PoliceStop-and-search report leads Scottish police to change policy

Published 30 May 2018

Police Scotland has changed the way it carries out stop and search following a series of recommendations made by researchers. The researchers’ report highlighted elements of the pilot that can be regarded as good practice while also making nineteen recommendations for improvement. Police Scotland has published their response to this and other reports, highlighting the ways in which policy has been changed.

Police Scotland has changed the way it carries out stop and search following a series of recommendations made by researchers at the University of Dundee and Edinburgh Napier University.

Dr. Megan O’Neill, from Dundee, and Edinburgh Napier’s Dr. Liz Aston had previously evaluated a new approach to stop and search piloted by the Fife Division of Police Scotland.

Dundee says that their report, published by the Dundee-based Scottish Institute for Policing Research (SIPR), highlighted elements of the pilot that can be regarded as good practice while also making nineteen recommendations for improvement. Police Scotland has published their response to this and other reports, highlighting the ways in which policy has been changed.

One of the key proposals was a cessation of consensual search and a presumption of the use of statutory search powers. The authors suggested these should be targeted in order to end misunderstanding about the purpose of consensual searches and the public’s right to refuse them.

Police Scotland have accepted all the recommendations within the report and these were implemented into policy and practice alongside further recommendations made by other internal and external stakeholders. Police Scotland’s Code of Practice for Stop and Search was introduced in May 2017 through the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 2016. Consensual searches are now no longer lawful in Scotland.

“We are absolutely delighted to see Police Scotland respond to our report in this way,” said Dr. O’Neill. “When we looked at the pilot it was clear there was a real desire amongst individual officers, Fife Division and Police Scotland in general to make stop and search more effective in serving public safety.

“Many of the elements of the pilot can be regarded as good practice, but we also noted several areas for improvement, particularly around consensual search. Those searched continued to complain about ‘random’ searches during the trial, suggesting that even with the pilot’s methods of making the option to refuse a consensual search explicit and the advice slips provided by officers, confusion remained.

“We therefore recommended that Police Scotland used legislative searches only. Only these can truly be targeted at ‘the right