Accredited official statistics

Police powers and procedures: Stop and search, arrests and mental health detentions, England and Wales, year ending 31 March 2024

Published 26 September 2024

Applies to England and Wales

© Crown copyright 2024

This publication is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 except where otherwise stated. To view this licence, visit nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3 or write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, or email: [email protected].

Where we have identified any third party copyright information you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concerned.

This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/stop-and-search-arrests-and-mental-health-detentions-march-2024/police-powers-and-procedures-stop-and-search-arrests-and-mental-health-detentions-england-and-wales-year-ending-31-march-2024

Frequency of release: Annual

Forthcoming releases: Home Office statistics release calendar

Home Office responsible statistician: Jodie Hargreaves

Press enquiries: 0300 123 3535

Public enquiries: [email protected]

Privacy information notice: Home Office Crime and Policing Research and Annual Data Requirement (ADR) data – Privacy Information Notices

1.1 Overview of Police powers and procedures statistical bulletins

Prior to September 2024, the ‘Police powers and procedures’ statistical bulletin was published as 2 reports. Given the volume and variety of topics covered, a decision has been made to split the release into 3 separate statistical bulletins.

This release is the first of the now 3 annual publications on police powers, and contains statistics on the use of the powers of stop and search, arrest and detentions under the Mental Health Act by the police in England and Wales up to the year ending 31 March 2024.

Stop and search statistics contain information from the 43 territorial police forces in England and Wales, and the British Transport Police (BTP), including data on the:

  • change in the use of stop and search in the years ending March 2023 and March 2024
  • number of stop and searches carried out under a range of legislative powers, including; section 1 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) and associated legislation, section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, section 47A (previously section 44) of the Terrorism Act 2000, section 11 of the Public Order Act 2023 and section 342E of the Sentencing Act 2020
  • reason for conducting a search
  • outcomes following stop and search
  • weapons found from stop and search
  • ethnicity, sex and age of persons searched
  • analysis of where stop and searches take place within Police Force Areas (also referred to as ‘hotspot analysis’)
  • whether force was used in a stop and search
  • new analysis on the amount of clothing removed from persons searched
  • new analysis on whether an outcome was linked by ethnic group

Arrest statistics contain information from the 43 territorial police forces in England and Wales on a financial-year basis, including data on the:

  • number of arrests for notifiable offences
  • reason for which persons were arrested
  • ethnicity, sex and age of those arrested

Detentions under the Mental Health Act 1983 statistics contain information from the 43 territorial police forces in England and Wales, and British Transport Police, on a financial year basis, including data on the:

  • number of detentions under sections 135 and 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983
  • age-group, sex and ethnicity of persons detained
  • type of place of safety used to detain individuals, and the reason for using a police station (where applicable)
  • method of transportation used to transport an individual to a place of safety, and the reason for using a police vehicle (where applicable)

The second part of this statistical series ‘Roads policing powers’ is scheduled for publication in winter 2024. This release will contain data on:

  • roadside breath tests for alcohol
  • fixed penalty notices and other outcomes for motoring offences

The third part of this statistics series, ‘Police powers and procedures: Police custody and bail, England and Wales’, is scheduled for publication in early 2025. This release will contain statistics on the use of other police powers under the Police and Criminal Evidence (PACE) Act 1984 including:

  • pre-charge bail, released under investigation and voluntary attendance
  • the use of police custody and the number of strip searches and intimate searches conducted in custody

1.2 Main findings

Including searches under all relevant legislation, in the year ending March 2024 police in England and Wales conducted 535,307 stop and searches in total, a decrease of 2.1% compared with the year ending March 2023 (down 11,693 from 547,000).

The number of arrests following searches under all legislation increased by 1,772 (up 2.4% to 75,953) in the year ending March 2024. This equated to 14.2% of all searches, a slight increase compared with the year ending March 2023 (13.6%), however it remains below the peak arrest rate (17.1%) in the year ending March 2017 and year ending March 2018.

There were 720,506 arrests carried out by 43 territorial police forces in England and Wales, an increase of 8% compared with the year ending March 2023, in which there were 669,598 arrests. Of the 43 territorial forces, 31 carried out more arrests in the year ending March 2024 than the year ending March 2023, while 11 forces carried out fewer.

There were 31,213 detentions under section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983 in the year ending March 2024. This was a decrease of 10% compared with the year ending March 2023. Most cases (95%) involved adults aged 18 or over (excluding those cases where the age of the person being detained was unknown).

1.3 Accredited Official Statistics status

These official statistics were independently reviewed by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) the regulatory arm of the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA). They comply with the standards of trustworthiness, impartiality, quality and value in Code of Practice for Statistics and should be labelled ‘Accredited Official Statistics’.

The statistics in this release were originally assessed as National Statistics in 2012.

On 30 July 2024 the OSR wrote to the Home Office to confirm that the stop and search statistics can continue to be labelled as Accredited Official Statistics (following the expansion of the data from aggregate to record-level), highlighting the improvements that have been made to the analysis and bulletin. They also made several recommendations which have been addressed in this bulletin.

The arrests statistics and mental health detentions statistics were most recently assessed by the OSR in 2020 and were assessed as continuing to meet National Statistics designation.

Where new data requirements have been added to the statistical collections covered in this bulletin and are deemed to need further data quality development, these have been labelled as Official Statistics in development.

The Home Office worked closely with the UK Statistics Authority to improve information on the quality and limitations of the various datasets, and the ways in which the Home Office engages with users of the statistics. This is documented in the user guide, which is published alongside this release.

1.4 Accountability statement

Our statistical practice is regulated by the OSR which sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official statistics should adhere to. You are welcome to contact us directly via [email protected] with any comments about how we meet these standards. Alternatively, you can contact OSR by emailing [email protected] or via the OSR website.

1.5 Data quality

Whilst this data has been labelled as Accredited Official Statistics, there are some data quality issues which users should be aware of when interpreting the data; a summary is provided below and more detailed information is provided in section 2.12.

Data comparability

Since the year ending March 2010, BTP have provided data to the Home Office, prior to this they did not provide data. Data on total searches before this period is therefore not directly comparable with more recent years. However, as BTP typically only makes up between 1% and 3% of all stop and searches each year, excluding them has only a marginal effect on the longer-term time series.

For some years, certain forces were not able to provide all the requested breakdowns of the data. Such cases have been outlined in the relevant table notes. To make sure data is comparable over time, some forces may not be included in annual comparisons. These cases have been highlighted.

Self-defined ethnicity data

A fifth (19%) of stop and search records do not include self-defined ethnicity data. A person is not legally required to provide their ethnicity, or it may be that the officer did not ask. Whilst self-defined ethnicity is the preferred option, where this is not available, officer-observed ethnicity helps to fill the gap and allows for analysis based on more complete data. However, the impact of this is that the officer-observed ethnicity categories are not as detailed as the self-defined categories and the ‘Mixed’ and ‘Other ethnic’ groups are combined, which means some detail is lost.

Age of persons stopped and searched data

Since April 2020, the Home Office has collected data on the age of persons stopped and searched. Police forces are asked to review any searches where the age of person stopped and searched is recorded as 9 or under, however this may not always be possible. In the year ending March 2024, there were 101 stop and searches where the age was recorded as 9 or under (less than 0.1% of the total number of stop and searches. Any records in which the age of the person stop and searched was recorded as ‘0’ are reported as unknown values in this publication. The age of the person stopped and searched was unknown for 4.6% of searches.

Reason for arrest data

Since April 2020, the Home Office has also collected data on reason for arrest. The aim of collecting this data is to understand how effectively the police are using stop and search powers, for example if the reason for arrest is aligned with the reason for search it would be implied that this was a successful search. Data quality checks showed that some forces will by default provide the same reason for arrest as for reason for search or they record all reasons for arrest as other. This data has been presented in the summary tables as ‘Official Statistics in development’ to denote that there are known data quality issues.

Outcome linked data

Given the known issues around the quality of the data, statistics in this release on outcomes and whether the outcome was linked to the reason for the search (formerly referred to as ‘Best Use of Stop and Search’ data) are Official statistics, and not Accredited Official statistics. Further details can be found in section 7.2 of the user guide that accompanies this publication.

The Home Office have collected data on whether force was used during a stop and search since the year ending March 2023. Given the partial nature of the data presented in this section, these statistics are ‘Official Statistics in development’ and any conclusions drawn should be done so with caution.

The Home Office have collected data on the extent of clothing removal during a stop and search for the first time, on a voluntary basis, in the year ending March 2024. Given the partial nature of the data presented in this section, these statistics are ‘Official Statistics in development’ and any conclusions drawn should be done so with caution.

Whether body worn video was used in a stop and search

The Home Office have collected data on whether body worn video was used during a stop and search for the first time in the year ending March 2024. Given the partial nature of the data presented in this section, these statistics are ‘Official Statistics in development’ and any conclusions drawn should be done so with caution.

Official statistics in development

Any new additions to the ADR are usually a voluntary requirement in the first year of collection to allow forces time to embed recording practices and make the necessary changes to their IT systems. We expect the levels of completion to improve in successive years.

Quality assurance checks

Home Office analysts carry out detailed data quality checks of the data supplied by police forces, including checking for duplicate records, unusual values or changes in search volumes (more detail of our quality assurance checks can be found in the user guide).

For the first time this year, Home Office analysts have also carried out an information gathering exercise to understand more about the quality assurance processes that forces carry out on the stop and search data. Twenty-seven forces out of the 43 forces responded. A summary of the main findings can be found below:

  • forces reported that errors are flagged automatically by the application software – examples of automated errors include missing data fields, duplicate records, or the search power not being recognized
  • reporting systems have in-built validation checks, such as the mandating of certain fields
  • officers carry out manual checks on forms which are unsent or failed to send
  • many forces reported that the stop and search leads review all records on a weekly basis to ensure the grounds of searches are lawful and legitimate
  • any records which are missing location coordinates are automatically flagged and these are updated with the correct coordinates; this can be due to the gazetteer used by the force not always being updated
  • the use of body-worn video was mentioned by several forces to check back against what was reported on the stop and search record and is also used to check for compliance of recording of self-defined ethnicity
  • analysts within forces reported using Power BI dashboards (and other data quality tools) to help visualize and review data and identify errors
  • many forces use peer review to check records – this usually involves taking a dip sample of the stop and search records and checking for issues. Some forces noted that particular attention is paid to search records of children aged 9 or under, full strip searches, and searches where ethnicity is missing
  • officers at sergeant rank carry out regular reviews of stop and search records – for some forces this was all records, or all records of black people
  • forces reported that their records were subject to regular internal and external scrutiny panels

This section presents the latest statistics on stop and searches conducted by the territorial police forces in England and Wales (and the British Transport Police) under different legislative powers. These are:

  • section 1 of the Police and Criminal Evidence (PACE) Act 1984 and associated legislation[footnote 1]
  • section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act (CJPOA) 1994
  • section 47A (previously section 44) of the Terrorism Act (TACT) 2000
  • section 342E of the Sentencing Act 2020 – this bulletin reports on the use of these powers for the first time
  • section 11 of the Public Order Act 2023 - this bulletin reports on the use of these powers for the first time

These powers allow police to search persons and vehicles without a warrant in specific situations. Details of the above legislation and the legislation associated with section 1 of PACE are included in the user guide.

This section includes statistics on the:

  • change in the use of stop and search in the years ending March 2023 and March 2024
  • number of stop and searches carried out under a range of legislative powers, including; section 1 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) and associated legislation, section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, section 47A (previously section 44) of the Terrorism Act 2000, section 342E of the Sentencing Act 2020 and section 11 of the Public Order Act 2023
  • reason for conducting a search
  • outcomes following stop and search
  • weapons found from stop and search
  • ethnicity, sex and age of persons searched
  • police use of force in a stop and search
  • new analysis on the level of clothing removal in stop and searches
  • new analysis on whether body worn video was used during a stop and search
  • new analysis on whether an outcome was linked by ethnic group

In this chapter, the majority of percentages are presented to one decimal place, in order to provide more detail regarding year-on-year changes in the data.

2.2 Main results - stop and search

In total, including searches under all relevant legislation, police in England and Wales conducted 535,307 stop and searches in the year ending March 2024, a decrease of 2.1% compared with the year ending March 2023 (down 11,693 from 547,000). The number of stop and searches in the year ending March 2024 was 64.8% lower than the peak number (1,519,561) in the year ending March 2009.

Figure 2.1: Number of stop and searches under all relevant legislation, year ending March 2002 to year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Source: Stop and search summary data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table SS_01, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Data collected before the year ending March 2010 does not include the British Transport Police (BTP). Due to this, stop and search data before the year ending March 2010 is not directly comparable with more recent years. BTP usually makes up between 1.0% and 3.0% of all stop and search across England and Wales each year.

There were 530,093 stop and searches conducted under section 1 PACE by police in England and Wales (including British Transport Police). This is a decrease of 12,627 (2.3%) compared with the year ending March 2023.

With the exception of searches for stolen property and going equipped (which increased by 7.9% and 5.7%, respectively), the number of searches conducted in the year ending March 2024 decreased across all other search reasons under section 1 PACE (see section 2.4 for a full breakdown).

The number of arrests following searches under all legislation increased by 1,772 (up 2.4% to 75,953) in the year ending March 2024. This equated to 14.2% of all searches, a slight increase compared with the year ending March 2023 (13.6%), however it remains below the peak arrest rate (17.1%) in the year ending March 2017 and year ending March 2018.

Of those 530,093 searches under section 1 PACE (and associated legislation), 75,741 led to an arrest. This number of arrests is 2.4% higher than the year ending March 2023. The proportion of searches resulting in an arrest increased slightly, from 13.6% to 14.3%.

In 69.1% of stop and searches under section 1 PACE, the outcome was recorded as needing ‘no further action’, similar to the year ending March 2023. Across all relevant legislation, 69.3% of searches resulted in ‘no further action’.

Police in England and Wales conducted 5,145 stop and searches under section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act in anticipation of violence, an increase of 20.2% compared with the year ending March 2023 (up from 4,280).

46.3% of stop and searches in the year ending March 2024 were of males aged between 18 and 34, while this group makes up 10.8% of the overall population. Males aged 18 to 34 had the highest rate of stop and search, at 35.3 stop and searches per 1,000 population in the year ending March 2024.

All ethnic groups (based on self-defined ethnicity), either saw a reduction or little to no change in disparity rates[footnote 2] compared with the year ending March 2023. Individuals from a black or black British background have the highest disparity rate, at a rate 3.7 times higher than that of those from a white ethnic group across England and Wales.

Based on a combination of self-defined ethnicity and officer-observed ethnicity (where self-defined ethnicity was not stated) the disparity rate for black people was 5.0. This was a decrease compared with the year ending March 2023 (5.5). People who self-defined their ethnicity as either black or ‘mixed or other’ (or were perceived by the officer to belong to one of those ethnicities, if not stated) had an arrest rate following a stop and search of 15.9%. White people had an arrest rate of 13.9%, and people who self-defined or were perceived to be of Asian ethnicity had the lowest arrest rate (12.8%).

For the first time in the year ending March 2024, data has been collected (on a voluntary basis) on the level of clothing removed from an individual during a stop and search. Where the information was provided, 98.0% of searches had either no clothing removed or outer clothing only removed, 0.6% of searches involved the removal of more than outer clothes without exposing intimate parts and 1.4% of searches were a full strip search.

