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Blacks in England and Wales are nine times more likely to be arrested and searched by the police than whites, new official figures show.
The figures for 2019-20 come after protests and accusations of racial discrimination by the police, with claims that trust in the police is under great pressure.
A total of 577,054 stops were made in England in 2019-20, with 76% leading to no further action. Stops where an officer requires reasonable suspicion increased 53% from the previous year, to 558,973.
Arrests under section 60, where reasonable suspicion is not required, increased by 35% to 18,081, with 4% leading to an arrest.
The use of arrest and search powers was at its highest level for six years after the government asked the police to increase their use to try to reduce violent crime.
The data shows that in 63% of the cases the most common reason to justify the suspension was drugs. The next most common reason was guns, at 16%.
The Home Office, which released the figures, said the increases were driven by the greater use of the metropolitan police to arrest and search in London last year. The force covering the capital made almost half of all calls and while there were 10 calls per 1,000 inhabitants in England and Wales, in London the figure was three times higher.
The Home Office said this high rate, coupled with the fact that London’s population has a higher proportion of Black, Asian and Ethnic Minority (BAME) people (40%) compared to the rest of England and Wales ( 10%), meant the London figures skewed national figures due to racial disproportionality.
The figures also show that while blacks were 8.9 times more likely to be arrested than whites, for all BAME people that figure was 4.1 times higher than for whites, slightly below 4.3 in 2018-19.
Police say disproportionality doesn’t necessarily show racial bias.
In a comment accompanying the statistics, the Interior Ministry noted that disproportionality rates had increased in the last 10 years: “Between 2011-12 and 2014-15, the overall disparity decreased (from 6 to 4 times higher respectively). However, it started to rise between 2015 and 2016, reaching a peak in the previous two years, with a rate around 9.5 times higher for those who identify as black or British black compared to those who identify as white. ). In the last year, the disparity rate fell, decreasing to 8.9 times more ”.
Stops increased by 40 out of 43 forces in England and Wales, with the Met accounting for 50% of that increase.
The arrest data shows that black people were more than three times more likely to be arrested than white people, and BAME people more than one and a half times more.
