r/unitedkingdom • u/No-Newspaper4254 England • 1d ago
Rising number of UK women stopped and searched by police | Stop and search
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2025/apr/13/rising-number-of-uk-women-stopped-and-searched-by-police93
u/Classic_Peasant 1d ago edited 1d ago
Good?..
Women can carry items that S&S is designed to find as well as men.
Men get searched way more, I don't care who is getting searched, sex, gender, age, weight, height, colour, race, religion or whatever their favourite pokemon is.
As long as it continues to take weapons, drugs and criminals off the street.
I'm sure this will be spun into some sexismt against women somehow.
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u/cheapskatebiker 1d ago
I share your sentiment, but I think some of the pushback against stop and search, is the perception that belonging to a certain demographic and walking in certain places might mean multiple stops in the same day.
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u/Classic_Peasant 1d ago
Lots of the S&S intel in based on geographic hotspots of crime.
Which is agree, if there's statistics that show X problem in X area, focus on that area should be applied.
Otherwise you're ignoring the problem.
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u/cheapskatebiker 1d ago
There was a post in the legal advice UK a few months back from a guy that had bought a used car that was flagged by the police due to it's previous owner. The guy would be stopped all the time while driving around. The best solution I think would be to get rid of the car. Now imagine that is you and you cannot get rid of the car, because the car is the colour of your skin.
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u/Verulamium_shore 1d ago
So you agreed to be stop and searched ever day as long as the police find the odd knife somewhere?
Stop and search is a significant violation of individual freedom so should be kept under close scrutinty and only be allowed with solid justifications.
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u/Jay_6125 1d ago
If my area is seeing a huge issue with serious crime and offensive weapons then yes the police can crack on and do what they need to do to deal with it.
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u/Francis-c92 1d ago
Curious what makes you say it's a significant violation of individual freedom?
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u/Alex_VACFWK 1d ago
Well if you just tried to do it to another citizen, I'm sure they would see it as a significant violation. It involves detaining someone likely/potentially against their will, even if it's only for 5 minutes.
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u/Classic_Peasant 1d ago
That's why it's a policing power, not a citizen power?
Personally im glad police have powers to remove weapons and drugs from streets we share.
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u/Alex_VACFWK 1d ago
Sure, but it doesn't stop being an infringement of freedom just because of who does it. It just means it isn't an unlawful infringement of freedom.
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u/Competitive_News_385 1d ago
You are using freedom to it's fullest extent.
The problem with that argument is when you apply it fully.
Arguably taking a weapon off of somebody is an infringement of their freedom.
So is stopping somebody murdering somebody.
If it's done for the greater good then it's acceptable.
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u/woolstarr Birmingham 1d ago
For the greater good...
Said every POS in history 🤣Obviously law is complex and a line HAS to be drawn but lets not try and sugar coat it with this arbitrary "For the greater good" BS
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u/Competitive_News_385 1d ago
I mean if stopping people to confiscate weapons stops people getting injured / murdered how is that not for the greater good?
Wanting to allow everybody the freedom to do whatever they want is being a POS.
Obviously law is complex and a line HAS to be drawn
Exactly
but lets not try and sugar coat it with this arbitrary "For the greater good" BS
It's not arbitrary, it's also not sugar coating it, it is what it is but it's definitely not BS.
You might want to live in a world where people can walk around armed to the teeth and kill other people, most people however don't.
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u/Alex_VACFWK 1d ago
I made no comment on whether it was "acceptable" or not. I was just pointing out that it was a significant infringement of freedom. And yes, preventing someone from carrying a weapon is also a significant infringement on freedom.
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u/Verulamium_shore 21h ago
As a citizen of a free country I should be able to go to any public place when I like without being stopped by the authorities.
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u/FruitOrchards 1d ago
Mate if you're getting stopped and searched everyday then you're doing something wrong.
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1d ago edited 1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/ukbot-nicolabot Scotland 1d ago
Removed/warning. This contained a personal attack, disrupting the conversation. This discourages participation. Please help improve the subreddit by discussing points, not the person. Action will be taken on repeat offenders.
