The policing of young people, especially through stop-and-search, has been rigorously debated in the context of rising violence in the UK. While concepts based on procedural justice theory and perceptions of police fairness are directly relevant to these debates, these have rarely been tested on young people, nor have they taken account of the impact of stop-and-search. This paper examines young people's experiences of stop-and-search in two Scottish and two English cities, and tests the relationship between these experiences, their trust in the police, their perceptions of police legitimacy and their compliance with the law. The study finds that Scottish adolescents, who experienced higher volume stop-and-search, had more negative attitudes to the police and perceived them to be less procedurally fair than English adolescents. Structural equation modelling confirms that principles of procedural justice theory do apply to young people in this UK sample.However, our findings suggest that stop-and-search may damage trust in the police and perceptions of police legitimacy, regardless of the volume of police stop-and-search, and this may result in increased offending behaviour. With ongoing calls to increase the use of stop-and-search in response to recent increases in knife crime in England, we argue that its use needs to be carefully balanced against the, as yet poorly evidenced, benefits of the use of the tactic.
From a position of near parity in 2005/6, by 2012/13 recorded search rates in Scotland exceeded those in England/Wales seven times over. This divergence is intriguing given the demands placed on the police, and the legal capacity to deal with these are broadly similar across the two jurisdictions. The aim of this paper is to unpack this variation. Using a comparative case-study approach, the paper examines the role of structural 'top-down' determinants of policing: substantive powers of search, rules and regulations, and scrutiny. Two arguments are presented. First, we argue that the rise of stop and search in Scotland was facilitated by weak regulation and safeguards. Second, we argue that divergence between the two jurisdictions may also be attributed to varying levels of political and public scrutiny, caused, in part, by scrutinising stop and search almost exclusively through the prism of 'race'. In Scotland, the significance of these factors has been made evident by dint of organisational developments within the last decade; by the introduction of a target driven high-volume approach to stop and search in Strathclyde police force circa 2007 onwards; and the national roll-out of this approach following the single service merger in April 2013. The salient point is that the Strathclyde model was not hindered by legal rules and regulations, nor subject to policy and political challenge; rather a high discretion environment enabled a high-volume approach to stop and search to flourish without challenge.
Within the last two years, respective proposals by the Scottish and UK Governments to reform the Gender Recognition Act 2004 (GRA) to allow people to change their legal sex based only on making a legally-registered self-declaration have sparked an intense debate on how sex and gender identity should be defined in law and policy. This paper examines how gender self-identification had in fact become a feature of Scottish policy-making and practice, long before public consultation on GRA reform began. The analysis is structured as two case-studies that examine firstly, policy development on the census in relation to the ‘sex’ question, and second, Scottish Prison Service policy on transgender prisoners. The analysis shows that the unregulated roll-out of gender self-identification in Scotland has taken place with weak or non-existent scrutiny and a lack of due process, and that this relates to a process of policy capture, whereby decision-making on sex and gender identity issues has been directed towards the interests of a specific interest group, without due regard for other affected groups or the wider population. The paper raises questions about the adequacy of institutional safeguards against well-organised and highly purposeful lobbying, particularly where any groups detrimentally affected do not have effective representation.
In recent years, the scale, impact and legality of stop and search in Scotland has been subject to intense critical scrutiny, leading to major legal and policy reform in 2016. Based on these events, including an early unsuccessful attempt by Police Scotland to reform the tactic (the 'Fife Pilot'), this paper presents original theoretical and empirical insights into organizational change in policing. Building on the theoretical perspectives of Chan (1997) and Bradford and Quinton (2014) on organizational culture and justice respectively, the paper set out a dynamic model of organizational justice in policing. While Scotland has seen significant legislative reform apropos stop and search, we conclude that real change in police practice and culture will require effective leadership and a strong commitment to organizational justice. We also suggest how insights from the analysis might be applied to other jurisdictions and policing fields, with a view to securing more citizen-focused, democratic policing.
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