You may have seen it before – a young boy stopped at the side of the road by police officers, who are looking through his things.
You may have even been that boy, or girl. It looks humiliating, and by all accounts it doesn’t feel great either.
We reported this week on Southwark being the borough with the highest number of police searches on children aged fourteen and under over the past year, with 463.
There are reasons why this happens of course. Violence among young people has soared: we saw 30 teenagers killed in London last year, many by other teenagers. Police say they wish that stop and search “was not necessary” but claim that the tactic “is a vital tool in preventing violence”. There is a lot to be said for this and indeed many parents whose families have been for victims of robberies or knife crime have spoken in favour of stop and search.
More kids under 14 stopped and searched in Southwark than any other London borough
But the Met have still not explained why Southwark had the highest number of stops, and why it was an outlier compared to all the other London boroughs. The next highest was Bromley, with 350 stops over the year – a 24 per cent drop. Surely violent crime among young people is not so much higher in Southwark than anywhere else in London? Is it a case of stop and search being a tactic that is encouraged more by officers in this area to act as a warning to youngsters that the police are proactive, and how much police intelligence comes into play before hand?
When approached for comment this week, Avril Jones, the head of Southwark’s community stop and search monitoring group – not a police officer – said that the figures made for “uncomfortable reading” but added that knife crime was prevalent in the borough, and this could be behind the high rate of stops. She said she would be taking up the issue with senior local police officers to clarify more.
The police explanation does make logical sense. But think about what you were like at the age of fourteen – how would you react to being publicly humiliated, seemingly for no reason?
Would you think rationally that statistically this was part of a broader effort to keep weapons off the streets? Or would you be more likely to feel victimised, perhaps because of the estate you live on, or the colour of your skin?
Maybe some readers will think this is a small price to pay to keep violence down. But police talk a good game about building trust in “our communities”; how effective is stop and search in achieving this goal? It will always be a difficult line for the police, who must enforce the law but feel currently they have a lot of bridges to build within communities.