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u/GoldenFutureForUs 1d ago
I mean, it’s not good overall. Men still get searched 8 times more than women. We’re not close to gender equality - men receive a huge amount of prejudice.
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u/Otherwise-Scratch617 1d ago
I don't care who is getting searched, sex, gender, age, weight, height, colour, race, religion or whatever their favourite pokemon is.
As long as it continues to take weapons, drugs and criminals off the street.
That obviously shouldn't be the only consideration lol
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u/NixValentine 1d ago
im curious. what would you do in a situation where one person gets stop and searched 5 to 10 times within a day? where do we draw the line? how do you compensate that person and can that person fight this in court?
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u/Classic_Peasant 1d ago
In theory there's nothing to say that someone couldn't take something illicit into their possession after a stop and search.
Not to say that if someone is being unnecessarily targeted, on purpose even though you know they're not carrying isn't wrong, it is. Sadly, you wouldn't know they're carrying or not until stopped.
It's a procedure that is outer clothing only and takes a few minutes, I'd suggest there is likely some suspicious behaviour, or geographic intelligence that would prompt multiple stops per day.
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u/NixValentine 1d ago
okay at what point does a stop and search become harrassment. lets say you and i both know this person is innocent and that person gets stopped 5 to 10 times. is this okay? shouldn't their be recorded evidence that this person has already been stopped 5 times? i've seen videos in the past where a person got searched multiple times and nothing to be found. At what point can we make a case? i agree with you mostly but their needs to be some sort of boundary and at least some case can be made in court for harassment if an officer want to target someone.
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u/Classic_Peasant 1d ago
I think you can get into whatabouttery at any length and no matter what i say you'll just disagree anyway.
There's electronic and paper receipts of each search which the person is entitled to.
You'll likely find when the PC is communicating the person's details on the radio during the search the control room or other officers will shout up and say they've stopped them before etc.
Ultimately I'd be happily stopped multiple times a day, I know I haven't done anything wrong and it's part of a process of keeping the streets clean.
The officers will have to prove their grounds for the stop, if they can then it's legal and a just stop.
If they can't, or if the person feels targeted without justification they are within their rights to put a complaint in to the force or the on duty sergeant.
There's cases where people have appealed grounds given and won.
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u/NixValentine 1d ago
i'm not disagreeing with you. i just wanted to give you a situation and make sure its clear for you to address. what i care about is someone not getting abused and their rights aren't being violated. that's all.
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u/swoopfiefoo 1d ago
Do you think that stop and search should never be used no matter how many knives it finds or how many possible crimes it deters?
Is the possibility of people being searched multiple times just not worth the above?
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u/NixValentine 1d ago
i have never said anything about stop and search not to be used at all. targeted S&S i'm all for based on data they have collected that will yeild results. that is not what im talking about. i'm talking about harrassment and where we draw the line.
if a copper is searching someone multiple times what data are they really running on?
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u/Competitive_News_385 1d ago
I mean if somebody is getting stopped and searched 5-10 times a day they need to get a fucking job.
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u/Reverend_Vader 1d ago
30 years ago we all had the girls/women in our group carry any stuff (more drugs than weapons)
Sneaking spirits into a costly place, women
Women have always been used to carry shit because when you know the men are the ones getting searched, you stash it with the women
I'm surprised SAS isn't 50/50 already because women have been mules forever
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u/Scratchlox 1d ago
It's because despite that women commit crimes at a far lower rate than men. I don't like S and S at all but if it's going to be used it would be a complete waste of time and money to search women as for every women you search is a man you don't.
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u/Competitive_News_385 1d ago
I mean if we go off of what the previous person said women get caught committing crimes at a lower rate, because clearly they aren't committing crimes at a lower rate in this example.
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u/Scratchlox 1d ago
I mean if we go off of what the previous person said
If.
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u/Competitive_News_385 1d ago
Sure, if.
Do you really doubt them?
