Netherlands; Mitsuru Namba frames his account of the war against illegal immigrants in Japan in terms of globalisation, risk and nationalism; Monique Marks embeds her discussion of police roadblocks in South Africa in the literatures of community policing and police effectiveness; and Weber looks to research on police legitimacy and ideas about governance through surveillance to provide a critical perspective on everyday migration policing in Australia.

The papers also represent a range of criminological traditions, from the sophisticated quantitative analysis reported by Wortley and Owusu-Bempah to the fine-tuned qualitative approach exemplified by Quinton. Authors have looked beyond reviews of the established stop and search literature to find appropriate theoretical frameworks. Van der Leun and van der Woude draw on Garland’s culture of control thesis to contextualise their discussion of the policing of immigrants in the Netherlands; Mitsuru Namba frames his account of the war against illegal immigrants in Japan in terms of globalisation, risk and nationalism; Monique Marks embeds her discussion of police roadblocks in South Africa in the literatures of community policing and police effectiveness; and Weber looks to research on police legitimacy and ideas about governance through surveillance to provide a critical perspective on everyday migration policing in Australia.

The papers uncover a range of targets for stop and search practices, defined by race, religion, ethnicity and legal status, each able to be linked to specific local histories and perceptions of threat and belonging. In Arizona (Provine and Sanchez) the nineteenth century redrawing of national borders shapes the contemporary targeting of Mexican immigrants. In Toronto, the evidence shows that Black populations remain the ‘usual suspects’ (Wortley and Owusu-Bempah), while counter-terrorism in London has shifted some of the police focus towards young Muslims (Parmar). Long-standing antipathy towards the Roma minority in Hungary (Tóth and Kádár) and towards Chinese and Korean neighbours in Japan (Namba) earmarks those groups for disproportionate police attention under contemporary social conditions. While a history of exclusionary, colonial policing against Aboriginal people appears to normalise the surveillance of non-citizens in Australia (Weber), active political and social rhetoric against foreign criminals in the Netherlands is challenging the long-standing presumption of cultural tolerance in that country (van der Leun and van der Woude). In both Mumbai (Belur) and Durban (Marks), roadblocks appear as a common form of stop and search, and seem to be rather loosely targeted and overshadowed by deeper concerns about serious violence committed by criminals, terrorists and police, as well as other forms of potentially harmful behaviour such as drunk driving. More generally, reliance on categorical signals, as described by Quinton, seems likely to increase as police around the world adopt supposedly ‘intelligence-driven’ approaches.

Taken as a whole, we believe that this collection, and the process which produced it, has made a small but genuine contribution towards reconceiving criminology as a globally connected mutual learning process. More specifically, this approach has yielded new insights into stop and search practices around the world, which are informed by a global perspective. We would like to express our gratitude to the contributors to this volume; to all the participants at the Stop and Search in Global Context workshop held at King’s College London on 7–8 July 2011, especially Rebekah Delsol, Loraine Gelsthorpe, Paddy Rawlinson, Mike Shiner and Layla Skinns who acted as expert discussants to Lea Schönfeld for research assistance to our respective universities – Monash University, Melbourne, at the geographic (although not economic) extreme of the periphery, and King’s College London situated at the heart of the metropolis – for financially supporting this venture in global dialogue; and to Policing and Society editor Martin Innes for promoting this model of globally engaged scholarship.

Leanne Weber

Monash University, Melbourne

Ben Bowling

King’s College London

References

Bowling, B., 2008. Transnational policing: the globalisation thesis, a typology and a research Agenda. Policing: a Journal of Policy & Practice, 3, 149–160.

Bowling, B. and Sheptycki, J., 2011. Global policing. London: Sage.

Connell, R., 2007. Southern theory: the global dynamics of knowledge in social science. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.

Held, D. and McGrew, A., eds., 2002. The global transformation reader; an introduction to the globalization debate. Cambridge: Polity.

Sassen, S., 2007. A sociology of globalization. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

Weber, L. and Bowling, B., 2004. Policing migration: a framework for investigating the regulation of global mobility. Policing & Society, 14 (3), 195–212.

Weber, L. and Bowling, B., 2008. Valiant beggars and global vagabonds: select, eject, immobilize. Theoretical Criminology, 12 (3), 355–375.

The formation of suspicions: police stop and search practices in England and Wales

Paul Quinton

Department of Sociology, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, UK

This paper explores the interpretative practices of the police when carrying out stops and searches. Drawing on ethnographic research carried out in England and Wales, a conceptual framework is developed to understand how officers become suspicious and decide to initiate encounters. It is argued that officers use tacit knowledge to make sense of new situations and determine what action to take, and base their suspicions on signals they come across on patrol. In examining these social processes, the paper shows that categories and stereotypes are central to decision-making which result in a police focus on the socially marginal. Looking beyond the immediate influences on officer action, the paper also explores the role played by the law in regulating police practice.