2.3.1 Section 1 PACE and associated legislation

In this section we refer to ‘section 1 PACE’ searches, which includes other legislation such as searches conducted under section 23 Misuse of Drugs Act (1971). Additionally, for the first time, the ‘section 1 PACE’ category includes suspicion-led stop and searches under section 10 of the Public Order Act, for items related to protest activity. For examples of other legislation included under section 1 searches see the user guide.

In the year ending March 2024 there were 530,093 stop and searches conducted under section 1 PACE by police in England and Wales (including British Transport Police). The number of searches under section 1 PACE in the year ending March 2024 decreased by 12,627 (or 2.3%) compared with the year ending March 2023 (542,720). The Metropolitan Police, who account for 25.6% of searches, saw a decrease of 23.2% in the year ending March 2024, down from 176,749 to 135,739. This pattern was not observed in all forces - 24 of the 44 police forces in England and Wales had a higher number of stop and searches under section 1 PACE in the year ending March 2024 than the year ending March 2023.

Looking at longer-term changes, the number of stop and searches conducted in the year ending March 2024 was 56.9% below the peak recorded in the year ending March 2011 (when there were 1,229,324). The rate of reduction between the year ending March 2011 and the year ending March 2018 in stop and searches accelerated following the then Home Secretary’s decision in 2014 to re-focus the use of such powers. Between the year ending March 2018 and year ending March 2021, the number of stop and searches began to increase again[footnote 3].

Figure 2.2: Number of stop and searches under section 1 PACE and associated legislation, year ending March 2002 to year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Source: Stop and search summary data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table SS_02, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Data collected before the year ending March 2010 does not include the British Transport Police (BTP). Due to this, stop and search data before the year ending March 2010 is not directly comparable with more recent years. BTP usually makes up between 1.0% and 3.0% of all stop and search across England and Wales each year.

2.3.2 Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act

Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act (CJPOA) 1994 enables officers to conduct ‘no suspicion’ stop and searches for dangerous instruments or offensive weapons for a limited time within a specified area, in anticipation of violence occurring in that area. This will often follow a major incident or from intelligence gathered by the police. Further details can be found in the user guide.

From April 2019, under a pilot scheme agreed by the then Home Secretary, some changes were made to the conditions under which a section 60 search could be carried out. The changes, aimed to make it easier for the police to use such powers when they judged it necessary to do so, included:

  • reducing the rank of an authorising officer from senior officer to inspector
  • relaxing the grounds from a reasonable belief that serious violence will take place to a belief that it may take place

A phased approach was taken, with 7 forces joining the pilot from 1 April 2019, whilst the remaining 37 forces joined from August 2019. Three further changes were made at that time:

  • increasing the length of time the initial Section 60 order can be in place from 15 to 24 hours
  • reducing the rank of officer who can extend the order for up to a further 24 hours from senior officer to superintendent
  • removing the requirement for forces to communicate to local communities in advance, where practicable, where a Section 60 order is in place

In July 2021, as part of the Beating Crime Plan, the then Home Secretary announced a permanent relaxation of all 5 voluntary conditions outlined above.

In the year ending March 2024, police in England and Wales carried out 5,145 stop and searches under section 60 CJPOA, a 20.2% increase compared with the year ending March 2023 (when 4,280 such searches were undertaken). This is the first increase in the number of searches under section 60 since the year ending March 2020 (figure 2.3). Greater Manchester Police increased their number of stop and searches under section 60 CJPOA by 76.1% in the year ending March 2024, from 954 up to 1,680. Merseyside Police increased their number of stop and searches under section 60 CJPOA by 715.0%, from 80 to 652. The Metropolitan Police Service increased their number of searches under section 60 CJPOA by 77.2% in the year ending March 2024, from 741 to 1,313.

Figure 2.3: Stop and searches under section 60 CJPOA, year ending March 2007 to year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Source: Stop and search open data tables, year ending 31 March 2007 to year ending 31 March 2020 and stop and search open data tables, year ending 31 March 2021 to year ending 31 March 2024, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Data from the year ending March 2010 onwards includes the British Transport Police (BTP). Data taken before this is not directly comparable with more recent years.

The number of forces making at least one stop and search under section 60 powers decreased from 23 to 19 of the 44 forces in England and Wales (including BTP) in the year ending March 2024.

In previous years, the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) has usually had the highest number of section 60 stop and searches in England and Wales. However, in the years ending March 2023 and March 2024, Greater Manchester Police conducted a higher number of stop and searches under section 60 CJPOA. In the year ending March 2024, Greater Manchester Police accounted for 32.7% of the England and Wales total, whereas the MPS accounted for 25.5% of section 60 searches. Merseyside Police accounted for 12.7% of the total number of section 60 stop and searches in the year ending March 2024.

The proportion of section 60 searches that resulted in an arrest in the year ending March 2024 was 4.1%, down from the year ending March 2023 (4.8%). However, this remains much lower than the arrest rate following searches under section 1 of PACE (14.3% in the year ending March 2024).

2.3.3 Section 47A (previously section 44) of the Terrorism Act 2000

Section 47A (as amended by the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012) of the Terrorism Act 2000 (TACT) allows the police to use stop and search powers when there is reasonable suspicion an act of terrorism will take place, and only when such powers are considered necessary to prevent such an act taking place. This must be authorised by a senior officer, at least at the rank of assistant chief constable, and the area and duration of the authorisation must be no greater than is necessary to prevent such an act. Section 47A of TACT stop and search powers replaced similar powers under section 44 of TACT on 18 March 2011. Further information on these searches can be found in the user guide.

In the last 6 years, stop and search powers under section 47A of TACT were not used. In the year ending March 2018, there were 149 stop and searches under section 47A of TACT, details of which can be found in the bulletin from that year.

2.4 Reason for search under section 1 PACE legislation

There are several reasons why the police may carry out a section 1 PACE stop and search, such as having reasonable grounds to suspect that an individual is carrying drugs or a weapon. Any further arrests from a PACE search may not be related to the first reason for the search; for example, an officer may suspect that an individual is carrying drugs but arrest them if they are found to be carrying a weapon. As a result, while arrest rates give an overall picture of the number of searches leading to arrests, they do not give insight into arrest rates for specific offence categories. More information on how frequently arrests (and other outcomes) are linked to the first reason for the search can be found in the link between search reason and outcome section. The data quality section also includes information on data collected on reason for arrest. Reason for arrest data is provided in the stop and search summary data tables: police powers and procedures, year ending 31 March 2023, table SS_49 as ’Official Statistics in development’.

As in previous years, the most common reason for carrying out a PACE stop and search was on suspicion of drug possession. These made up 59.6% of all stop and searches in the year ending March 2024, a lower proportion than the year ending March 2023 (61.2%) (table 2.1). The proportion and number of drugs searches steadily increased between the year ending March 2018 and year ending March 2021, but has reduced in the 3 years since then. The peak in the year ending March 2021 may have been affected by proactive searches for drugs during national lockdowns throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

The proportion of searches on people suspected to be in possession of stolen property or going equipped for stealing increased slightly in the year ending March 2024 (table 2.1).

Table 2.1: Proportion of PACE stop and searches, years ending March 2020, March 2021, March 2022, March 2023 and March 2024, England and Wales

Reason for search Year ending March 2020 Year ending March 2021 Year ending March 2022 Year ending March 2023 Year ending March 2024
Drugs 62.6 68.7 64.7 61.2 59.6
Offensive weapons 16.1 12.2 15.7 15.9 15.9
Stolen property 10.2 8.0 9.3 10.3 11.4
Going equipped 7.3 7.1 6.5 7.6 8.2
Other 2.1 2.3 1.6 2.4 2.3
Criminal damage 0.8 0.8 1.1 1.5 1.5
Firearms 0.8 0.7 0.9 1.0 0.9
s.43 Terrorism Act 2000 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.0

Source: Stop and search open data tables, year ending 31 March 2007 to year ending 31 March 2020 and stop and search open data tables, year ending 31 March 2021 to year ending 31 March 2024

Notes:

  1. The ‘other’ search category includes reasons such as fireworks, drones or unmanned aircraft and suspicion-led searches for items related to protest related offences.
  2. Due to rounding, percentages may not add up to 100.

Apart from searches for stolen property (which increased by 7.9%) and searches for ‘going equipped’ (which increased by 5.7%), the number of searches conducted in the year ending March 2024 decreased across all other search reasons under section 1 PACE (and associated legislation (figure 2.4). The number of searches for drugs decreased by 4.8% in the year ending March 2024, from 331,949 down to 316,138.

Figure 2.4: PACE stop and searches by reason for search, the year ending March 2023 compared with the year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Source: Stop and search summary data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table SS_03, Home Office

Notes:

  1. The ‘other’ search category includes searches for reasons such as fireworks, drones or unmanned aircraft and searches for items related to protest related offences.
  2. In the year ending March 2023 there were 423 searches under s.43 of the Terrorism Act, and in the year ending March 2024 there were 254 searches.

2.5 Outcomes from stop and search

It should be noted that, for this data collection, only one outcome (the principal outcome) per stop and search is recorded and subsequent sanctions are not included. For example, if an arrest is made following a stop and search and subsequently a caution is also issued, only the arrest will be counted. For further information about how outcomes are recorded and for detail on data quality issues, please see the user guide.

The number of arrests following searches under all legislation increased by 1,772 (up 2.4% to 75,953) in the year ending March 2024. This equated to 14.2% of all searches, a slight increase compared with the year ending March 2023 (13.6%), however it remains below the peak of the arrest rate (17.1%) in the year ending March 2017 and year ending March 2018.

Figure 2.5: Arrest rate under all stop and search legislation, year ending March 2002 to year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Source: Stop and search summary data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table SS_21, Home Office

Notes:

1.Data collected before the year ending March 2010 does not include the British Transport Police (BTP). Due to this, stop and search data before the year ending March 2010 is not directly comparable with more recent years. BTP usually makes up between 1.0% and 3.0% of all stop and search across England and Wales each year.

The number of arrests following a section 1 PACE search increased by 1,766 (2.4%) in the year ending March 2024. The total number of section 1 PACE searches decreased by 12,627 (2.3%) over the same time period. This led to a rise in the arrest rate, up from 13.6% in the year ending March 2023 to 14.3% in the year ending March 2024.

Arrests under section 60 CJPOA account for a very small proportion of all arrests following a stop and search (212 out of 75,953 arrests or 0.3%). The arrest rate in the year ending March 2024 for section 60 searches was 4.1%, slightly lower than the year ending March 2023 (4.8%).

Arrest is just one possible outcome following a stop and search. Data on other outcomes from stop and search can be found in the next section (2.5.2).

Since the year ending March 2017, police forces have reported on a wider range of outcomes including:

  • arrests
  • cautions
  • summons
  • penalty notices for disorder
  • cannabis or khat warnings
  • community resolutions
  • no further action

Since the year ending March 2021, the Home Office have expanded the list of outcomes to also include:

  • voluntary attendance
  • verbal warning or words of advice
  • seizure of property
  • guardian intervention
  • other action

In years prior to the year ending March 2021, the new options would have been classed as ‘no further action’. Therefore, comparisons with previous years on the proportion of searches that resulted in ‘no further action’ should be interpreted with caution. A full breakdown of stop and search outcomes is available in the stop and search open data tables, year ending 31 March 2021 to year ending 31 March 2024 accompanying this publication.

This data includes searches under section 1 Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE), section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, section 342E of the Sentencing Act and Section 11 of the Public Order Act. In 69.3% of stop and searches the outcome was recorded as needing ‘no further action’. In a further 14.2% the initial outcome was an arrest and an alternative outcome was given in the remaining 16.5% of cases. These proportions are all similar to the year ending March 2023 (table 2.2).

Table 2.2: Proportion of outcomes following a stop and search, in the year ending March 2023 and the year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Outcome Proportion in year ending March 2023 Proportion in year ending March 2024
Arrest 13.6 14.2
Community resolution 7.9 7.7
Summons 1.6 1.5
Verbal warning or words of advice 1.2 1.9
Penalty notice for disorder 1.2 0.9
Khat or cannabis warning 0.7 0.5
Other action 1.1 1.6
Seizure of property 0.9 0.8
Voluntary attendance 1.0 1.3
Caution 0.3 0.2
Guardian intervention 0.0 0.0
No further action 70.7 69.3

Source: Stop and search outcomes summary data tables, year ending 31 March 2024, table SSO_01; Home Office

Notes:

  1. Includes British Transport Police.
  2. 42 police forces are either partially or fully using the expanded list of outcomes introduced in 2021. Two police forces (Northumbria and Surrey) are only using old outcomes framework only.

If the outcomes introduced in the year ending March 2021 are considered to be ‘no further action’ (as they would have been before that year), then 75.0% of searches in the year ending March 2024 resulted in ‘no further action’, a similar proportion as in the year ending March 2023 (74.9%).

2.5.3 Link between outcome and reason for a stop and search

This section excludes cases where an object was found however the link between the reason for search and outcome is unknown, or where it’s unknown whether an object was found.

In the year ending March 2024, 22.6% of stop and searches resulted in an outcome that was linked to the reason for the search, a slight increase compared with the year ending March 2023 (21.6%). However, this varied by the reason for search. For example, 27.7% of drugs searches resulted in a linked outcome, whereas only 3.3% of searches under Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 resulted in a linked outcome. This lower rate for Section 60 searches reflects the fact that they are undertaken to try and resolve violent situations quickly in a specific area, without reasonable grounds to suspect the people being searched.

Table 2.3: Proportion of stop and search where the outcome of the stop was linked to the reason for the stop and search, by reason for stop, year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Reason for search Outcome linked to reason for search Outcome not linked Nothing found
Drugs 27.7 3.7 68.6
Stolen property 24.3 7.3 68.4
Firearms 14.8 9.0 76.2
Offensive weapons 11.6 7.2 81.2
Criminal damage 11.7 6.8 81.6
Going equipped 11.4 8.4 80.2
S.43 (Terrorism) 2.6 3.4 94.0
Items in connection with protest related offences: suspicion-led [z] [z] [z]
Drone or unmanned aircraft [z] [z] [z]
Other 15.1 7.3 77.6
Total Section 1 PACE 22.8 5.2 72.0
S.60 (Violence) 3.3 5.9 90.8
Serious violence reduction order 0.0 1.5 98.5
Items in connection with protest related offences: suspicion-less [z] [z] [z]
Total 22.6 5.2 72.2

Source: Stop and search open data tables, year ending 31 March 2021 to year ending 31 March 2024, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Proportion calculations do not include cases where an object was found however the link between the reason for search and outcome is unknown, or where it’s unknown whether an object was found.
  2. The ‘other’ search category includes searches under Section 1 PACE that do not fall into other categories.
  3. Due to rounding, percentages may not add up to 100.
  4. Percentages are not shown for search categories where the total number of stop and searches was less than 50. These are represented by [z] values.

2.5.4 Weapons found from stop and search – Official statistics in development

The Home Office stop and search data collection was expanded in the year ending March 2021 so that police forces can provide more detailed information on whether an offensive weapon or firearm was found in a stop and search encounter. Previously, data was only collected on whether an offensive weapon was found from a search conducted under section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act.

