News and opinion

The new Met chief's big data obsession risks overlooking long-standing concerns from Londoners about police culture and conduct

As the pandemic effect recedes, 2022 figures highlight something many minoritised communities knew at the time: the oppressive nature of lockdown policing

Police officers more frequently stop and search members of the public in neighbourhoods where well-off and economically precarious people co-exist. Joel H. Suss and Thiago R. Oliveira show that this pattern holds up even when accounting for other important factors, such as previous local crime rates and a neighbourhood’s ethnic makeup. Although the evidence is that stop and search activity does little to reduce crime, the police persist with the practice in order to maintain social order

In this article, StopWatch volunteer Ella discusses Priti Patel's new drugs policy white paper and its implications for stop and search practices.

As the Met appoints a new commissioner, former police officer Chantelle Lunt argues that unless all police forces across England and Wales adopt a new model of policing, the people should #withdrawconsent

Sydney Kirton describes the London team's trip to the Houses of Parliament to present the latest findings from the women and girls research project

Describing drill as ‘gang-related music’ that ostensibly encourages serious violence is deeply problematic, argues Dr Lambros Fatsis

Sydney provides a moving testament of how the girls' research project process has affected her perceptions of policing

Home sec threatens to turn back time by rolling section 60 restrictions back to the 1990s, but fails to appreciate things have changed

New crime data remind us that fraud is bigger than knife and drug-related crime ever was… not that you would know it from media coverage, argues Eugene K

In the second of a series of articles on the little known policing tactic, Shaquille Scott-Davis explores the impact of Project Servator on our way of life

Shaquille Scott-Davis looks into the operations of a police patrol you may have noticed around a lot in the last 5 years, but probably know very little about

Sydney recounts the beginnings of an exciting new project

Chair Montell Neufville steps down after 5 years, cites successes of the system

New Home Office dataset shows rise in overall stop and searches, but masks a complex story of moral panic towards young people, especially of colour

Why does our law-and-orders government want to equate nuisance with terrorism?

It is in the interest of police forces themselves to help form effective community scrutiny panels/monitoring groups in their areas, argues Bedfordshire Police Community Scrutiny Panel vice chair

Georgia-Mae Chung describes how Suffolk Stop and Search Community Reference Group scrutinize stop and searches conducted by Suffolk police officers and how the group navigated the difficulties caused by the pandemic

The new orders proposed in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill will be neither proportionate nor likely to be effective in combating violent crime

Falls in section 43 and Schedule 7 stops under the Terrorism Act 2000 caused by multiple lockdown measures imposed during pandemic outbreak

Reading into 35 years of data, it doesn't take a detective to work why stop and search powers are being used disproportionately

Is Sir Stephen House the biggest threat to Black Londoners' safety?

Police say ‘we want more powers’, home sec asks ‘how many’?

We've written to Home Secretary Priti Patel over the proposed introduction of Serious Violence Reduction Orders – we implore all of those moved by these concerns to respond to the government’s consultation on these proposals before the deadline of 8 November*

Consultation on plans to allow police to stop and search those previously convicted of knife crime offences without suspicion