Statistical Smokescreens

The Guardian reports that Black people are 26 times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people in England and Wales. Clearly the police are racists. What the article doesn't bother to tell you is how many stop and searches end in arrest. The figures are available from here.

Overall throughout the whole of England and Wales a stop and search is likely to result in arrest in 2.8% of cases. For white people that figure becomes 3.3% and for black people it is 2.7%.

But look more closely. 95% of all stop and searches involving black people were carried out by the Metropolitan Police. For that force the arrest rate is 2.5% for whites and 2.7% for blacks.

If the arrest rate for blacks was a lot lower than for whites then one could understand accusations of racism - black people are being stopped for no reason. But there is no statistically significant difference in the arrest rate. This means that each stop and search is as likely to result in arrest regardless whether the person being stopped is black or white. That means that police are as good (or actually as bad) at spotting who they should stop regardless of skin colour. Is that racism? No.

I wonder why Mark Townsend, the Guardian reporter here, didn't think it was his job to do any kind of investigation about the truth of the claims being made to him?

Racism Won't Go Away Through Obsession

Jesse Jackson asks, in The Guardian:

How can enlightened societies have institutionalised policies of race profiling?

The question is asked because research shows that black people are more likely to be stopped and searched than white ones based on the number stopped as a proportion of the total population with that skin colour. This disparity has lead Jackson to conclude:

If just one individual was involved, then that would be a problem, but this enormous disparity shows it is institutionalised.

It seems to me that the answer to the question is two-fold. Firstly there is no real evidence of an institutionalised policy of stopping black people more than white. But more crucially the reason why racism doesn't go away in "enlightened" societies is because it isn't allowed to. Every single time you talk about racism or look for racism or demand that records about race are kept so that racism can be checked up on you are simply extending the lifetime of racism.

In any non-racist world it is obvious that no records will be kept discussing the colour of someone's skin. How will we ever get there by insisting that such records are always kept?

Police, Red Tape, Oversight and Centralisation

The Telegraph reports on a report that is due to be published this week about red tape and the police. Basically they do a lot of form filling and this wastes money. The headline example is the need to fill in a 16-page form in order to look through someone's window.

Two paragraphs worry me. The first is:

All of the paperwork must be approved by a superintendent. Failure to complete it properly could lead to a prosecution collapsing in court when defence lawyers claim surveillance was carried out without authorisation.

Even if the paperwork is completed properly where is the authorisation? A member of the police giving permission for another member of the police to breach my privacy is not authorisation. If a Tesco manager gives permission to a delivery man to start looking through my windows is that authorised?

Where's the judge? Where's the independent oversight? Here's an idea to save on paperwork. If the police want to take some action that a member of the public would not be allowed to do they should first seek permission from a judge. They don't then need to fill in any forms because the court will keep a record of it. This would mean that we have proper oversight of the police at all times. What's more, it sets up the system that would allow for the privatisation of the police force, or at least the detection side of it.

The second thing was this:

The report will conclude that a prime problem is that no single person is responsible for the police nationally, or for overall control of the criminal justice system. 

Yeah, because the obvious way to remove bureaucracy is to add another layer of control on top of what exists.

As a final note, be afraid:

Other main recommendations include allowing officers to use common sense

Still Think You Can Trust the Police?

The commissioner of the Metropolitan Police wants the police to have more protection from being sued. I'm sure others will discuss this and point out how wrong it is. But what got me was this statement:

"One of the key aspects is that the average settlements are well under £10,000 and most under £5,000, in other words these are not major areas of police misconduct with long-lasting consequences but often technical breaches."

In reality what he's saying is - it's OK for the police to break the law so long as they only commit small crimes.

Anyone still think the police are friends of the public?

They're Out to Get You

From the Guardian:

Police were criticised today for inventing intelligence to persuade civilian CCTV operators to snoop on suspected drink-drivers outside pubs. Officers in Devon were said to have regularly asked operators to watch for people who might be over the drink-drive limit by making up false information about them.

But they're the good guys!

Campaign group Liberty said the disclosure was a reminder that there was scope for CCTV cameras to be abused.

And also that you cannot and should not trust the police. They're not your friends. And they're not necessary nice people.

Police Accountability

Julie Bindel writes for the Guardian's CiF about the police's poor performance on rape cases. She claims that in order to make the police better at dealing with these crimes it should be possible to sue them:

Nothing will significantly change unless the commissioner or chief constable ceases to have this unjustifiable protection from the courts. If the police budget were to become vulnerable to compensation claims, it might result in systems being put into place to root out incompetence and prejudicial attitudes towards vulnerable complainants.

She's quite right. But why leave it to the courts to decide whether the police are doing their job properly? Why not let the people do it? Just as the possibility of being sued encourages better performance so does the threat of loss of income. Allow private firms to investigate crimes and let people choose who to trust with the job and we have a simple answer to Julie's headline question:

Who will challenge this obscene protection racket?

The market.