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UK: Stop and Search on Merseyside

01 September 1998

Merseyside Police have responded to Statewatch's analysis of stop/search and arrest figures, which showed that black people were 7.5 times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people (see Statewatch, vol 8, no 3 & 4). The problem apparently lies with the statistics. A police spokeswomen told the Liverpool Echo:

"These figures are not new. We actually supplied these figures to the Home Office so we do not have an argument with them. On average every day on Merseyside we stop 95 whites and just 5 black people. (Liverpool Echo, 28/7/98)

In response to the press coverage, the Chief Constable presented a report on stop and search to the Merseyside Police Authority. Members were informed:

"The ratio of white people to racial minority groups stop and searched has risen from 76.6% : 3.4% in 1993 to 95% : 4.5% in 1997 (20% and 0.5% of the records did not specify white/racial group). In relation to whites, the percentages stop searched clearly fall well below the white population on Merseyside which is 98%. In contrast, the percentage of racial minority group stop searched is about the population percentage (1.9%)."

Presenting the statistics in these ways is, of course, extremely misleading because there are over 1.4 million white people compared with fewer than 10,000 black people on Merseyside. It is, therefore, essential to relate the stop and search statistics directly to the respective size of the different populations. When this is done, the statistics show that 25 of every 1000 white people were subject to stop/searches compared with 189 of every 1,000 black people. This differential shows clearly that there is a major problem with the way black people are treated in comparison to white people on Merseyside. The problem will not be dealt with by clever presentations of the statistics.