Due to the differences in how forces record property found during a stop and search, caution should be taken when interpreting these statistics. Furthermore, the data collected as part of the stop and search collection does not show whether multiple weapons were found in a single search. Therefore, the figures presented below are estimates and should be used with caution. See the user guide for more information on the data quality issues of these statistics.

In the year ending March 2024, 16,066 (3.0%) of stop and searches resulted in an offensive weapon or firearm being found. Of these, 3,221 (20.0%) were when the initial search reason was for drugs, although this was 1.0% of all drugs searches. Searches carried out for firearms and offensive weapons had the highest find rate at 17.3% and 12.0% respectively. A full breakdown of all search reasons and force breakdown can be found in the stop and search summary data tables: police powers and procedures, year ending 31 March 2024; tables SS_42 and SS_45.

2.6 Demographics of persons stop and searched

2.6.1 Ethnicity of persons searched

When a stop and search is undertaken, the person being searched is asked by the police which ethnic group they consider themselves to belong to. This is a measure of “self-defined” ethnicity rather than “officer observed” and is the preferred measure of ethnicity. For the purpose of analysis, the 19 ethnicity categories as defined by the ONS 2021 Census, were grouped into the following categories:

  • Asian (or Asian British)[footnote 4]
  • black (or black British)
  • mixed
  • white
  • other ethnic group
  • not stated

Additionally, officer-observed ethnicity may also be recorded as one of the following:

  • Asian
  • black
  • white
  • other

Since the year ending March 2021, the Home Office have collected stop and search data on both the “officer observed” ethnicity and the “self-defined” ethnicity of the person searched, for individual records. This means that if the self-defined ethnicity of the person searched was not stated, officer-observed ethnicity can be used as a replacement, for analytical purposes. However, one limitation of this approach is that there is no ‘mixed’ category in the options for ‘officer-observed ethnicity’. For the purposes of analysis, the ‘mixed’ and ‘other’ ethnic groups are combined in any analysis where officer-observed ethnicity is used in place of self-defined ethnicity where the latter is ‘not stated’.

This section begins by examining the ethnicity of people stopped and searched using the traditional method, based solely on self-defined ethnicity. The latter section uses the newer approach, in which when the self-defined ethnicity of the person searched was not stated, officer-observed ethnicity is used instead. The approach is an attempt to reduce uncertainty in disparity rates based solely on self-defined ethnicity, caused by the growing proportion of records in which this information is not stated (19.3% in the year ending March 2024). This latter approach is only possible for data in the latest 4 reporting years.

It is important that a ‘like-for-like’ approach is used when making comparisons between years. That is, when assessing the trend in disparity rates, users should not use the rate based on the newer approach for the latest year and compare it to the rate based on the traditional approach for the previous year. It is advisable to use the traditional approach when making long-terms comparisons, however the newer (combined) approach can be used for the most recent 4 years.

Self-defined ethnicity of persons searched

The MPS consistently make up a large proportion of all stop and searches in England and Wales (25.6% in the year ending March 2024) and also has a larger proportion of ethnic minorities (not including white minorities) within its resident population (46%) compared to the rest of England and Wales (13% - not including MPS)[footnote 5]. Table 2.4 presents the data for the MPS area separately, as well as distinct England and Wales totals, with one including and the other not including the MPS area. Table 2.4 shows that stops of individuals who define themselves as black, Asian and other minority ethnic groups make up a larger proportion of all stops in the MPS area when compared with forces in the rest of England and Wales.

Table 2.4: Proportion of stop and searches by self-defined ethnic group, year ending March 2024, England and Wales (E&W) and the MPS area

Legislation Police Force Areas Asian Black Mixed White Other Not stated
All searches E&W excl. MPS 8.0 6.1 3.3 66.1 1.5 15.0
All searches MPS 10.1 22.5 3.4 29.1 3.5 31.3
All searches England and Wales 8.6 10.4 3.3 56.4 2.0 19.3
               
Population E&W excl. MPS 7.3 2.4 2.4 88.6 1.4 -
Population MPS 20.7 13.5 5.7 53.7 6.3 -
Population England and Wales 9.3 4.0 2.9 81.7 2.1 -

Sources: Stop and search summary data tables: police powers and procedures, year ending 31 March 2024, table SS_23 and table P_1, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Does not include vehicle only searches.
  2. Includes searches under section 1 PACE and associated legislation, section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, section 342E of the Sentencing Act and Section 11 of the Public Order Act.
  3. Due to rounding, percentages may not add up to 100.

The largest increase in the number of searches was seen in the group of people who self-defined as white, an increase of 4,220 (1.5%), from 288,277 to 292,497 in the year ending March 2024. There were similar increases in searches of people from the mixed ethnicity group, which increased by 357 (2.1%) from 16,947 to 17,304, and people from other ethnic groups, which increased by 848 (9.0%) from 9,447 to 10,295.

There was a decrease in the number of searches of people who self-defined as black British or Asian British. The number of searches of people who self-defined as black decreased by 5,022 (8.5%) from 58,920 to 53,898. The number of searches of people who self-defined as Asian decreased by 2,225 (4.8%) from 46,585 to 44,360.

Figure 2.6: Number of stop and searches by self-defined ethnicity, the year ending March 2024 compared with the year ending March 2023, England and Wales

Source: Stop and search summary data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table SS_16, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Includes searches under section 1 PACE and associated legislation, section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, section 342E of the Sentencing Act and Section 11 of the Public Order Act.
  2. Includes British Transport Police.

Caution should be taken when interpreting search rates at the national level because force areas vary in their ethnic composition (and in their level of missing ethnicity data); an average national figure presumes that all stop and searches and ethnic groups are spread evenly across forces, whereas these differ considerably between forces. Furthermore, even within a PFA there can be significant variation in terms of the distribution of different ethnic groups, which may be hidden by the force level averages. One notable example of this is the Metropolitan Police PFA[footnote 6] which is made up of several boroughs where ethnic minorities (not including white minorities) make up the majority of the resident population, and others where they form a minority of the resident population. For this reason, more insightful analysis can be possible at smaller geographical levels than PFA. See section 2.8 and Annex A.2 for on more information on stop and search ‘hotspots’.

It is also important to be mindful of the fact that the population data is based on residential estimates and does not show the transient population – people who move into and out of an area, but do not live there.

Furthermore, when calculating rates, individuals who have not provided their ethnicity are not included. In the year ending March 2024, the level of missing ethnicity data (self-defined) was 19.3%. This proportion has steadily increased since the year ending March 2014, in which self-defined ethnicity was not stated for only 5.0% of searches, although the latest year is slightly below the year ending March 2023 (20.6%). This adds further uncertainty to the trends discussed below. To improve this level of uncertainty, we have repeated this analysis using officer-observed ethnicity where self-defined ethnicity is not stated – see the ‘Combined disparity measure’ section below for more detail.

The following analysis compares the overall rate of stop and search per 1,000 population for each ethnic group based on self-defined ethnicity (using the 2021 5+1 Census categories) against the relative rate at which people from each ethnicity are stopped and searched in comparison to white individuals. A relative rate of one indicates a lower likelihood whilst a relative rate greater than one indicates a higher likelihood. For example, a relative rate of 2 would mean that a group is stopped twice as much as the white group.

Traditional disparity measure

In the year ending March 2024, People identifying as black or black British were searched at a rate 3.7 times higher than those from a white ethnic group across England and Wales, which is the third year-on-year decrease, from 5.5 in the year ending March 2021 down to 4.8 in the year ending March 2022 then 4.1 in the year ending March 2023.

In the year ending March 2024, people identifying as Asian or Asian British were searched at a rate 1.3 times higher than those from a white ethnic group. In the year ending March 2024, people identifying as mixed were searched at a rate 1.7 times higher than white people, and people from other ethnic groups 1.4 times higher (table 2.5).

Table 2.5: Comparison of the rate at which people were searched relative to individuals who self-define their ethnicity as white, year ending March 2011 to year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Year Asian (or Asian British) Black (or black British) Mixed Other ethnic group
2010/11 2.0 6.5 1.8 1.6
2011/12 1.8 5.9 1.8 1.5
2012/13 1.5 4.4 1.6 1.3
2013/14 1.4 4.1 1.5 1.3
2014/15 1.3 4.4 1.6 1.4
2015/16 1.8 6.5 2.1 1.8
2016/17 2.0 8.4 2.4 2.0
2017/18 2.3 9.5 2.8 2.4
2018/19 2.5 9.7 2.7 2.7
2019/20 2.5 8.9 2.6 2.9
* * * * *
2020/21 1.8 5.5 1.7 1.2
2021/22 1.6 4.8 1.7 1.2
2022/23 1.4 4.1 1.7 1.3
2023/24 1.3 3.7 1.7 1.4

Source: Stop and search summary data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table SS_18, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Includes searches under section 1 PACE and associated legislation and section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994.
  2. Population breakdowns used to calculate the disparity figures are based on the 2011 Census for all years up to the year ending March 2020, and the 2021 Census for the latest 3 years. Therefore, caution should be taken when comparing between these periods.

Combined disparity measure

Self-defined and officer-observed ethnicity of people searched

As shown in table 2.4, in the year ending March 2024, self-defined ethnicity was ‘not stated’ for approximately 1 in every 5 searches of people. This increases the uncertainty in the figures presented above. Table 2.6 presents the data in a different way; where the self-defined ethnicity of the person searched is not stated, officer-observed ethnicity is used instead. This reduces the proportion of stops with unknown ethnicity from 19.3% to 1.6%.

Table 2.6: Proportion of stop and searches by ethnic group, year ending March 2024, England and Wales (E&W) and the MPS area

Legislation Police Force Area(s) Asian Black Mixed or other White Not stated
All searches E&W excl. MPS 10.1 8.6 5.6 73.8 1.9
All searches MPS 14.3 36.6 9.7 38.6 0.7
All searches England & Wales 11.2 15.9 6.6 64.6 1.6
             
Population E&W excl. MPS 7.3 2.4 3.8 86.6 -
Population MPS 20.7 13.5 12.1 53.7 -
Population England & Wales 9.3 4.0 5.0 81.7 -

Source: Stop and search summary data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table SS_24, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Does not include vehicle only searches.
  2. Includes searches under section 1 PACE and associated legislation and section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994.
  3. Table uses officer-observed ethnicity in place of self-defined ethnicity for records where self-defined ethnicity is ‘not stated’.
  4. Due to rounding, percentages may not add up to 100.

Looking at the data in this way increases the disparity rates for people from ethnic minorities (not including white minorities), especially for black people. This suggests that self-defined ethnicity is more likely to be ‘not stated’ or missing when the person searched was from one of those ethnic groups. Using officer-observed ethnicity in place of self-defined ethnicity (when the latter is ‘not stated’) the disparity for ethnic minorities (not including white minorities) in the year ending March 2024 was 2.3 (compared with 1.9 using the measure solely using self-defined ethnicity data). This is a slight decrease compared with the year ending March 2023 when the disparity was 2.5.

There was a relatively larger increase when looking at the differential for black people, who had a disparity of 5.0 using this methodology, down from 5.5 using the same methodology for the previous year. This disparity compares with 3.7 using the measure solely using self-defined ethnicity data. A relatively smaller increase is seen in the differential for Asian people, who had a disparity of 1.5 using this methodology (compared with 1.3 using the measure solely using self-defined ethnicity data). To see how this compares with the previous 3 reporting years, see the stop and search summary data tables: police powers and procedures, year ending 31 March 2024; table SS_19.

The following analysis uses a combination of self-defined ethnicity and officer-observed ethnicity.

There is some variation in the disparity rates depending on the reason why searches were conducted. For offensive weapon searches (under section 1 PACE) and searches under section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, black people were searched at a rate 8.3 and 9.2 times higher than white people (compared with a disparity of 5.5 for all stop and searches). However, searches of black people for articles to commit criminal damage had a rate 1.5 times higher than white people (table 2.7).

Asian and ‘other or mixed’ individuals were less likely than white individuals to be stopped and searched for reasons of criminal damage (0.4 and 0.8 respectively).

Table 2.7: Stop and search disparity, compared with the white ethnic group, by reason for search, year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Reason for search Asian (or Asian British) Black (or black British) Other ethnic group or mixed
Stolen property 1.1 5.9 2.2
Drugs 1.7 4.5 1.6
Firearms 2.6 6.0 1.8
Offensive weapons 1.6 8.3 2.0
Going equipped 0.9 2.3 1.2
Criminal damage 0.4 1.5 0.8
Other 2.0 4.0 1.7
s.60 CJPOA 2.5 9.2 2.3
All stop and search 1.5 5.0 1.7

Source: Stop and search summary data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table SS_40, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Figures in the table show the disparity between the ethnic group shown and the white ethnic group.
  2. Ethnic group is based on a combination of self-defined ethnicity and officer-observed ethnicity.
  3. The ‘other’ search category includes searches for reasons such as fireworks, drones or unmanned aircraft and searches for items related to protest related offences.

Outcomes by self-defined and officer-observed ethnicity

Table 2.8 shows the outcome rates for each ethnic group. If the self-defined ethnicity of the person searched was ‘not stated’, then the officer-observed ethnicity is used instead.

People who self-defined their ethnicity as either black or ‘mixed or other’ (or perceived by the officer to belong to one of those ethnic groups, if not stated) had an arrest rate of 15.9%. White people had an arrest rate of 13.9%, and people who self-defined or were perceived to be of Asian ethnicity had the lowest arrest rate (12.8%).

Table 2.8: Proportion of outcomes following a stop and search by ethnic group, year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Outcome Asian Black Mixed or other White Not known All person searches
Arrest 12.8 15.9 15.9 13.9 9.4 14.1
Community resolution or cannabis warning 9.3 7.7 9.6 8.2 6.4 8.3
Penalty notice for disorder 1.7 1.7 1.2 0.5 0.3 0.9
Summons 1.6 1.3 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5
Other 4.5 2.5 4.5 6.3 7.4 5.4
No further action 69.9 70.9 67.4 69.6 75.0 69.8

Source: Stop and search outcomes summary data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table SSO_11, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Due to rounding, percentages may not sum to 100.
  2. Does not include vehicle only searches.
  3. Cannabis warnings and community resolutions are grouped as many police forces no longer issue cannabis warnings.
  4. ‘Other’ outcomes include caution, voluntary attendance, verbal warning, seizure of property, guardian intervention or other action.
  5. Ethnic group is based on a combination of self-defined ethnicity and officer-observed ethnicity.

Resultant arrest by reason for search and ethnicity

The proportion of searches which result in an arrest differs by the reason for search, however differences between ethnic groups were on the whole small with a few exceptions.

Searches for firearms and stolen property resulted in some of the higher arrest rates. Just over a fifth (21%) of searches of black people for firearms resulted in an arrest, a higher proportion compared to all other groups. Black people (22%) and people belonging to the mixed or other ethnic groups (24%) also had a high arrest rate following searches for stolen property.

