UK: Blacks bear brunt of rise in stop and search

Black people are almost eight times as likely as whites to be stopped and searched a decade after the Stephen Lawrence inquiry branded the police “institutionally racist”.

Use of ordinary stop and search tactics in England and Wales rose sharply to more than one million in 2007-08, the highest figure since 1998.

The rise has had a disproportionate impact on ethnic minorities. When Stephen Lawrence was murdered in 1993 black people were six times as likely to be stopped and searched as whites. By 2006/7, that had risen to seven times.


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