This report examines police stop and search practice in the first two years of Police Scotland, following the amalgamation of the eight Scottish forces under the Police and Fire Reform (Scotland) Act 2012 in April 2013.
The report follows on from an earlier evaluation of stop and search published by the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research which examined police practice between 2005 and 2010 (Murray, 2014). This found that by 2010, search rates in Scotland were around four times higher than in England and Wales; that seventy per cent of recorded searches were undertaken without reasonable suspicion; and that searches were disproportionately targeted towards young people in some parts of Scotland.
University of Edinburgh
Criminal Justice Process and Institutions