Table 2.9: Proportion of searches resulting in an arrest, by search reason and ethnic group, year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Reason for search Asian or Asian British Black or black British Mixed or other White Unknown Total
Criminal damage 12.8 15.1 15.3 9.3 10.8 10.1
Drugs 11.4 13.7 13.2 11.6 7.6 11.9
Firearms 18.7 21.5 15.6 20.7 10.1 20.0
Going equipped 15.4 20.3 19.1 16.8 13.4 17.1
Offensive weapons 16.4 17.3 18.3 17.1 10.4 17.1
Other 10.1 10.1 11.6 9.4 5.1 9.5
Stolen property 17.9 22.1 23.7 21.3 17.0 21.3
Anticipation of violence 1.8 6.2 5.5 3.8 1.7 4.1
Terrorism Act 2000 section 43 10.5 10.7 13.3 11.0 0.0 11.1
Total 12.8 15.9 15.9 13.9 9.4 14.1

Source: Stop and search open data tables, year ending 31 March 2021 to year ending 31 March 2024, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Ethnic group is based on a combination of self-defined ethnicity and officer-observed ethnicity.
  2. Users should note that the underlying search volumes for some ethnic groups may be small and therefore comparisons should be made with caution.
  3. The ‘other’ search category includes searches for reasons such as fireworks, drones or unmanned aircraft and searches for items related to protest related offences.

Outcome linked by ethnicity

If the self-defined ethnicity of the person searched was ‘not stated’, then the officer-observed ethnicity is used instead.

Overall, an object was found (the ‘find rate’) in 27.8% (145,009) of stops and searches (excluding searches where it was not known whether an object was found or whether the outcome was linked), of which 22.6% (117,751) were linked to the original reason for search.

Table 2.10 shows the ‘find rate’ by ethnic group.

Table 2.10: Proportion of stop and search by whether the outcome of the stop was linked to the reason for the stop and search, by ethnic group, year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Ethnic group Find rate Outcome linked to reason for search Outcome not linked Nothing found
Asian or Asian British 27.3 22.3 5.0 72.7
Black or black British 26.6 20.7 5.9 73.4
Mixed or other 30.0 24.3 5.7 70.0
White 27.6 22.7 4.9 72.4

Source: Stop and search open data tables, year ending 31 March 2021 to year ending 31 March 2024, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Proportion calculations do not include cases where an object was found however the link between the reason for search and outcome is unknown, or where it’s unknown whether an object was found.
  2. Due to rounding, percentages may not add up to 100.
  3. Ethnic group is based on a combination of self-defined ethnicity and officer-observed ethnicity.

2.6.2 Age of persons searched

Since the year ending March 2021, police forces have supplied data on the age and sex of people stopped and searched. During a stop and search, the person stopped may provide their date of birth, or an officer may estimate the person’s age where this information is refused or not provided.

The following analysis only includes records where the age of the person searched was provided and excludes vehicle-only searches.

Just under two-thirds (62.1%) of all stop and searches of persons in the year ending March 2024 were on people aged between 10 and 29 years old (306,878 out of 494,384 searches). Of these, 103,135 were aged between 10 and 17 (20.9% of the total), 141,505 were 18 to 24 (28.6% of the total) and 62,238 were 25 to 29 (12.6% of the total). Between the year ending March 2021 and year ending March 2024, there has been a steady decrease in the proportion of people aged between 10 and 29 being stopped and searched, down from 69.0% in the year ending March 2021 to 62.1% in the year ending March 2024.

Table 2.11: Proportion of stop and searches by age group, year ending March 2021 to year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Age group Proportion in year ending March 2021 Proportion in year ending March 2022 Proportion in year ending March 2023 Proportion in year ending March 2024
9 or under <0.1 <0.1 <0.1 <0.1
10 to 17 17.0 19.1 21.1 20.9
18 to 24 37.3 33.3 30.9 28.6
25 to 29 14.7 14.0 12.9 12.6
30 or over 31.0 33.6 35.0 37.9

Source: Stop and search open data tables, year ending 31 March 2021 to year ending 31 March 2024, Home Office

Notes:

  1. There were 42 searches of those aged 9 or under recorded in the year ending March 2021, 70 in the year ending March 2022, 65 in the year ending March 2023 and 101 in the year ending March 2024.
  2. Due to rounding, percentages may not add up to 100.

There were some differences in the age of people searched depending on the reason for search. For example, people aged between 10 and 17 made up 60.9% of criminal damage searches, but only 13.1% of drug searches. In contrast, people aged 30 and above made up more than half (60%) of section 43 TACT searches, 45.4% of searches for stolen property and 40.1% of searches for going equipped, but only 23.8% of searches under section 60 CJPOA (figure 2.7).

Figure 2.7: Proportion of stop and search by age of person searched and reason for search, year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Source: Stop and search summary data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table SS_29, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Does not include vehicle only searches, searches where the age of the person searched was not known and searches with a recorded age of 9 and under (101 searches out of 494,384 searches where the age of the person searched was provided).
  2. By law, Serious Violence Reduction Orders (SVROs) can only be given to persons aged 18 or over. In the year ending March 2024, there were 66 searches of people recorded where the reason for search was given as them having a SVRO.
  3. The ‘other’ search category includes searches for reasons such as fireworks, drones or unmanned aircraft and searches for items related to protest related offences.

Resultant arrest rate of persons searched by age

The analysis described in the section above shows that most stop and search is carried out on younger people, aged below 30 with 20.9% of all searches carried out on those aged 10 to 17, 28.6% on those aged 18 to 24 and 12.6% on those aged 25 to 29. The remaining 37.9% is carried out on people aged 30 and over.

Arrest rates however are lower for the younger age groups, as shown in figure 2.8 below. Just 9.9% of searches on 10 to 17 year olds resulted in an arrest, compared with 13.3% of 18 to 24 year olds, 16.6% of 25 to 29 year olds and 17.5% of those aged 30 and over.

This is likely because younger age groups are dealt with more informally through warnings or community resolutions. The Code of Practice for youth conditional cautions states ‘Youth conditional cautions provide an opportunity, in appropriate cases, to achieve an early, positive response for those young people who are willing to admit their offending and to comply with certain conditions’.

Figure 2.8: Proportion of stop and searches resulting in arrest by age, year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Sources: Stop and search summary data tables: police powers and procedures, year ending 31 March 2024, table SS_29 and SS_30, Home Office

2.6.3 Sex of persons searched

In this report, we refer to sex rather than gender of people stopped and searched. ‘Sex’ can be considered to refer to whether someone is male or female based on their physiology, with ‘gender’ representing a social construct or sense of self that takes a wider range of forms.

The data collection gives 4 options for the sex of the person searched: female, male, other and unknown. ‘Other’ may include people who define themselves as non-binary or transgender. However, only 18 of the 44 police forces recorded any stop and searches of people defined as ‘other’ sex. This suggests that different recording systems used by police forces have different levels of detail to which the sex of the person searched can be recorded. Additionally, it is likely that recording includes a mixture of physiological and personal identity.

The following analysis only includes records where the sex of the person searched was provided and excludes vehicle-only searches.

The majority (88.2%) of searches were of males and 11.7% of females. There were a small number of searches of people of ‘other’ sex (174 out of 507,675 searches of people where the sex was recorded).

There was little variation in the sex of person searched by the reason for search (figure 2.9) except that females were 18.3% of those searches for stolen property and 21.2% of searches of people with serious violence reduction orders, but only 4.4% of searches under section 60 CJPOA and 5.0% of searches under section 43 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

Figure 2.9: Proportion of stop and search by sex of person searched and reason for search, year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Source: Stop and search open data tables, year ending 31 March 2021 to year ending 31 March 2024, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Does not include vehicle-only searches, and searches where the sex of the person searched was ‘other’ or not known.
  2. The ‘other’ search category includes searches for reasons such as fireworks, drones or unmanned aircraft and searches for items related to protest related offences.

There was also a small difference in the arrest rate between males and females. 14.8% of searches of males resulted in arrest, slightly higher than the arrest rate for females (11.2%).

2.6.4 Ethnicity, sex and age of persons searched

This section takes a more in-depth look at the sex, age and ethnicity of persons searched, and how the profile of people stopped and searched compares with the population of England and Wales. Stop and search figures in this section include only those with a known age where the sex of the person searched was recorded as male or female. These figures are the number of stop and search incidents rather than number of unique individuals stopped and searched, that is, multiple searches on the same people are counted as separate incidents. Therefore, the rates in this section do not strictly refer to the proportion of the population (or sub-populations) that experienced stop and search in the year ending March 2024. Population rates quoted are based on the 2021 Census.

The following analysis only includes records where the age, sex and ethnicity of the person searched was provided and excludes vehicle-only searches (482,968 records out of the total 535,307 stop and searches in the year ending March 2024).

Figure 2.10 shows the age and sex of persons searched compared with the population of England and Wales. This shows that stop and search is largely targeted at young males. For example, 18.7% and 46.3% of stop and searches in the year ending March 2024 were on males aged between 10 to 17 and 18 to 34 respectively, whilst these groups make up 4.9% and 10.8% of the overall population. These groups had the highest rate of stop and search, at 35.3 stop and searches per 1,000 population for males aged 18 to 34 and 31.6 stop and searches per 1,000 population for males aged 10 to 17 in the year ending March 2024.

In contrast, females aged between 10 to 17 and 18 to 34 made up only 2.1% and 5.6% of stop and search, respectively despite being 4.6% and 11.1% of the overall population. The proportion of searches of females is lower than their proportion of the population at every age group. For males, only those aged 9 and under, or over 49 were a lower proportion of stop and search than their proportion of the population.

Figure 2.10: Proportion of stop and search by age and sex of person compared with the population, year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Source: Stop and search summary data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table SS_31 and table P_2, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Does not include vehicle-only searches, searches where the sex of the person searched was ‘other’ or not known and searches where the age of the person searched was not known.

Figures 2.11 to 2.14 show the age and sex of people stopped and searched in the year ending March 2024, split by whether the ethnicity of the person searched was white (including white minorities) or another ethnic group, and how that compares with the population of England and Wales within those ethnic groups. Where the self-defined ethnicity of the person searched is not stated, the officer-observed ethnicity is used instead. Searches where both the self-defined ethnicity and officer-observed ethnicity are unknown are not included in the stop and search proportions. Different scales have been used for charts, so comparisons should be made with caution.

Figure 2.11: Proportion of stop and search conducted on white people, by age and sex of person, compared with the population, year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Source: Stop and search summary data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table SS_32 and table P_2, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Does not include vehicle only searches, searches where the sex of the person searched was ‘other’ or not known and searches where the age of the person searched was not known.

Figure 2.12: Proportion of stop and search conducted on black people by age and sex of person compared with the population, year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Source: Stop and search summary data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table SS_33 and table P_2, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Does not include vehicle only searches, searches where the sex of the person searched was ‘other’ or not known and searches where the age of the person searched was not known.

Figure 2.13: Proportion of stop and search conducted on Asian people, by age and sex of person compared with the population, year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Source: Stop and search summary data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table SS_34 and table P_2, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Does not include vehicle only searches, searches where the sex of the person searched was ‘other’ or not known and searches where the age of the person searched was not known.

Figure 2.14: Proportion of stop and search conducted on people from a Mixed or other ethnic background, by age and sex of person compared with the population, year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Source: Stop and search summary data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table SS_35 and table P_2, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Does not include vehicle only searches, searches where the sex of the person searched was ‘other’ or not known and searches where the age of the person searched was not known.

Males aged 18 to 34 were overrepresented across all ethnic groups, with those who were black showing the highest disparity, accounting for 8.5% of stop and search in the year ending March 2024, despite only making up 0.5% of the population. White males aged 18 to 34 accounted for 27.0% of stop and search but only made up 8.4% of the population. Looking at these as rates per 1,000 population, males aged 18 to 34 who were black were stopped at a rate of 141 times per 1,000 population, compared with their white counterparts who were stopped at a rate of 26 times per 1,000 population.

Resultant arrest rate by age and ethnicity

Looking at how the arrest rate differs across age groups between the different ethnic groups shows that the black people are most likely to be arrested in the 10 to 17 age category (15.0% resultant arrest rate). In the 18 to 24 age category, black people and people of the mixed or other ethnic group had the highest resultant arrest rate (15.3%). In the 25 to 29 age category, black people had the highest resultant arrest rate (17.5%), however this was only slightly above the mixed or other ethnic group (17.2%) and white people (17.0% resultant arrest rate). For people aged 30 or over, people from the mixed or other ethnic group had the highest resultant arrest rate (19.4%), closely followed by the black ethnic group (19.1%). Generally, across all age groups, people from a black or mixed or other ethnic background had the highest resultant arrest rate.

People of Asian ethnicity were least likely to be arrested in the age groups 18 to 24 (11.7% resultant arrest rate), 25 to 29 (13.8% resultant arrest rate) and 30 or over (16.7% resultant arrest rate).

Figure 2.15: Proportion of stop and searches resulting in arrest by age and ethnicity, year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Source: Stop and search summary data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table SS_36, Home Office

2.7 Stop and search by Police Force Area (PFA)

The MPS continued to account for a large proportion of all stop and searches[footnote 7] conducted in England and Wales (25.6% in the year ending March 2024), though this proportion has been reducing in recent years. The MPS made up 32.4% of the total number of searches in the year ending March 2023, 39.9% of the total number of searches in the year ending March 2022, and 44.3% of all stop and searches in the year ending March 2021.

When looking at the use of stop and search in different police forces, a traditional approach is to list rates of stop and search per head of resident population, using population figures produced by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This allows for more meaningful comparisons between areas than only using the number of searches in that area. However, calculating the rate based on the resident population has several limitations, such as not including the number of commuters and tourists in areas with a noticeable increase of non-residents. Additionally, looking at the rate across the Police Force Area (PFA) as a whole masks variation within the area (see Annex A.2 for analysis of stop and search within PFAs). Lastly, looking at the overall population within a PFA ignores that the evidence shows that stop and search is particularly concentrated on young men (see sections 2.6.2 and 2.6.3 – Age and sex of persons stopped and searched).

PFA analysis to compare overall rates per 1,000 population and disparity rates for each ethnic group compared with the white group can be found in section 2.6.1 (Ethnicity of persons searched).

In England and Wales there were 8.8 stop and searches per 1,000 population in the year ending March 2024. Merseyside PFA had the highest rate at 34.6 per 1,000 population[footnote 8], followed by Cumbria Constabulary, which had a rate of 16.5 per 1,000 population. The Metropolitan Police Service PFA had a rate of 15.3 per 1,000 population (figure 2.16). The rate of stop and searches per 1,000 people in Merseyside has remained stable in the last 4 years, whereas the rate of stop and searches per 1,000 people in the Metropolitan Police Service PFA has decreased from 35.8 per 1,000 people down to 15.3 per 1,000 people.

Figure 2.16: Stop and searches per 1,000 population, year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Source: Stop and search summary data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table SS_20, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Includes searches under section 1 PACE and associated legislation, section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, section 342E of the Sentencing Act and Section 11 of the Public Order Act.

2.7.2 Resultant arrest rates by Police Force Area

Searches conducted under all relevant legislation resulted in a 14.2% arrest rate in England and Wales for the year ending March 2024 (figure 2.15). Stop and searches in the Suffolk resulted in the highest arrest rate (24.7%) followed by Gloucestershire (22.6%). Lincolnshire had the lowest arrest rate, with 6.4% of searches leading to an arrest.

