Precision stop and search: Evaluating the impact of targeted enhancements to stop and search training
Stop and search (S&S) is an important police power; however, as highlighted in the Casey Review, when conducted poorly, S&S can cause harm to individuals and communities.
The Met has committed to reviewing, refining and improving its approach to conducting S&S.
As part of this effort, the precision stop and search pilot ran from July to December 2023. The pilot sought to test the implementation of a range of approaches in combination:
- Weapon enabled crime (WEC) harm data were used to identify nine high-risk wards in London.
- Community consultation was delivered in the target locations to increase awareness of the pilot and its objectives.
- Procedural justice (PJ) training aimed to enhance the skills of officers in delivering S&S encounters.
- Trained officers were asked to patrol specific locations within the target wards identified based on WEC harm data.
Ultimately, the project aimed to test the viability of delivering and evaluating the impact of these elements.
The evaluation focused on testing the impact of PJ training on the quality of S&S encounters, levels of public trust and confidence, and levels of violent weapon-enabled harm in the high-risk wards selected.
Method
118 Officers across 9 wards in the boroughs of Barking & Dagenham and Lambeth received an intensive one-day training course in Procedural Justice. Trained Officers were instructed to patrol specific high-harm locations.
To understand the impact of the pilot, the evaluation considered the following:
- Quality of S&S encounters: Body Worn Video (BWV) footage, surveys and the self-reports of officers were used to assess the impact of PJ training on the quality of S&S encounters.
- Officer presence: GPS data to track police presence within the 9 pilot wards to ensure that Officers spent time in the specified locations.
Public trust and confidence: street interviews with members of the public were conducted to understand public perception of S&S as well as any changes to local police activity. - Crime: data on weapon-enabled crime offences and harm for each of the target wards (and matched ‘comparison’ wards) to understand its impact.
Findings - Quality of S&S encounters: S&S encounters scored higher on the four pillars of PJ (voice, neutrality, respect and trustworthiness) in the targeted areas (i.e. where they were asked to specifically apply their training and told encounters would be reviewed). However, only 23 Officers conducted S&Ss in the target areas, reducing our ability to draw strong conclusions from this finding. Furthermore, S&S encounters outside of the targeted areas did not show the same improvements, indicating that the training did not improve officers’ behaviour in all contexts.
- Officer presence: As requested, Officers did spend more time in locations with the highest levels of weapon enabled crim (WEC) harm.
Public trust and confidence: One-third (93 out of 281) of those interviewed said they felt confident that S&S is used fairly, which is lower than levels of confidence reported elsewhere. Our sample also included far more people with direct police contact than in typical in surveys of trust and confidence. 68% noticed no recent changes in police activity and just 22% reported an increase. - Crime: There was no statistically significant impact (positive or negative) on the number of weapon enhanced crime (WEC) offences.
Based on the results of this pilot, a number of recommendations have been made, including re training on S&S and PJ.
Met training is currently being reviewed and new, regular, refresher training is also being considered - lessons from this evaluation will feed into this work.
This report was prepared by the Met’s Strategic Insight Unit.
The report was reviewed by two members of the independent Police Science Council and the NPCC Chief Scientific Adviser.