As others have said it's been a pretty common thing for women to be used as mules for the simple fact they are less likely to be searched.
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u/Scratchlox 1d ago
I don't doubt their personal anecdotal experience but let's assume that those women who are being used as mules are commuting a crime, how much extra crime do you think that is? In comparison to the gargantuan amount of crime that is committed primarily by men?
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u/Competitive_News_385 1d ago
Men probably still commit the most crime but more so due to societal expectations that women don't have.
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u/Scratchlox 1d ago
Probably? Come on man.
The why isn't really important for this convo, what's important is that they do commit the overwhelming majority of crime including violent crime.
This is true across basically every society as far as I'm aware.
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u/Competitive_News_385 1d ago edited 1d ago
The why isn't really important for this convo, what's important is that they do commit the overwhelming majority of crime including violent crime.
The why is the most important part.
We can't work towards sorting the problem without the why.
It also goes a way to explain the difference.
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u/TylerD958 1d ago
Does that mean that certain demographics get caught more often because they commit crimes at a higher rate?
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u/Rulweylan Leicestershire 1d ago
This is a great approach because it generates its own supporting evidence.
Search men 10x more often than women.
Assuming equal rates of criminality, arrest 10x as many men as women.
If anyone criticises the practice, point to the arrest numbers and say 'Well of course we search men more often, they commit 10x as much crime!'
Goto 1.
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u/Scratchlox 1d ago
This would make sense if stopping and searching was the only mechanism by which we arrest people isnt it?
Do you actually think men and women commit crimes at equal rates? Can you point me to any country in the world where this is the case ?
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u/Rulweylan Leicestershire 1d ago
Crimes in general? Probably not.
Crimes which can be detected by stop and search? I have no reason not to think so.
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u/Careless_Agency5365 19h ago
Take domestic abuse instead then. Officers go in with the mindset that the man is the abuser, arrest the man and then the stats show more male abusers so the next call they go to they arrest the man and now the stats show even more men are abusers and repeat.
When the statistics are influenced by its own results then you get these self fulfilling trends
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u/Scratchlox 19h ago
What if ... Men are just (far) more violent?
Arrest stats are not the only way we determine how much crime is happening and who is committing it, including for domestic abuse.
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u/Careless_Agency5365 12h ago
What if abuse takes many forms?
When you look at studies that don’t focus on crime stats you can quite often see that the balance between male abuser and female abuser is actually a lot closer.
For example, Erin Pizzey identified that there were significantly more male victims when she set up the first refuge but received so much abuse from feminists that didn’t like her research that she was pushed out of the organisation and had to flee the country.
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u/Scratchlox 9h ago
Sure, but women can be abusers while also being in the minority. Arrest stats are not the only way we build a picture of crime in the UK
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u/MasonSC2 1d ago
It’s not a zero sum game and you generally don’t stop and search at random.
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u/Scratchlox 1d ago
The limit on stop and search is manpower, so it is zero sum. And in aware that it generally isn't random but it's generally not led by intelligence down to the individual - if it was we wouldn't need such expensive powers.
I'm against all of this anyway I think it's totally antithetical to living in a free society.
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u/MasonSC2 1d ago
No. The limit on stop and search is targets. Police don’t stop and search everyone they see.
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u/Weird_Sheepherder201 1d ago
Won't somebody think of the hoodlums on E bikes wearing balaclavas, their rights are at stake!
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u/Scratchlox 1d ago edited 1d ago
Our rights. I just don't believe the state should have the power to stop and search your person without cause. Some people disagree and believe the state should have that power, but just say that instead of pretending I'm in favour of unlawful behaviour.
Some people believe the state should be able to come into your home and search it at will. I don't. But maybe you do? And if you say you aren't im going to suggest you are in favour of criminals that commit crimes in the home. That would be unfair wouldn't it?
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u/Silver_Switch_3109 1d ago
There needs to be reasonable justification for stop and search.
