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The introduction of the UK's Criminal Justice Act (CJA) 2003 extended police stop and search powers. It allowed officers to stop and search for articles concerning the commission of the offence of criminal damage. The purpose of this study is to examine whether the act produced a change in the extent and nature of stop/searches.

Data from police‐recorded stops in a southern town are compared for periods before and after the act came into force on January 20, 2004. The same time periods in the previous year are used as comparison groups.

The four key findings are that there was: a large increase in observed compared to expected stop/searches, an increase in the likelihood of individuals of an Asian or Asian British Pakistani origin and Black and Black British of African origin being stopped and searched relative to others. A decrease in the proportion of stop/searches resulting in arrest; and the distribution of arrests being patterned by the ethnicity of a suspect stopped and searched.

The same time periods in the previous year are used as comparison groups since traditional geographically based comparison groups are not feasible to assess policy implemented nationally. The research is a small‐scale study focusing on a 70 day‐time frame to analyze the impact of the CJA 2003, therefore the results generated can be skewed and warrants further research with a longer follow up period.

The effects of extending police stop and search powers under the CJA 2003 are discussed. The findings are examined with regard to their implications for further research and policy.

The purpose of this paper is to apply focal concerns theory as a theoretical explanation for police officer decision making during a traffic stop that results in a consent search. The study uses coefficients testing to better examine the issue of racial profiling through the use of a race-specific model.

The data for this study come from traffic stops conducted by the Louisville Police Department between January 1 and December 31, 2002.

The results show that the three components of focal concerns theory can explain police officer decision making for consent searches. Yet, the components of focal concerns theory play a greater role in stops of Caucasian male drivers.

The data for this study are cross-sectional and self-reported from police officers.

This paper shows the utility of applying focal concerns theory as a theoretical explanation for police officer decision making on consent searches and how the effects of focal concerns vary depending on driver race.

The findings based on focal concerns theory can provide an opportunity for police officers or departments to explain what factors impact the decision making during consent searches.

This is the first study (to the researchers’ knowledge) that examines the racial effects of focal concerns on traffic stop consent searchers using coefficients testing.

The paper aims to examine the issue of potential disproportionality and racial profiling in s.163 traffic stops under the Road Traffic Act 1988, in light of recent media attention and referral of cases to the Independent Office for Police Conduct.

The paper reviews the law, procedural use and reports of racial profiling in s.163 traffic stops within a context of research which presents a history of disproportionate use of police tactics against ethnic minorities and black people in particular. An international perspective is evaluated as a potential framework for analysing the role of ethnicity in traffic stops in England and Wales.

There is an absence of systematically recorded data on s.163 stops. There are also significant contextual differences between traffic and street stop searches. For these reasons, doubt is cast over the legitimacy of institutionalised racism generalisations and arguments are presented against the extrapolation from street stop searches to s.163 traffic stops.

Implications for future research which take operational procedures and priorities into account, along with the realities of the context in which s.163 stops occur, are discussed. Importantly, the role of ethnicity may only become apparent after a traffic stop has been executed, and hence research is required into how ethnicity may mediate the interaction between police officer and driver.

Implications for the implementation of a national procedural requirement to record s.163 stops and the collection of evidence of racial profiling are highlighted.

This paper highlights practical implications for future policy, leadership and police culture considerations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the issue of racial profiling when the traffic stop outcome is a search using focal concerns theory as a theoretical explanation for police officer decision making and propensity score matching (PSM) as a better analysis to understand the race of the driver.

The data for this study come from traffic stops conducted by the Louisville Police Department between January 1 and December 31, 2002.

The results show that the elements of focal concerns theory matter most when it comes to if a traffic stop that resulted in a search even though racial profiling was evident. The use of PSM provides evidence that it is a better statistical technique when studying racial profiling. The gender of the driver was significant for male drivers but not for female drivers.

The data for this study are cross-sectional and are self-report data from the police officer.

This paper serves as a theoretical explanation that other researchers could use when studying racial profiling along with a better type of statistical analysis being PSM.

The findings based on focal concerns theory could provide an explanation for police officer decision making that police departments could use to help citizens understand why a traffic stop search took place.

This is the first study of its kind to the researcher’s knowledge to apply focal concerns theory with PSM to understand traffic stop searches.

The current study examines the effects of race, agency and environment on traffic stops in rural and non-rural spaces.

Using traffic stop data collected in a Midwest US County from January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2021, the current study uses logistic regression to examine racial disparities in traffic stops.

