I retired from the magistracy in 2015 after 17 years mainly as a presiding justice

United Kingdom
My current blog can be accessed at https://thejusticeofthepeaceblog.blogspot.com/

"STOP AND SEARCH" or SEEK AND YE SHALL FIND

 

25 Jan. 2010. – 12:11:15

There are lies, damned lies and statistics. This phrase of uncertain lineage has been around for over a century. It is even more apposite now in the age of the spin doctor. Nowhere are spurious so called facts and figures thrown at us more often than in the analysis of all that is associated with criminal behaviour.

The latest figure to enter this debate is Professor Marian Fitzgerald visiting professor of criminology at Kent Crime and Justice Centre, University of Kent who states that There is little connection between the use of stop and search powers by the ­Metropolitan police and reductions in knife crime.

It is not my intention to dispute here what the professor is assessing from the figures she has used but the effect isolated analyses such as these have upon a largely innumerate population.

Conclusions such are reported mean absolutely nothing without knowledge of the professor`s remit and sponsor, without detailed information of those actually stopped and searched, their previous criminal history, the consequences of the stop and search eg the arrest rate, the number of cautions issued as a result, the charges [if any] brought and the conviction rate and final sentence of those brought to court. Perhaps some or all of these numbers missing are in the professor`s paper and perhaps not. But the net result is purely political and will be another misleading avenue down which our political parties will travel in the coming four months in their attempts to convince us they are or are not doing all they can in the matter of protecting the citizen and punishing the guilty.

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