Figure 2.17: Arrest rate following a stop and search, England and Wales, year ending March 2024

Source: Stop and search summary data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table SS_20, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Includes stop and searches under section 1 of PACE and associated legislation, and section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994.

While an arrest is one possible outcome of a stop and search, there are other outcomes that could show a successful search, including the issuing of police cautions, cannabis or khat warnings, community resolutions and summonses. These are included in the stop and search outcomes section (section 2.5).

2.7.3 All outcomes following a stop and search by Police Force Area

Figure 2.18 shows the outcome rate for each Police Force Area in the year ending March 2024. The figures are broken down by searches that resulted in action being taken as part of the old outcome framework (which included arrest, summons, caution, khat or cannabis warning, penalty notice for disorder or a community resolution), or as part of the new outcome framework (voluntary attendance, verbal warning or words of advice, seizure of property, guardian intervention or other action). Due to inconsistency between forces in how the new outcome framework is being applied, the figures should be interpreted with caution.

Based only on the old outcome framework, Sussex Police had the highest percentage of searches where action was taken (35.8%). Overall (across both frameworks), South Yorkshire Police had the highest proportion of searches where action was taken (49.6%).

Figure 2.18: Outcome rate following a stop and search, year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Source: Stop and search outcomes summary data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table SSO_10, Home Office

2.8 Stop and search hotspots

The Home Office stop and search data collection was expanded in April 2020 to include more detailed information on the locations where stop and search take place (6digit x and y coordinates), meaning that hotspots (areas of high stop and search activity hotspots within a Police Force Area) can be identified. The location data provided should reflect the exact location of the stop and search, however there may be a small number of records where this is not the case, for example if there are signal issues with mobile devices or the location was only recorded on a paper form instead of a mobile device.

This section contains information on stop and search hotspots conducted by the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) in London, as well as Greater Manchester Police, West Midlands Police, Lincolnshire Police, Dorset Police and North Wales Police. These areas have been selected as they provided good quality x and y co-ordinate data and allow comparisons to be made between areas with large urban centres with more rural areas.

The analysis shows that there is a high amount of variation in the number of stop and searches in the individual LSOAs within a PFA, with a large proportion of stop and searches occurring in a relatively small number of LSOAs. This is further illustrated by figures A5 to A10 in Annex A.2.

London, comprising the MPS and City of London PFAs, is comprised of 4,994 LSOAs. When ordering the LSOAs in descending order relating to the number of searches within each LSOA, analysis demonstrates that 25% of searches conducted by the MPS in the year ending March 2024 took place in just 94 LSOAs (1.9% of the total number of LSOAs).

Table 2.12 shows the percentage of LSOAs within a PFA that 25%, 50% and 75% of searches take place in. This shows a consistent pattern between areas, where about half of stop and search takes place in the top 6% to 10% of LSOAs.

Table 2.12: Percentage of stop and search that takes place in 25%, 50% and 75% of LSOAs within selected PFAs, year ending March 2024

% of LSOAs
Percentage of search total Metropolitan Police GMP West Midlands Lincolnshire Dorset North Wales
25% 1.9 1.1 1.0 1.6 1.3 2.4
50% 8.8 7.3 6.7 6.0 5.6 9.6
75% 25.8 25.0 23.0 20.2 17.5 25.4

Source: Stop and search data collection, Home Office

2.9 Whether force was used in a stop and search – Official Statistics in development

A ‘use of force’ incident is defined as a situation in which a police officer uses any restraint tactics such as handcuffing, equipment such as a baton or a less lethal weapons such as TASER®. For a full list of tactics please see the user guide.

During a stop and search, a police officer may deem it necessary to use a force tactic.

Given the partial nature of the data presented in this section, these statistics are ‘Official Statistics in development’ and any conclusions drawn should be done so with caution. In the year ending March 2024, 36 of 44 police forces provided data on whether force was used during a stop and search encounter, accounting for 82% (436,635) of the total number of stop and searches in the year ending March 2024. Figures should be interpreted with caution, as they may reflect differences in recording standards between forces, and ability to link up stop and search records with use of force records, which may be held on different systems.

Where the information was provided, force was used in 28% of stop and searches (123,432 of 436,635 searches where the information was available). The Metropolitan Police Service had the highest number searches in which force was used (50,137 out of 137,055). Suffolk Police had the highest proportion of searches in which force was used (53%), followed by Warwickshire Police (49%).

2.10 Whether clothing was removed during the stop and search – Official Statistics in development

Following the case of Child Q, a 15-year-old girl who was strip searched by police at school, we have requested additional data from police forces across England and Wales on the removal of clothing as part of a stop and search interaction. This is to better reflect the operational picture of the extent to which a More Thorough Search (MTS) or an Exposes Intimate Parts (EIP) search takes place following a standard stop and search interaction. This data was already being captured within most forces, therefore bringing this data collection under the ADR and publishing it at a national level will help improve transparency.

Given the partial nature of the data presented in this section, these statistics are ‘Official Statistics in development’ and any conclusions drawn should be done so with caution.

In the year ending March 2024, police forces have started to provide voluntary data on the level of clothing removed from an individual during a stop and search, with 4 potential options:

  1. No clothing removed.
  2. Removal of outer clothes only (jacket, outer coat, gloves).
  3. Removal of more than outer clothes.
  4. Full strip search involving exposure of intimate parts.

Due to their recording systems, the Metropolitan Police Service and South Yorkshire Police were unable to distinguish between searches in which no clothing was removed or only outer clothing was removed. For that reason, this analysis groups those 2 categories together. A full breakdown of the data can be found in the stop and search summary data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; tables SS_46 and SS_47.

29 out of 44 police forces provided this data on a voluntary basis for the year ending March 2024, accounting for 70% (372,124) of stop and searches.

Where the information was provided, 98.0% of searches (351,321) had either no clothing removed or outer clothing only removed, 0.6% of searches (2,035) involved the removal of more than outer clothes without exposing intimate parts and 1.4% of searches (5,098) were a full strip search involving the exposure of intimate parts.

Young adults were more likely have clothing removed during a stop and search than younger teenagers or older adults. People aged 25 to 29 were fully stripped in 2.0% of stop and search encounters and people aged 18 to 24 were fully stripped in 1.9% of stop and searches, compared with 1.6% for those aged 30 and over and 0.4% for those aged between 10 and 17.

The rate of being fully stripped during a stop and search (1.4% of stop and searches) did not differ between males and females, however males had a higher likelihood of having more than outer clothing removed (0.6% of stop and searches, compared with 0.3% for females).

The following analysis is based on a combination of self-defined ethnicity and officer-observed ethnicity if the former was ‘not stated’. Black or black British people had the highest rate of being fully stripped in a stop and search (1.8% of stop and searches), compared with 1.6% for Asian or Asian British people, 1.5% for people of mixed or other ethnicity and 1.2% for white people.

2.11 Whether body worn video was used during the stop and search – Official Statistics in development

Given the partial nature of the data presented in this section, these statistics are ‘Official Statistics in development’ and any conclusions drawn should be done so with caution.

In the year ending March 2024, police forces have started to provide voluntary data on whether the officer conducting a stop and search used their body worn video.

33 out of 44 police forces provided this data for the year ending March 2024, accounting for 73.7% (394,538) of stop and searches.

Where the information was provided, 96.3% of stop and searches (374,139) involved the use of a body worn video device.

2.12 Stop and search data quality

Since the year ending March 2021, under the Home Office Annual Data Requirement (ADR), police forces have supplied stop and search data in an incident-level format, increasing the opportunities for analysis. Though the format of the collection has changed, it is not expected to have any meaningful effect on the trends in stop and search at the national level.

As part of this data collection, police forces were supplied with reports to highlight potential issues with the data they supplied, including:

  • duplicate records
  • records with unusual age values
  • incorrect date or time data
  • any unusual changes in stop and search volumes

After reviewing these issues, some police forces submitted revised data sets. Home Office analysts will continue to work with police forces to improve the quality of the stop and search data they provide under the ADR.

Although the ethnicity analysis in this commentary focusses only on aggregated ethnic groups (white, black, Asian, mixed or other), the accompanying open data breaks data down into the 19+1 self-defined ethnicity groups (such as, white British, white Irish, other white).

Data presented here has been provided to the Home Office by 43 territorial police forces in England and Wales and the British Transport Police (BTP). Since the year ending March 2010, BTP have been providing data to the Home Office. Data on total searches before this period is therefore not directly comparable with more recent years. However, as BTP typically only makes up just over 1.5% of all stop and searches each year, not including them only has a marginal effect on the longer-term time series.

The figures presented are correct at the time of publication and may include revisions submitted by forces for previous years.

For some years, certain forces were not able to provide all the requested breakdowns of the data; for example, the reason for some stop and searches or the ethnicity of the person searched may not have been provided for all cases. Such cases have been outlined in the relevant table notes. To make sure data is comparable over time, some forces may not be included in annual comparisons. These cases have been highlighted.

The user guide provides further information on the quality assurance checks on the data, as well as details relating to definitions, legislation and procedure around stop and search.

Since April 2021, the Home Office has also collected data on reason for arrest. The aim of collecting this data is to understand how effectively the police are using stop and search powers, for example if the reason for arrest is aligned with the reason for search it would be implied that this was a successful search. Data quality checks showed that some forces will by default provide the same reason for arrest as for reason for search, or they record all reasons for arrest as other. For the first time this data has been presented in the summary tables as Official Statistics in development to denote that there are known data quality issues.

Information on person identification is also collected from police forces on a voluntary basis. A person ID should relate to a unique individual. The purpose of collecting this data is to understand the extent to which people are repeatedly stopped and searched. However, analysis of this data has shown that for a large proportion of records, person_ID is either missing or has not been recorded correctly (for example, it is clear from demographic information that the same person ID has been used for different individuals). There are operational difficulties with recording this data as when an individual is stopped and searched they are not required to provide personal information.

Similarly, good quality data for self-defined ethnicity is reliant on the individual who is stopped and searched to provide this information, which they are not required to tell the police officer. As stated earlier in this chapter, 20% of stop and search records (not including vehicle-only searches) are missing ethnicity data. To help close this gap we have used officer-observed ethnicity where self-defined ethnicity is not stated.

Future data collection

Given recent high-profile cases in the media on strip searches following a stop and search, the Home Office has plans to expand on the information collected on the nature of a stop and search. For the first time, in the year ending March 2024, data has been collected (on a voluntary basis) on the specific amount of clothing removed from people being stopped and searched (see section 2.10. The Home Office is seeking to collect additional information on this topic in the year ending March 2025, including whether an appropriate adult was present during a full strip search, the location of the strip search and whether a supervisor was consulted prior to the strip search.

Note that new data requirements are usually introduced on a voluntary basis in the first year to allow police forces to update their systems and embed recording practices.

Quarterly figures for stop and searches conducted in Great Britain under the Terrorism Act 2000 appear in the Home Office series Operation of police powers under the Terrorism Act 2000.

Users should note that there is some minor variation in the figures reported between this statistical release and those in the Operation of Police Powers under the Terrorism Act (TACT) statistical release for the Metropolitan Police Service’s use of section 43 powers. Differences between the 2 sources can in part be explained by the difference in the date of data extraction and updates made to records following each release, with those reported in the TACT release superseding those reported in the police powers and procedures release.

During data quality checks for the year ending March 2023 police powers and procedures publication, analysts from the Home Office and the MPS identified that a small number of searches had been incorrectly recorded under section 47a legislation. As agreed with the MPS, these searches were reclassified as section 43 searches for the police powers and procedures publication. However, following publication, the MPS further reclassified some of these searches under a different search type and these were subsequently revised in the TACT publication.

Analysts from the 2 Home Office teams and analysts from the MPS are working together to ensure the 2 releases are better aligned and will revise figures in future releases. The slight discrepancy in the number of section 43 searches has negligible impact on the trends reported in this publication.

MOJ publishes a biennial Race and the criminal justice system series that includes data supplied by the Home Office on stop and search. The latest publication was released in December 2021.

The Metropolitan Police Service publishes monthly reports and a dashboard on the use of stop and search by the force. Other forces may publish similar reports.

The Home Office also publishes annual figures on police use of force incidents in England and Wales.

Stakeholder engagement and additional analysis in this release

For the first time in the year ending March 2021, the Home Office collected incident-level data on stop and search from police forces. This means that each row of data relates to a single incident of stop and search. This publication contains data from the fourth year of the incident-level data collection.

The improved method of data collection, as well as the additional data collected, allows for more in-depth analysis of stop and search in England and Wales than was previously possible. More information on the change to the data collection is available in the year ending March 2021 release.

Due to the improved collection, and in response to the Commission for Race and Ethnic Disparities report, Home Office officials have worked with force representatives, stakeholders, and users of this publication to understand what more could be done to improve this release, which has led to additional analysis. Home Office analysts have worked closely with the Race Disparity Unit to ensure it meets the Inclusive Britain actions (14 and 15) in which the Home Office has committed to improving the use of its stop and search data. Examples of this include the ‘hotspot’ analysis and the stop and search rates by police force area by ethnicity (see Annex A.1).

To improve the user experience and address these actions, analysts have also developed a disparity time series for stop and search and arrests data. This allows even those users with little experience in Microsoft Excel to explore the data and review how the rate of search of different ethnic groups has changed in each Police Force Area over time. This publication also includes outcomes analysis by ethnicity, reason for arrest tables and weapons found by reason for search tables.

Moreover, analysts have developed a stop and search data tool to query the open data tables. This allows users with beginner Microsoft Excel skills to produce customised data tables more easily.

Findings from an engagement survey conducted in Spring 2022 showed that most people who accessed the statistics had an interest in policing in their local area.

Data on stop and searches at Community Safety Partnership level were therefore published for the first time in the year ending March 2022 release and are again included as part of this release. This data can be found in the stop and search summary data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table SS_50.

In line with the Code of Practice for Statistics and as part of our commitment to continuous development and improving the statistics, we invite users to provide feedback on the statistics and analysis within this bulletin and associated data tables. Users can contact Home Office statisticians at [email protected]

3.1 Introduction to arrests

This section includes data on the police power of arrest[footnote 9]. In line with police recorded crime statistics, the arrest collection covers only arrests for notifiable offences[footnote 10] carried out by police in England and Wales. Further, in this collection, an arrest is counted for each separate occasion a person is arrested, provided that the offences are not linked. If the arrest is connected, or if a person has been arrested for one or more notifiable offences at the same time, only one arrest is counted and the offence with the highest maximum penalty should be recorded. Therefore, it does not provide a measure of all arrests made by the police.

The Home Office requests data from the 43 territorial police forces in England and Wales on arrests made during the financial year. The Home Office does not receive data on arrests from the British Transport Police (BTP).

Figures on arrests reported to the Home Office reflect police activity and do not indicate total levels of crime committed by offenders. For example, the number of arrests for drug offences is greatly dependent on police activities and priorities and does not give a reliable indication of trends in the level of drug offending. Data on crime in England and Wales is available here: Crime and justice - Office for National Statistics. Additionally, not all suspects of crime are arrested and are instead invited to voluntarily attend an interview. Latest data on voluntary interviews cover the period to March 2023, and are available here: Other PACE powers, year ending March 2023 (second edition). Data on voluntary attendance for the year ending March 2024 is scheduled for publication in January or February 2025.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) amended the offence groups for the police recorded crime series in the year ending March 2013. Since the publication of ‘Police powers and procedures’ in October 2016, arrests data collected by the Home Office on the reason for arrest is in line with the ONS crime groups. For this reason, data from year ending March 2016 on the reason for arrest is not directly comparable with earlier years.