Introduction

When police officers conduct stops and searches, they make legal decisions. These everyday decisions can have a profoundly negative effect on the public particularly when the encounters are carried out with little reason, perceived to be unfair, or are poorly handled (Stone and Pettigrew 2000). Ironically, if these decisions undermine the legitimacy of the police, they are likely to weaken the public’s willingness to comply with the law (Tyler 1990). It is, therefore, crucial to understand the processes by which officers become uncertain about people or anticipate wrong-doing, and decide to initiate encounters.

Suspicion was a feature of many of the first policing studies, and it has since become regarded as a pervasive aspect of cop culture (Reiner 2010). The early literature drew a distinction between idealised notions of suspicion as it appeared in books, and how it was used in practice. Skolnick (1966) argued that the police characterised people as symbolic assailants through the use of perceptual shorthand, which resulted from the dangers faced by officers and their ability to use force. Others regarded suspicion more as a way for police to exert control over their workload and territory, and thought it intrinsically bound to officer knowledge and uncertainty (Rubenstein 1973). Matza (1969) placed greater emphasis on social control. He described how the ordinary mode of suspicion involved ‘rounding up the usual suspects’ and focusing on categories of people who ‘looked like criminals’ (see also Marx 1988). Subsequently, commentators have viewed suspicion as a means of re-establishing social order (Ericson 1982), constructing criminality (McConville et al. 1991), or disciplining social groups (Choongh 1997). Furthermore, it has been argued that suspicious are grounded in a series of working rules (Smith and Gray 1985, McConville et al. 1991) which draw on public information about criminals (Young 1994).

These accounts of police suspicion are not unproblematic. The early ethnographic studies did not recognise the law as providing context and setting for police action, and portrayed culture as deterministic of behaviour (Dixon 1997). Similarly, more recent structuralist accounts have tended to neglect the active role played by officers in the decision-making process. This paper, therefore, seeks to examine the interpretative practices of the police when carrying out stops and searches, and looks at how discretion is situated in a particular legal and social context. The work of Goffman is used as the conceptual lens to examine these social processes because he was largely concerned with understanding how suspicions were communicated in mundane social encounters and were central to the production of order. The paper sits in the Anglo-American tradition, and is based exclusively on empirical research conducted in England and Wales. Its scope is necessarily limited and concentrates largely on ordinary police powers that require officers to have reasonable grounds before conducting a search, and on less intrusive encounters requiring no formal power.

Research methods and analysis

This paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork carried for two related studies (Bland et al. 2000, Quinton and Olagundoye 2004). These studies sought to evaluate changes to police stops and searches introduced following the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, but were also designed to enable a qualitative exploration of police decision-making (Quinton et al. 2000, Quinton 2010). Research was conducted in 10 research sites across England and Wales, over two separate time periods:

• In 1999/2000 – Central Leicester, Chapeltown, Greenwich, Hounslow and Ipswich.

• In 2003 – Bournville, Hackney, Sefton, South Notts and Wrexham.

In total, 198 officers were interviewed across the sites. The interviews focused on what prompted their suspicions, how they initiated and handled encounters, and the impact of policy changes. Observations of patrols were also conducted to gain firsthand experience of decision-making in a more naturalistic setting. Most of the time was spent with officers on vehicle patrol, although some foot patrols were also studied. Officers were accompanied for over 565 hours across 70 shifts. During that time, 249 people were: stopped and searched; or stopped and asked questions about who they were, what they were doing, or similar.

An initial coding framework was developed fro...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• 1. Introduction: Stop and search in global context
• 2. The formation of suspicions: police stop and search practices in England and Wales
• 3. Stop and search in London: counter-terrorist or counter-productive?
• 4. Ethnic profiling in ID checks by the Hungarian police
• 5. The usual suspects: police stop and search practices in Canada
• 6. The fantastical world of South Africa’s roadblocks: dilemmas of a ubiquitous police strategy
• 7. Police stop and search in India: Mumbai nakabandi
• 8. ‘War on Illegal Immigrants’, national narratives, and globalisation: Japanese policy and practice of police stop and question in global perspective
• 9. Ethnic profiling in the Netherlands? A reflection on expanding preventive powers, ethnic profiling and a changing social and political context
• 10. ‘It sounds like they shouldn’t be here’: immigration checks on the streets of Sydney
• 11. Suspecting immigrants: exploring links between racialised anxieties and expanded police powers in Arizona
• 12. Stop and search in global context: an overview
• Index