Increased stop and search is not, and never has been, the answer to youth violence

I read with some alarm the recent comments by Scottish Conservative leader Russell Findlay that stop and search powers need to be extended to address youth violence.

Not only have decades of research data shown how misguided this is as a policy approach, but also Scotland’s own experience with stop and search should serve as a cautionary tale towards this stance.

It was only 10 years ago that Police Scotland was being so regularly chastised by the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish press (among others) about its extensive use of stop and search with young people that there were near-daily articles in the press about it.

Senior leaders in Police Scotland, including the then chief constable Sir Stephen House, were being called to parliament to account for themselves on a regular basis. The result was the Criminal Justice Scotland Act (2016) which enshrined a new code of practice for stop and search in statute.

This code of practice, and Police Scotland’s subsequent robust internal and external governance of stop and search, has now been held as an example of good practice to other police forces in Europe, who often approach the National Stop Search Unit to learn about it. To row back on this impressive achievement would be a colossal error.

I am amazed at how quickly we forget that at one point the official records showed that more 16-year-olds were stopped and searched in Strathclyde than are actually resident in Strathclyde. This statistic, discovered by Dr Kath Murray, revealed either a level of searches on an industrial scale, with some young people being searched more than once, or exceptionally poor record keeping – or a combination of both.

The rate of stop and search in Police Scotland at the time was four times that of the London Metropolitan police. And what was found? The majority of the time – nothing. And if something was found, regardless of the initial reason for the search, it was usually drugs. Not knives.

So what does stop and search achieve? Broken relationships with communities. A generation of young people who don’t trust the police and so will not go to them when they need help, as either children or as adults.

If we are serious about addressing youth violence we need to better understand why young people are carrying the knives in the first place. We need to work with our communities, in a multi-agency agency capacity, to get to the root of the problem. Increased stop and search does none of these things.

Fortunately, this type of work is already in progress, with the police as one of several partners. Unfortunately, this type of work does not grab headlines. It does not gain votes or sell papers. But it has a much better chance of actually achieving something. For the sake of our young people, we would do well to try to remember that.