In this chapter, figures are presented to nearest whole numbers, except figures less than one and disparity rates, which are presented to one decimal place.

Further detail on data quality and interpreting figures can be found in section 3.9.

3.2 Main results - Arrests

In the year ending March 2024, 720,506 arrests were made in England and Wales. This was an increase of 8% compared with the year ending March 2023 (in which there were 669,598 arrests), and the highest number of arrests since the year ending March 2017.

The increase was greater in females (12%) than males (7%). This was true across every offence group.

The increase was also predominantly seen only in adults aged 21 or over. Arrests of people aged 21 or over increased by 9%, compared to a less than 1% increase in both the 10 to 17 and the 18 to 20 age groups. This is in line with the longer-term shift towards an older age profile of people arrested.

The number of arrests increased in 9 out of the 10 offence groups. The groups which had the largest percentage increases were theft (14%), sexual offences (11%), and violence against the person (10%).

Of the 43 forces in England and Wales, 31 carried out more arrests in the year ending March 2024 than the year ending March 2023, while 11 forces carried out fewer (Cleveland reported the same number of arrests in both years). As with previous years, the Metropolitan Police had the greatest number of arrests (96,426 or 13.4%). However the Metropolitan Police did not follow the general trend of England and Wales, and their number of arrests fell by 3% since the year ending March 2023. The number and proportion of arrests accounted for by the Metropolitan Police has been decreasing over the last 8 years.

3.3 Trends in the number of arrests

In the year ending March 2024 there were 720,506 arrests carried out by territorial police forces in England and Wales. This was an increase of 8% from the 669,598 arrests in the year ending March 2023, and is the highest number of arrests since the year ending March 2017.

In the decade between the years ending March 2008 and March 2018 the number of arrests halved (from 1,475,266 to 693,681). Following this period the number of arrests declined at a much slower rate each year until the year ending March 2021, the year of the COVID-19 pandemic, when there was a larger decrease of 5%. Since then, there have been slight increases in the volume of arrests, until this latest year ending March 2024 where there was a larger increase of 8% (figure 3.1).

In the year ending March 2024, 84.1% of people arrested were male, the lowest proportion since year ending March 2011. Previously the proportion of people arrested who were male varied between 82.9% in the year ending March 2008 and 85.4% in the year ending March 2019.

Figure 3.1: Number of arrests, by sex, year ending March 2007 to year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Source: Arrests summary data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table A.01, Home Office

Notes:

  1. In the years ending March 2021 onwards ‘other’ and ‘unknown’ sex were also collected, however these make up just 3,306 arrests (0.5% of total arrests) in the year ending March 2024.

In contrast to the increase in arrests in the latest year, police recorded crime has fallen by 1% in the year ending March 2024.

As presented in the ‘Crime outcomes for England and Wales’ statistical bulletin, the proportion of crimes resulting in a charge or summons has been decreasing, and the proportion of crimes where the victim does not support further police action has been increasing. Therefore, trends in arrests (that is, crimes where a suspect is identified) may not follow trends in crime. This provides important context for the data presented in this chapter. Additionally, longer-term trends in police recorded crime data may be impacted by levels of reporting to the police and changes in police recording practices. We have therefore not drawn comparisons between longer-term crime and arrests trends in this bulletin.

3.4 Arrests by offence group

Offence data is collected in 10 broader categories:

  • criminal damage and arson
  • drug offences
  • fraud offences
  • miscellaneous crimes against society
  • possession of weapons offences
  • public order offences
  • robbery
  • sexual offences
  • theft offences
  • violence against the person

A breakdown of the offences included in each category are listed within the Home Office counting rules notifiable offences list

Almost half of all arrests made by police in England and Wales were connected with violence against the person offences (47%). The next most common offence group was theft, which was 14% of all arrests (figure 3.2). The proportion of arrests in each offence group has changed compared to 8 years ago (when the offence groupings changed), with the proportion of arrests for violence against the person offences now accounting for a greater proportion of all arrests (47%) compared with 35%, 8 years ago. Conversely, theft offences account for a smaller proportion of all arrests (14%), down from 22%, 8 years ago, although this proportion has been rising again in the last few years as the number of arrests for theft offences has increased.

Figure 3.2: Proportion of arrests in each offence group, year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Source: Arrests summary data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table A.02, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Other reasons for arrest include criminal damage and arson (6%), sexual offences (6%), miscellaneous crimes against society (5%), possession of weapons offences (3%), robbery (2%) and fraud offences (0.7%). A full breakdown of reasons for arrests is in table 3.1.

A comparison of the arrests series to the recorded crime series shows a difference in the distribution of offence groupings. For example, violence against the person offences made up a higher proportion of arrests (47%) than the 30% they accounted for in police recorded crime in the year ending March 2024[footnote 11]. Over one-quarter (27%) of all police recorded crime were theft offences, but made up only 14% of all arrests. Another notable difference was fraud, which made up just 1% of all arrests but 19% of all recorded crime (figure 3.3 below).

Direct comparisons between the 2 series should be made with caution since arrests relate to persons (suspects) and recorded crime relates to offences. For example, one offence may be committed by multiple offenders and therefore may generate several arrests. Conversely an offender may be arrested for committing 2 or more recorded crimes (such as shoplifting and possession of drugs) but only one arrest will be recorded. In addition, some offences can be resolved without the use of an arrest, for example, through the issuing of a fixed penalty notice or cannabis warning. Finally, some crimes take longer to investigate than others and therefore some arrests reported in this year’s collection may relate to crimes recorded in a previous year.

Figure 3.3: Offence group breakdowns of persons arrested and police recorded crime, year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Source: Arrests summary data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table A.02, Home Office and ONS Crime Statistics

In the year ending March 2024, all offence groups showed an increase in arrests apart from drug offences (table 3.1).

Of the overall increase of 50,908 arrests in the year ending March 2024, over half (29,556, or 58%) were arrests for violence against the person. Arrests for this offence type increased by 10% in the latest year, from 307,154 to 336,710, and have been consistently increasing since the year ending March 2017.

There was also an increase of 12,113 arrests for theft offences. Theft offences increased by 14% (from 88,594 to 100,707), which was the largest percentage increase seen by any offence group this year. Theft offences had been decreasing up until the year ending March 2022, however have increased in each of the past 2 years.

Arrests for sexual offences increased by 11% in the latest year (from 39,928 to 44,283) and have increased by almost half (up 42%) from 31,166 arrests in the year ending March 2020. The increased volume of arrests for sexual offences in the last few years may reflect a number of factors, including the effect of high-profile incidents, media coverage, and campaigns on people’s willingness to report incidents to the police, as well as a potential increase in the number of victims. Prior to the pandemic, the number of police recorded sexual offences was well below the number of victims estimated in the Crime Survey for England and Wales.

Table 3.1: Offence group breakdowns of persons arrested in England and Wales, year ending March 2023 compared with year ending March 2024

Offence group Year ending 31 March 2023 Year ending 31 March 2024 Change (number) Change (%)
Violence against the person 307,154 336,710 29,556 10%
Theft offences 88,594 100,707 12,113 14%
Drug offences 60,011 58,275 -1,736 -3%
Public order offences 50,156 50,866 710 1%
Criminal damage and arson 43,796 44,651 855 2%
Sexual offences 39,928 44,283 4,355 11%
Miscellaneous crimes against society 36,705 39,254 2,549 7%
Possession of weapons offences 22,707 23,518 811 4%
Robbery 15,566 17,013 1,447 9%
Fraud offences 4,981 5,229 248 5%
Total 669,598 720,506 50,908 8%

Source: Arrests summary data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table A.02, Home Office

Although the overall number of arrests is similar to 6 to 7 years ago (up 4% from the year ending March 2018), changes by offence type has varied.

Arrests for theft, criminal damage and arson, miscellaneous crimes against society and fraud had decreased over the past 6 years, though each of these have seen small increases in the last year or 2 – the increases in fraud and miscellaneous crimes this year are the first increases of these arrest types in the 8 years comparable data has been collected. Fraud offences had the greatest percentage fall since the year ending March 2018 (down 44%), but as the smallest offence group it has had little impact on the overall change in arrests over time. The offence group with the largest volume decrease in arrests was theft offences, which is down 40,500 arrests in the year ending March 2024 compared to the year ending March 2018.

These decreases have been counter-balanced by increases in other offence groups, particularly violence against the person, which is up 70,084 arrests (26%) since the year ending March 2018.

Other offences such as possession of weapons and public order offences have remained more stable over time.

Figure 3.4: Number of arrests, by offence group, year ending March 2016 to year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Source: Arrests open data tables, year ending 31 March 2024, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Following a change in offence groups (in the year ending March 2016) it is believed that a number of police forces are incorrectly recording some ‘public order’ offences against ‘miscellaneous crimes against society’. Caution should therefore be exercised when comparing these offences over time and across forces.

3.5 Arrests by sex

The data collection has been set up with 4 options for the sex of the person searched: female, male, other and unknown. It is likely that recording includes a mixture of sex and gender, and ‘other’ may comprise people who define themselves as non-binary or transgender. However, only 14 of the 43 police forces recorded any arrests of people defined as ‘other’. This suggests that different recording systems used by police forces have different levels of detail to which the sex of the person arrested can be recorded. This bulletin reports on data in the format it is collected from the police, and Home Office continues to work with stakeholders to bring this data in line with Government Statistical Service sex and gender harmonisation standards.

The majority of arrests in the year ending March 2024 were of males (84.1% of arrests excluding unknowns or 603,438 arrests). This is the lowest proportion since year ending March 2011. Between the year ending March 2008 and the year ending March 2019 the proportion of people arrested who were male increased from 82.9% to 85.4%, but it has decreased again since.

In the year ending March 2024, the number of arrests of females increased by 12% (up by 12,413 from 101,349 to 113,762) compared to 7% for males (up by 37,722 from 565,716 to 603,438), and females had a larger percentage increase than males across all crime types.

The largest percentage increase for females was seen in arrests for robbery offences, (up 29% or up by 403 to 1,783). Although this was the largest proportional increase, it accounted for 3% of the overall increase seen for females (table 3.2 below).

Similarly females saw a large percentage increase in arrests for sexual offences, up 27% (or up by 237 to 1,124), accounting for 2% of the overall volume increase.

The largest volume increase in arrests for females was for violence against the person offences, up by 6,541 to 63,188 (or up by 12%), accounting for 53% of the overall volume increase.

Table 3.2: Percentage change in number of arrests between year ending March 2023 and year ending March 2024, by offence group and sex, England and Wales

Reason for arrest % change - females % change - males
Violence against the person 12% 9%
Theft offences 24% 12%
Drug offences 4% -4%
Public order offences 5% 1%
Criminal damage and arson 6% 1%
Sexual offences 27% 10%
Miscellaneous crimes against society 13% 6%
Possession of weapons offences 14% 2%
Robbery 29% 7%
Fraud offences 7% 4%
All offences 12% 7%

Source: Arrests summary data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table A.02, Home Office

The proportion of people arrested who were male (84%) was slightly lower than both the proportion of stop and searches that were of males (88%) and the proportion of stop and searches resulting in arrest that were of males (91%). However stop and search data also showed a difference in the year-on-year changes for males versus females. Overall stop and searches increased by 7% for females but decreased by 4% in males. Females showed a larger increase in stop and search across multiple reasons for search, including stolen property, going equipped, drugs and possession of weapons (table 3.3).

Table 3.3: Percentage change in number of stop and searches between year ending March 2023 and year ending March 2024, by reason for search and sex, England and Wales

Reason for search % change - females % change - males
Criminal damage -9% -2%
Drugs 3% -7%
Going equipped 17% 5%
Weapons 9% -3%
Stolen property 16% 6%
s. 43 Terrorism act 2000 -40% -39%
Other 7% -10%
All reasons 7% -4%

Source: Stop and search open data tables, year ending 31 March 2021 to year ending 31 March 2024, Home Office

Notes:

  1. For comparability purposes against the ‘possession of weapons’ arrests category, ‘weapons’ stop and searches include searches for offensive weapons and/or firearms under section 1 PACE (and associated legislation), section 60 CJPOA and s342E of the Sentencing Act 2020.
  2. The ‘other’ search category includes searches for reasons such as fireworks, drones or unmanned aircraft and searches for items related to protest related offences.

Both males and females were most commonly arrested for violence against the person offences, accounting for 45% of all male arrests and 56% of all female arrests. This was followed by arrests for theft offences (14% for males and 15% for females).

However, there were some differences in arrest patterns for males and females. For example, though making up 16% of overall arrests (113,762 arrests), females have consistently made up a very small proportion of those arrested for sexual offences (3%) and possession of weapons offences (10%), but a larger proportion of those arrested for fraud offences (24%). Figure 3.5 shows the split by sex for each offence type.

Figure 3.5: Proportion of arrests by sex and offence group, year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Source: Arrests summary data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table A.02, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Does not include arrests of people identified as ‘other’ (252 arrests) and those whose sex was recorded as unknown (3,054 arrests). The analysis presented preceding the chart does include people who identified as ‘other’.

3.6 Arrests by age

Data on arrests by age are collected using the following 5 categories:

  • aged 9 and under
  • aged 10 to 17
  • aged 18 to 20
  • aged 21 and above
  • age unknown

The legal minimum age for prosecution in England and Wales is 10 years old; the ‘age 9 and under’ category includes persons who, after further investigation, were found to be too young to be charged with an offence.

The analysis in this section excludes those whose age was unknown or those aged under 9.

The majority (84%) of all arrestees in the year ending March 2024 were aged 21 and above, slightly up from last year (83%). In comparison, 76% of the general population are aged 21 and above. Analysing the reasons for arrest showed some variation by age-group; for example, although 16% of all arrests were of persons aged 20 and under, they made up almost half (49%) of arrests for robbery offences and 28% of arrests for possession of weapons offences. The majority of fraud offences (92%) were of people aged 21 and above. Figure 3.6 shows the number of persons arrested by offence type and age-group.

Figure 3.6: Age-group of persons arrested, by offence type, year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Source: Arrests summary data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table A.03, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Does not include those whose age was unknown (0.09% or 669 arrests), or aged 9 or under (one arrest)

Whilst the number of arrests of people aged 21 and over has increased by 9% in the year ending March 2024, the arrests of people aged 10 to 17 and 18 to 20 have increased by less than 1% in each category.

These changes are in line with the long-term trend since 2007 that has seen a shift towards an older age profile. As figure 3.7 shows, arrests across all 3 age-groups showed decreases between 2007 and 2020, but these reductions were more significant for those aged 20 and under, compared with those aged 21 and over. In the year ending March 2024, the 21 and over group now comprises 84% of all arrests, compared with 61% in the year ending March 2007.

Figure 3.7: Number of arrests (indexed to 100 in the year ending March 2007) by age group, years ending March 2007 to year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Source: Arrests summary data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table A.01b, Home Office

Notes:

1.Index numbers are calculated by dividing the number of arrests in each financial year by the number of arrests in the year ending March 2007 (the base year) multiplied by 100. This shows the relative change in the number of arrests over time compared to the year ending March 2007.

