Ruth Davis: How the police can use social technology and new media to cut crime

Ruth Davis is a Crime and Research Fellow with Policy Exchange

You are seven times more likely to be stopped and searched by the police if you are black or from an ethnic minority background than if you are white. If you are stopped, there is only a 9 per cent chance that you are doing or planning to do anything that should result in your arrest. The Home Secretary recently told Parliament that this suggests that the police are using stop and search powers without reasonable grounds for doing so and in a way that discriminates against people because of their ethnicity rather than for behaving suspiciously.

It is, she says, ‘not sustainable’ if public confidence in the police is to be maintained. She is right.

This is the latest in a series of recent events and claims. Hillsborough, Operation Elveden, undercover intrigue against the Lawrence family: all are by-words for the corrupt and closed culture that has operated in some parts of our police service and all have damaged public confidence in the police.