The results indicate that police decision-making in traffic stops may be influenced by other factors besides a driver’s race or ethnicity. In other words, the police officer’s decision making in a traffic stop varies between small and large agencies as well as rural and non-rural places.

This study provides one of the few examinations of racial disparities in traffic stops in rural places.

To examine the extent to which cultural fragmentation among police officers results in differences in searches of suspects and their surroundings during proactive traffic stops.

Cluster and multivariate analyses are performed utilizing survey and observational data collected as part of the Project on Policing Neighborhoods (POPN).

Differences in search behavior among patrol officers are found as a result of variation in cultural alignments. That is, patrol officers that adhere to the culture (in varying degrees) from an attitudinal standpoint are more likely to engage in searches than those who most ardently resist cultural attitudes.

Although the classification scheme captured many of the core attitudes associated with police culture, it did not measure all of them. Also, the departments studied would compare to most American municipal police organizations, but would make poor comparisons to very large urban or small rural agencies, where culture might operate in different ways.

Police administrators can use this information if they wished to alter the rate at which search behavior occurs.

This study fills a research void in policing by examining whether attitudinal variation in cultural commitment results in different behavioral patterns. This work also adds to a larger body of social science research by finding an attitude‐behavior relationship.

Within the last 15 years, law enforcement agencies have increased their collection of data on vehicle stops. A variety of resource guides, research reports, and peer‐reviewed articles have outlined the methods used to collect these data and conduct analyses. This literature is spread across numerous publications and can be cumbersome to summarize for practical use by practitioners and academics. This article seeks to fill this gap by detailing the current best practices in vehicle stop data collection and analysis in state police agencies.

The article summarizes the data collection techniques used to assist in identifying racial/ethnic disparities in vehicle stops. Specifically, questions concerning why, when, how, and what data should be collected are addressed. The most common data analysis techniques for vehicle stops are offered, including an evaluation of common benchmarking techniques and their ability to measure at‐risk drivers. Vehicle stop outcome analyses are also discussed, including multivariate analyses and the outcome test. Within this summary, strengths and weaknesses of these techniques are explored.

In summarizing these approaches, a body of best practices in vehicle stop data collection and analysis is developed.

Racial profiling continues to be a contentious issue for law enforcement and the community. A considerable body of research has developed to assess the prevalence of racial profiling. This article offers social scientists and practitioners a comprehensive, succinct, peer‐reviewed summary of the best practices in vehicle stop data collection and analysis.

Inquiries, commissions, reviews and the promise of broader data collection about racial and gender disparities are now the reflex defensive responses from state institutions charged with grievous social harm, particularly in the UK. Recommendations from these exercises are rarely implemented. As criminologists, our ability to produce and analyse data that evidences or better illuminates social harm has long been a key offer of the discipline to activism.

How are we to respond to the very institutions activist criminologists seek to challenge immediately offering this very activity, invariably protracted and ineffectual, as a reflex response to activist challenge? This chapter explores this tension. Grounded in the work of groups struggling to end police stop and search, it considers the strategy impasse around research and data production that faces grassroots activists and their accomplice researchers. The chapter proposes new routes for collaboration and action across activist and criminologist communities that may help move past the ‘data trap’. In short, it seeks to answer: do activists need more evidence?

The Prevention of Terrorism (Additional Powers) Act was rushed through Parliament in just 24 hours and 47 minutes, starting on Tuesday 2nd April. In the House of Commons the allocation of time for the Bill was debated at 3.43 pm, the Second Reading took place at 10.10 pm, the Third Reading at 1.21 am on Wednesday morning, and the Bill completed its passage through the House of Lords at 4.30 pm the same day. The Opposition acquiesced in the Bill being rushed through Parliament by the Government. The legislation allows the police to search clothing following the exercise of random stop and search powers, for which no reasonable grounds are required, and provides for searches of non‐residential premises on a warrant issued by a justice of the peace. It also permits searches of any goods on accompanied or unaccompanied vehicles entering or leaving Great Britain or Northern Ireland, and provides a power to impose a police cordon, and for the application of parking prohibitions and restrictions. The stop and search powers were the most controversial feature of the legislation, as potentially involving the greatest interference with individual liberty, and the implications of these powers are considered else‐where. This paper will examine some of the less publicised provisions contained in the Act, which have, possibly unforeseen, implications for businesses. This is especially likely given that due to the timetable motion (the guillotine) only cl. 1 of the Bill, on the stop and search powers, was actually considered by the House of Commons in Committee.