3.7 Arrests by ethnicity

When an individual is arrested, they are asked to define their ethnicity (using the 2021 Census 19+1 categories). For the purpose of this analysis, these are grouped into the following Census 5+1 categories:

  • white
  • black (or black British)
  • Asian (or Asian British) - including Chinese from the year ending March 2020 onwards
  • mixed
  • other ethnic group - included Chinese for the years before March 2020
  • not stated

In November 2022, the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) changed to a new data management system, which impacted the recording of self-defined ethnicity. In the year ending March 2024, the MPS reported self-defined ethnicity as unknown for 69% of records (up from 25% in the year ending March 2023, and 4% in the year ending March 2022). In comparison, 9% of records from the rest of England and Wales were missing self-defined ethnicity data in the year ending March 2024. Since the Metropolitan Police account for the largest proportion of arrests (13%) in England and Wales, they have a large weighting on the overall proportion of missing ethnicity data, which is 17%. The Home Office is working with the Metropolitan Police to improve their recording of self-defined ethnicity data. Excluding the Metropolitan Police, recording of self-defined ethnicity has seen recent improvement and the proportion of records where this information is missing has fallen from 17% to 9% in the last 2 years.

In the year ending March 2024, where self-defined ethnicity was known, 80% defined their ethnicity as white, 7% as black and 8% as Asian. The remaining considered themselves either of mixed ethnicity (3%) or any other ethnic group (2%). The proportion of people from black or mixed ethnicity are slightly lower than reported in previous years, and the proportion belonging to the white ethnic group is 2 percentage points higher. This is likely at least in part due to the missing MPS data, since the Metropolitan Police area has a much more ethnically diverse population compared with the England and Wales average. Excluding the Metropolitan Police, the opposite pattern occurred, in that the proportion of people arrested who were from a white ethnic background (82%) was slightly lower than in the year ending March 2024 (83%) (table 3.4).

Table 3.4: Self-defined ethnicity of persons arrested, year ending March 2023 and year ending March 2024, England and Wales, excluding Metropolitan Police

Self-defined ethnicity Year ending March 2023 - Number of arrests Year ending March 2023- % excluding unknowns Year ending March 2024 - Number of arrests Year ending March 2024- % excluding unknowns
Asian (or Asian British) 34,365 6.8% 40,567 7.2%
Black (or black British) 27,772 5.5% 31,707 5.6%
Mixed 16,464 3.2% 18,465 3.3%
White 423,103 83.1% 467,482 82.4%
Other ethnic group 7,306 1.4% 9,125 1.6%
Unknown 61,419 [z] 56,734 [z]
Total 570,429 100% 624,080 100%

Source: Arrests summary data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table A.04, Home Office

Notes:

  1. [z] = not applicable.

In this release, data on the officer-observed ethnicity (ethnicity as perceived by the arresting officer) of people arrested has been published by the Home Office for the first time.

Officer-observed ethnicity is recorded by police using the following ONS categories:

  • white
  • black
  • Asian
  • other
  • unknown

A disadvantage of officer-observed ethnicity data is that it doesn’t include a ‘mixed’ ethnicity group. People of mixed ethnicity are reported under different ethnicity groups, such as black or Asian.

The MPS’s officer-observed ethnicity data has a higher completion rate than their self-defined ethnicity data, with missing information in just 13% of their arrest records in the year ending March 2024. Overall in England and Wales, only 4% of officer-observed ethnicity data was missing.

Where officer-observed ethnicity was recorded, 79% of people arrested were of white officer-observed ethnicity, 11% were black, 9% were Asian, and 1% were recorded as other ethnicity (table 3.5).

Table 3.5: Officer-observed ethnicity of persons arrested, year ending March 2023 and year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Officer-observed ethnicity Year ending March 2023 - Number of arrests Year ending March 2023 - % excluding unknowns Year ending March 2024 - Number of arrests Year ending March 2024 - % excluding unknowns
Asian 54,847 8% 59,296 9%
Black 75,818 12% 77,284 11%
Other 10,764 2% 10,371 1%
White 510,820 78% 547,033 79%
Unknown 17,349 [z] 26,522 [z]
Total 669,598 100% 720,506 100%

Source: Arrests summary data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table A.08b, Home Office

Notes:

  1. [z] = not applicable.

The following analysis considers the ethnicity of those arrested relative to the resident population as a whole, by calculating arrest rates for each ethnic group. Population data is based on the 2021 census. The relative ratios presented in this section give an indication of the difference in arrest rates for people from black, Asian, mixed and other ethnic backgrounds compared with those who identify as white. A rate of more than one means that that ethnic group is arrested at a higher rate than the white group, whereas a rate of less than one means they are arrested at a lower rate than the white group.

Persons who identified as black or black British were arrested at a rate 1.7 times higher than those who identified themselves as white. This is lower than in previous years (2.2 in the year ending March 2023, and 2.4 in the year ending March 2022), however this is likely due to the changes in the MPS’s ethnicity reporting, as well as the MPS making up a smaller proportion of overall arrests this year, since the disparity rate for England and Wales excluding the MPS is has remained at 2.4 in each of the last 2 years.

Similarly, the disparity rates for the mixed and Asian groups have also decreased slightly at an England and Wales level (1.2 down from 1.3 for the mixed ethnicity group, and 0.8 down from 0.9 for the Asian group), though these rates have remained stable when analysing the data excluding the MPS (1.4 and 1.0 respectively) (table 3.6).

People of other ethnicity were arrested at a rate of 0.9 that of white people, the same as last year.

Table 3.6: Disparity rates (compared with the white ethnic group) by self-defined ethnicity, year ending March 2023 and year ending March 2024, England and Wales (E&W), including and excluding the Metropolitan Police

Self-defined ethnicity Year ending March 2023 - disparity rate, all E&W Year ending March 2024 - disparity rate, all E&W Year ending March 2023 - disparity rate, E&W excl. MPS Year ending March 2024 – disparity rate, E&W excl. MPS
Asian (or Asian British) 0.9 0.8 1.0 1.0
Black (or black British) 2.2 1.7 2.4 2.4
Mixed 1.3 1.2 1.4 1.4
Other 0.9 0.9 1.1 1.2

Source: Arrests summary data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table A.04, Home Office

3.8 Arrests by police force area (PFA)

Of the 43 forces in England and Wales, 31 showed an increase in the number of arrests in the year ending March 2024 compared with the year ending March 2023, while 11 forces showed a decrease. Cleveland reported the same number of arrests as the previous year.

As with previous years, the Metropolitan Police had the greatest number of arrests (96,426). However, this was down 3% from 99,169 in the year ending March 2023. The number and proportion of arrests accounted for by the Metropolitan Police have been decreasing in recent years – in the year ending March 2024, 13.4% of arrests in England and Wales were carried out by MPS, compared to 21.6% 8 years ago in the year ending March 2016.

In comparison, MPS made up 17% of police recorded crime in the year ending March 2024 (excluding fraud).

Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, Thames Valley and West Midlands Police each also made up between 5 and 7% of total arrests, whereas most forces account for less than 3%.

The proportion of arrests made up by Greater Manchester Police was decreasing up until the year ending March 2020, when it made up 3.2% of arrests, but in the 4 years since then this proportion has more than doubled to 6.6% in the year ending March 2024.

In the following section, arrest rate per force population has been calculated using the mid-2023 population estimates for England and Wales supplied by the Office for National Statistics, which are based on the results of the 2021 census.

The number of arrests expressed per 1,000 people of the population in England and Wales[footnote 12] was 12 in the year ending March 2024. This varied by PFA[footnote 13] with the highest rate in Cleveland (20 per 1,000). The lowest arrest rates, at 7 arrests per 1,000 members of the population, were found in the Warwickshire and Dorset PFAs. In comparison, there were 90 police recorded crimes (not including fraud) per 1,000 population[footnote 14] in England and Wales in the year ending March 2024.

Differences in the proportion of arrestees from ethnic minority backgrounds (not including white minorities) in some PFAs are likely to, in part, reflect the differing resident and day-time populations in those areas. For example, the proportion of those arrested who identified as black, Asian, mixed or other ethnic background ranged from 3% in Dyfed-Powys to 58% in the Metropolitan Police Service area (excluding unknowns). Population data from the 2021 Census shows that in Dyfed-Powys the combined population of black, Asian, mixed and other ethnic groups was 3%, whereas in the Metropolitan Police area it was 46%. However, comparisons in arrest rates between areas should be made with caution because population breakdowns are based on residents of a particular area (such as they do not include visitors).

Figure 3.8: Number of persons arrested per 1,000 population, by Police Force Area, year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Source: Arrests summary data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table A.05, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Calculated using mid-2023 population estimates for England and Wales supplied by the Office for National Statistics, which are based on the results of the 2021 census.
  2. City of London rates not shown due to the small resident population of the area relative to the transient or visiting population. City of London figures have been included in the England and Wales total.

3.9 Arrests data quality and interpreting figures

The figures presented are correct at the time of publication and include revisions submitted by forces for the previous years.

Revisions

Devon and Cornwall were not able to supply data for the year ending March 2023 bulletin due to a transition to a new data management system, therefore their data was estimated. However, following the completion of the transition, they have been able to supply data retrospectively for that year, therefore their data for the year ending March 2023 in this publication is their actual data. Their number of arrests for that year has been revised down from 14,619 to 14,174.

Avon and Somerset Police changed their methodology in the latest year, as they were previously counting some arrests under multiple offence groups, which may have resulted in an overestimate for their arrests figures. They also revised their year ending March 2023 data, resulting in a decrease of 3,348 arrests.

Leicestershire Police were previously not able to identify all notifiable offences. They have changed their reporting process this year, and revised their year ending March 2023 data (an increase of 2,481 arrests).

Gwent and West Midlands police forces identified errors in their year ending March 2023 data, and revised their data up by 1,608 arrests and 724 arrests respectively.

Estimated data

The Home Office requests data from the 43 territorial police forces in England and Wales on arrests made during the financial year. Lancashire Constabulary were not able to provide data between the years ending March 2017 to March 2019, due to a migration to a new record management system. Therefore, to ensure comparability with previous years, Lancashire’s data has been estimated for each of these years. The estimates have been calculated by inflating their data from the previous financial year in line with the overall percentage change for England and Wales. Proportions of category breakdowns have been kept the same between years.

Methodology

Where a person has been arrested for one or more notifiable offence on the same occasion, forces are asked to record the arrest against the offence with the highest maximum penalty (the primary arrest). Some police forces use alternative methods to select the primary arrest, for example the offence flagged as the “main” offence on the arrest record, or the offence with the highest Crime Harm Index.

Kent, North Yorkshire, North Wales, and Devon and Cornwall police forces have only been able to identify primary arrests since the following dates:

  • Kent – November 2018
  • North Yorkshire – April 2020
  • North Wales – April 2020
  • Devon and Cornwall – April 2022

Prior to these dates they counted every offence as a separate arrest.

In the year ending March 2024, Derbyshire changed from using the offence with the highest Crime Harm Index to using the ‘primary offence’ flagged on the arrest record. Therefore, their offence breakdown may not be fully comparable to previous years. In this collection, an arrest is counted for each occasion a person is arrested, provided that the arrest is for an offence which is not related to an offence for which the person has already been subject to arrest during the same year. However, some forces are not able to link separate arrests for connected offences if a new arrest record was created for the second arrest. Therefore, there may be some instances in the dataset where arrests for connected offences may be counted more than once.

The Home Office does not collect data on outcome following arrest.

3.10 Other sources for data related to arrests

The Home Office also publishes official statistics in development on people detained in police custody and voluntary attendance of police interview in custody as part of the annual Police powers and procedures: Other PACE powers bulletin. The most recently published data is for the year ending March 2023.

While some ethnic breakdowns are provided in this bulletin, a more comprehensive overview of the criminal justice system is published by the Ministry of Justice (MOJ), as part of the Statistics on ethnicity and the Criminal Justice System series, which was last published in March 2024.

MOJ also publishes statistics every 2 years on the representation of females and males as victims, suspects, offenders and employees in the criminal justice system. Its latest statistics can be found in statistics on Women and the Criminal Justice System 2021, and includes arrest figures for the financial year ending March 2022.

The Youth Justice Board’s series on Youth justice statistics looks at the flow of young people through the youth justice system. The latest edition was released in January 2024 and includes arrests data for the financial year ending March 2023.

Data on individuals given an out of court disposal or proceeded against at court is published in MOJ’s Criminal justice statistics quarterly.

Crime statistics, including police recorded crime figures, are published by ONS on a quarterly basis.

4.1 Detentions under the Mental Health Act 1983 - introduction and main findings

Statistics in this chapter covering section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983 are designated as Accredited Official Statistics (National Statistics).

Statistics covering section 135 of the Mental Health Act 1983 are designated as Official Statistics in Development (previously Experimental Statistics).

Police forces in England and Wales regularly interact with people experiencing mental ill health. Sometimes these interactions may result in the need to remove a person and take them to a place of safety, under sections 135 and 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983.

In the year ending March 2024:

  • there were 31,213 detentions under section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983; this was a 10% decrease compared with the previous year (Devon and Cornwall were not able to provide data in either year)
  • where the details were known, 52% were detentions of males, 95% of cases were adults aged 18 or over and 86% were detentions of people from the white ethnic group
  • where the details were known, the person being detained was taken to a health-based place of safety in 52% of cases. 46% of detainees were taken to Accident and Emergency (A&E) as a place of safety, and 1% (322 people) were taken to a police station

4.2 Detentions under section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983

Under section 136 of the Mental Health Act a police officer may remove a person from any public place, other than a private dwelling, to a place of safety if, in the officer’s judgement, that person appears to be suffering from a mental disorder and needs immediate care or control, in the interests of their safety or that of others to be assessed by an approved mental health professional and an approved s12 doctor[footnote 15]. The maximum period for which a person can be detained at a place of safety under sections 135 or 136 is usually up to 24 hours, with the possibility of this period being extended by a further 12 hours if a person could not be assessed for clinical reasons.

In December 2022, chief constables for England and Wales voted to adopt the Right Care, Right Person (RCRP) approach. RCRP was an initiative developed by Humberside Constabulary. RCRP provides that when the police receive a call seeking the deployment of police resource, which concerns mental health or some other types of health and social care issues, officers will be deployed if (in line with the police’s legal duties) a crime has been or might be committed, or to protect people from a real and immediate risk to life or serious harm. The approach is designed to ensure that people of all ages, who have health and/or social care needs, are responded to by the right person, with the right skills, training, and experience to best meet those needs. The approach does not overwrite the independence of chief constables and their discretion to deploy in response to other types of call. This approach has started to be implemented by police forces in England and Wales.

4.2.1 Data Collected

Following concerns about the quality and transparency of police data in this area, at the Policing and Mental Health Summit in October 2014 the then Home Secretary announced that the Home Office would work with the police to develop a new data collection covering the volume and characteristics of detentions under the Mental Health Act 1983.

A data collection was developed which requests forces to provide information on the age, sex and ethnicity of people detained, as well as the place of safety used (including, where applicable, the reason for using police custody), and the method of transportation used (including, where applicable, the reason for using a police vehicle).