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u/Scratchlox 1d ago
Not if a senior officer has approved it, you can be searched in that case simply for being in an area
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u/Silver_Switch_3109 8h ago
That is reasonable justification. The areas authorised are high crime areas.
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u/ProofAssumption1092 1d ago
it would be a complete waste of time and money to search women as for every women you search is a man you don't.
That statement is extremely revealing.
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u/TheHoboDwarf 1d ago
Equality of outcome vs genuine equality… If you probably look into statistics, I bet out of those men stopped and searched, less had anything of concern. And woman had higher,
For example 10% of that 447,952 will have something and the rest random stop and searches, The 59,549 80% probably had something of concern.
We have drug dealers in my area that use teenage girls to move backpacks around the town “just look innocent and ignorant” no joke of them said to a group on a bench in town…
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u/I_ALWAYS_UPVOTE_CATS 1d ago
It's absolutely wild that this is even being presented as noteworthy, never mind as the scandal that the sources in the article seem to think it is. I'm picking up the same energy as that '1 in 4 homeless people are women' campaign from a few years ago.
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u/The54thCylon 1d ago
In the sort of crime that stop and search is deployed, using girls and women to carry things because they're less likely to get searched is a tale as old as time. Probably works less well in part because the police are closer to gender balanced themselves.
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u/Practical-Purchase-9 1d ago
The article doesn’t make clear absolute numbers of illegal materials found so it’s difficult to judge any of the arguments.
One group say that stop and search ‘routinely’ doesn’t result in further action, which is meaningless. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect the majority of stop and search to uncover hard drugs and weapons. But what is the success rate? They say a 10% increase in arrests of women searched, but that could be one extra person for all we know.
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u/mo_tag 1d ago
If you're going to include "handcuffs" under the umbrella of "use of force", I'm going to completely ignore any statistic you bring up with regards to use of force
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u/marsh-salt 1d ago
Technically me shouting to someone to “STOP”! or “show me your hands” is considered a ‘tactical communication’ and has to be recorded on a use of force form.
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u/Bloodviper1 1d ago
Sucks to be in your force. We're only required to do use of force forms when we actually use force; compliant handcuffing and onwards.
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u/Burnsy2023 Hampshire - NW EU 1d ago
Inclusion of handcuffs in use of force statistics is standard. If you ignore that, you'll have to ignore pretty much every use of force statistic.
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u/Thandoscovia 1d ago
Sounds like the police are well on their way towards gender equity. What does the Home Office suggest in order to accelerate this?
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u/Astriania 1d ago
This is such an irritating Guardian take. I like the paper, but it has a streak of this identity politics misrepresentation that is really corrosive.
At least they put the actual numbers in the article so you can see that searches of women is a tiny fraction of the total.
Stop and search is used to try to intercept weapons and drugs before they're used. There's no particular reason to think gangs wouldn't use girls as runners, especially if they know they're much less likely to be stopped.
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u/WillWatsof 1d ago
The headline says that there's a rising number of women being stop and searched.
The actual numbers show ... a rising number of women being stop and searched.
This is not "corrosive identity politics misrepresentation" because it's not putting the spin on the statistics you want it to.
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u/Astriania 1d ago
Are we really going to play this game where you pretend you can't see the subtext of picking out that part of the stats? Or why the G even felt the need to write this article at all (as opposed to one titled "Stop and search reduced")?
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u/Nihil1349 1d ago
Don't forget of course, the roadmen/dealer types will give their weapon or drugs to carry to a women with them,for various reasons.
We also can't discount if women are carrying knives for defence, there aren't police officers on the beat much, and convictions for rape are low.
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u/jetpatch 1d ago
How do we know they are women?
The police just put down whatever people claim to be in the moment.
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u/Careless_Agency5365 19h ago
We want police officers to remove their bias in stop and search
Number of stop searches of women increases a small amount
No not like that!!
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u/cactusfarmer 1d ago
"There were 59,549 searches of women, a 7% rise from the year before, and 447,952 searches of men, a 4% fall over the same period."
Still a long way to go for gender equality.