In this report, we refer to the sex of people detained. We are reporting the data in the format it is collected and we are working to bring this data in line with Government Statistical Service sex and gender harmonisation standards.

In the year ending March 2024, following consultation with stakeholders, some changes were made to the data collection. These changes only apply to the section 136 collection, apart from the change of ‘Ambulance not available within 30 minutes’ to ‘Ambulance not available within agreed timeframe’ which also applies to section 135. For a full list of changes to the data collection see the user guide.

One of the changes included amending the guidance for how A&E as a place of safety should be recorded. Previously, if the individual was taken to A&E for treatment of physical injuries, we asked the force to record the place of safety they were taken to following A&E. However, under legislation, A&E can be a place of safety if that is determined to be the most appropriate place of safety, for example if a person has self-harmed but also needs a mental health assessment. Under the previous ADR guidance, the extent to which A&E was being used as a place of safety was therefore largely unknown. Current guidance advises that if someone is initially taken to A&E for treatment of physical injuries, A&E should be recorded as the place of safety. As a result of this, place of safety data for the year ending March 2024 is not comparable with previous years.

A new requirement was also added to the collection to break the ‘Reason police custody used as a place of safety’ data down by age group (‘over 18’ and ‘17 or under’). However, the age breakdown has not been presented in this bulletin since police custody was not used as a place of safety for a child aged 17 or under in the year ending March 2024.

This section summarises the findings on detentions under section 136 from police forces in England and Wales, as well as the British Transport Police, for the year ending March 2024.

Prior to the year ending March 2017, data on the total number of section 136 detentions was collected and published by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC).

Devon and Cornwall were not able to supply data for the year ending March 2023 or year ending March 2024, due to a change in record management system. Devon and Cornwall accounted for 3% of section 136 detentions in the year ending March 2022.

In this chapter, figures are presented to nearest whole numbers.

4.2.2 Detentions under section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983

In the year ending March 2024 there were 31,213 detentions under section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983.

This was a decrease of 10% compared with the year ending March 2023. Detentions under section 136 had been increasing between the year ending March 2017 and March 2022 (except for a slight decrease during the year of the pandemic ending March 2021), however started to fall in the year ending March 2023[footnote 16].

Excluding cases where the person’s sex was unknown or other (1%), 52% were male detainees.

The majority of cases (95%) involved adults aged 18 or over (excluding those cases where the age of the person being detained was unknown).

Both self-defined ethnicity and officer-observed ethnicity (ethnicity as perceived by the police officer) are collected as part of the Annual Data Requirement (ADR). However, due to the nature and circumstances of a detention under the Mental Health Act it may not be appropriate for an officer to ask for a person’s self-defined ethnicity, therefore some police forces only collect data on officer-observed ethnicity.

Self-defined ethnicity was reported in 51% of cases. Where self-defined ethnicity was known:

  • 86% were white
  • 5% were black or black British
  • 6% were Asian or Asian British
  • 2% were of mixed ethnicity
  • the remaining 0.8% of people detained were of another ethnic group

Substituting in officer-observed ethnicity where the self-defined ethnicity is unknown increases the ethnicity completion to 86% (officer-observed data has also been substituted in for the MPS since self-defined ethnicity was only known for 1% of their cases).

Using this combined measure:

  • 83% were white
  • 8% were black
  • 6% were Asian
  • 1% were mixed or multiple ethnicities
  • 1% were of other ethnicities

Figure 4.1 Ethnicity of people detained under section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983, year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Source: Detentions under the Mental Health Act (1983) data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; tables MHA_03a and MHA_03b, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Uses officer-observed ethnicity (ethnicity as judged by officer) where self-defined ethnicity was unknown
  2. Does not include 4,292 cases (14%) where neither self-defined ethnicity nor officer-observed ethnicity was known.

4.2.3 Method of transport to a place of safety

Some forces were not able to distinguish the method of transport used to transport a person to a place of safety, and 6% of cases are recorded as “not known”. Excluding these “not known” cases, a police vehicle was used in over half (55%) of cases. Between the year ending March 2017 and year ending March 2022, the proportion of individuals transported in a police vehicle varied between 51% and 54% (excluding the year of the COVID-19 pandemic ending March 2021). In the year ending March 2023, this proportion increased to 61%, but it has now decreased again to a similar level seen in previous years[footnote 17].

An ambulance was used in a further 40% (11,730) of cases. Similar to police vehicle transport, ambulance transport did not follow same trend in the year ending March 2023 as previously, but has now returned to close to previous years. The proportion of cases where an ambulance was used varied from 41 to 45% between the years ending March 2017 and March 2022 (except during the COVID-19 pandemic), but decreased to 35% in the year ending March 2023.

The remaining 5% were transported in an ‘other health vehicle’ or were already at the place of safety. The most common method of transport used varied greatly by Police Force Area. For example, a police vehicle was used in 7% of detentions in West Midlands, but for over 90% of detentions for Dyfed-Powys, Gwent, and South Wales.

In the case where a police vehicle was used to transport the person to a place of safety, police forces are requested to give a reason why. In the 16,159 cases where a police vehicle was used, the reason why was not known in 1,665 cases (10%). Of those cases where the reason for using a police vehicle was recorded, 40% were because an ambulance was not available in the agreed timeframe. In a further 30% of cases, a risk assessment concluded the person being detained should be transported in a police vehicle due to their behaviour. There were also 3,982 cases (27%) where an ambulance was not requested. This might be for example because the individual was close by to the place of safety, so a police vehicle was used to save time and because the journey was short. The remaining cases (2%) were for other reasons including where an ambulance was no longer available due to a higher priority call and when an ambulance crew refused to convey.

Figure 4.2 Reasons for using a police vehicle to transport a detainee to a place of safety, year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Source: Detentions under the Mental Health Act (1983) data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table MHA_04b, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Does not include cases (1,665) where the reason for using a police vehicle was not known.
  2. Other includes cases where an ambulance was no longer available due to a higher priority call and when an ambulance crew refused to convey.

4.2.4 Place of safety

Following a detention under section 136 of the Mental Health Act, a place of safety was recorded in 90% of cases. Of the cases where the place of safety was known, 52% of detainees were taken to a health-based place of safety (HBPoS). The second most common place of safety people were taken to was Accident and Emergency, which made up 46% of cases in the year ending March 2024.

Between the year ending March 2017 and the year ending March 2023, the proportion of people taken to a Health Based Place of Safety decreased from 86% to 58%, whereas the proportion taken to A&E increased from 8% to 39%.

Figure 4.3: Proportion of people detained under section 136 of the Mental Health Act (1983) who were taken to a Health Based Place of Safety, year ending March 2017 to year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Source: Detentions under the Mental Health Act (1983) data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table MHA.08

Notes:

  1. Excludes unknowns.
  2. In some years data was not received by all forces. Additionally, some forces have reported improvements to recording practices over time. Therefore, changes over time should be interpreted with caution.
  3. For the year ending March 2024 collection, guidance around the recording of “A&E” as a place of safety was changed. Therefore, the data for this year is not fully comparable to previous years.

322 people (1%) were taken to a police station after being detained under section 136. Excluding 45 cases where the reason was not known, in the majority of cases (80%) section 136 was used on a person already in custody (for example, after an arrest) and the conditions in the regulations were met for police custody to be used as a place of safety[footnote 18]. In a further 8% of cases, section 136 was used on someone not in custody, but the conditions in regulations were met for them to be conveyed into custody.

In the remaining 34 cases, conditions in the regulations were not met, however police custody was used as a place of safety because there was not a more appropriate place of safety available. In 26 of these cases (9% of overall cases where police custody was used) the individual was already in custody, and in 8 cases (3% of overall cases) they were conveyed into custody[footnote 19].

Figure 4.4 Reasons for the detainee being taken to a police station, year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Source: Detentions under the Mental Health Act (1983) data tables, year ending 31 March 2024; table MHA_05b, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Does not include those cases where the reason for using a police station was not known.

The Policing and Crime Act 2017 aimed to improve outcomes for people in mental health crisis, was introduced on 11 December 2017. The Act bans the use of police cells for those aged 17 and under in mental health crisis and makes sure that they can only be used as a place of safety for adults in genuinely exceptional circumstances. Where age and place of safety were reported, there were no cases where an individual aged 17 and under was taken to police custody as a place of safety in the year ending March 2024.

4.2.5 Other data sources

As part of its annual Mental Health Bulletin, NHS Digital (formerly the Health and Social Care Information Centre) publishes data on inpatients detained in hospitals in England under the Mental Health Act 1983. Although these numbers will include some cases where the police initially detained the individual, they will also include a large number of other cases where the police were not involved.

Data on the number of occasions where a HBPoS was used can differ between the NHS Digital data and the NPCC data, due to the different data sources used.

4.3 Detentions under section 135 of the Mental Health Act 1983

Under section 135 a magistrate may issue a warrant, on application by a mental health professional, authorising a police officer to enter specific premises in respect of a mentally disordered person, believed to be in need of care or control, and to remove that person from those premises if necessary. Incidents are only recorded by the police under section 135 if an officer enters a private premise under the warrant (including by force if necessary) and/or removes the person from the premises to a place of safety in accordance with the terms of the warrant.

Either or both of these powers must be used by an officer for it to be counted as a section 135 detention for the purposes of this data collection. Therefore, incidents where an officer attends a private premise in response to ad-hoc requests for assistance or other reasons but does not carry out either part of a section 135 warrant, are not recorded in this data set.

Data analysis on detentions under section 135 of the Act is based on data received from 34 out of 43 police forces[footnote 20] for the year ending March 2023. British Transport Police do not use section 135 legislation.

Due to the provisional and incomplete nature of this dataset, these statistics have been designated as Official Statistics in Development. Therefore, data in this chapter gives an indication only, and should be treated with caution.

In this report, we refer to the sex of people detained. We are reporting the data in the format it is collected and we are working to bring this data in line with Government Statistical Service sex and gender harmonisation standards.

4.3.1 Main findings

In the year ending March 2024, there were 3,086 detentions under section 135 of the Mental Health Act. Comparing forces that provided data in both years[footnote 21] this was a 5% increase from the year ending March 2023.

Excluding cases where the sex of the person was unknown or other (2.2%), 58% were male detainees.

The vast majority (over 99%) of cases were detentions of adults aged 18 or over (not including those cases where the age of the person being detained was not recorded).

Self-defined ethnicity was known in around a quarter (26%) of detentions. This is a lower proportion than for section 136 since the Metropolitan Police only collect officer-observed ethnicity and they account for a greater proportion of section 135 detentions (52%) than section 136 detentions (14%).

Substituting officer-observed ethnicity where self-defined ethnicity was not available (and for the Metropolitan Police who recorded self-defined ethnicity in only 2% of cases) increases the ethnicity completion to 84%. Using this combined measure:

  • 58% were white
  • 28% were black, African, Caribbean or black British
  • 11% were Asian or Asian British
  • 0.5% were mixed or multiple ethnic groups
  • 3% were of other ethnicities

The proportion of detentions of ethnic minorities (excluding white minorities) may reflect the proportion of detentions accounted for by the Metropolitan Police which is a much more ethnically diverse police force area compared to other forces in England and Wales[footnote 22]. People from ethnic minority backgrounds (excluding white minorities) make up 46% of the population of the Metropolitan Police area, in contrast to 18% of the population of England and Wales.

Excluding the Metropolitan Police, the ethnic breakdown (substituting officer-observed ethnicity where self-defined ethnicity was not available) of people detained under section 135 was as follows:

  • 82% were white
  • 7% were black, African, Caribbean or black British
  • 7% were Asian or Asian British
  • 1% were mixed or multiple ethnicities
  • 3% were of another ethnicity

Data on the method of transport and place of safety used for detentions under section 135 is available in the data tables by Police Force Area. Given the large amount of missing data and variation in recording practices across forces, this data has not been presented at a national level.

A.1 Stop and search rates by Police Force Area and ethnicity

The following analysis compares disparity rates against stop and search rates, at Police Force Area (PFA) level.

When making comparisons between forces on disparity rates, the following should be considered:

  • both the relatively low number of stop and searches and the relatively small size of the resident population of ethnic minorities in some force areas can produce large differences in rates per 1,000 population, which are the result of a very small difference in the absolute numbers
  • police resourcing and priorities – the level of stop and search in a Police Force Area will be influenced by operational priorities and decisions
  • transient populations – the Race Disparity Unit highlighted the impact of population changes on stop and search rates; the stop and search rates are based on resident population estimates at a specific time and do not take into account individuals temporarily visiting an area, for example, tourists and students
  • variations within Police Force Areas – Annex A.2 shows, some force areas include many smaller areas (LSOAs) that have little to no stop and search activity, with a small proportion of areas that make up the majority of stop and search

Disparity rates are presented to one decimal place to show differences between ethnic groups which can be small. The following analysis is based on self-defined ethnicity only as the data is taken from the disparity time series tables which use longer-term trends for which only self-defined ethnicity is available.

Black ethnic group

Figure A.1: Overall stop and search rates and relative rates for black individuals, by Police Force Area, year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Source: Stop and search – ethnic disparity time series dashboard, year ending 31 March 2024, Home Office

Notes:

  1. City of London and British Transport Police are not shown, but they have been included in the England and Wales total.

In England and Wales there were 22.4 stop and searches of individuals from a black background per 1,000 population in the year ending March 2024. This is the highest overall rate compared with all other ethnic groups and 3.7 times higher compared with the white group, who were stopped and searched at an overall rate of 6.0 per 1,000 population. Merseyside had the highest overall rates at 55.7 stop and searches per 1,000 population, followed by Cumbria with an overall rate of 49.4 stop and searches per 1,000 population. Despite Cumbria having one of the highest overall rates of stop and search it is based on a very small number of searches (59 searches) compared to Merseyside (1,219). The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) had by far the highest volume of stop and searches of black people (30,489) and an overall rate of 25.7 stop and searches per 1,000 population. The lowest overall rate of stop and search of individuals from a black background was by Durham with an overall rate of 3.3 stop and searches per 1,000 population.

Although Merseyside had the highest overall stop and search rate for individuals from a black background, they had the third lowest relative rate of stop and search compared with individuals from a white background (1.7). Only Durham (0.7) and Cleveland (1.3) had a lower relative rate of black people stopped and searched compared with white people.

Dorset had the highest relative rate, with individuals from a black background being stopped and searched 9.4 times more than white individuals. However, this is based on a relatively low number of stop and searches of black individuals (98) and a low proportion of the resident population which identified as black in the 2021 Census (0.7% of residents).

Asian ethnic group

Figure A.2: Overall stop and search rates and relative rates for Asian individuals, by Police Force Area, year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Source: Stop and search – ethnic disparity time series dashboard, year ending 31 March 2024, Home Office

Notes:

  1. City of London and British Transport Police are not shown, but they have been included in the England and Wales total.

In England and Wales there were 8.0 stop and searches of individuals from an Asian background per 1,000 population in the year ending March 2024. Cumbria had the highest overall rate of stop and search of individuals from an Asian background at 47.4 stop and searches per 1,000 population, followed by Merseyside (17.9 per 1,000 population). The lowest overall rate of stop and search of individuals from an Asian background was by Wiltshire (1.1 per 1,000 population).

Although Cumbria and Merseyside had the highest overall rates of individuals from an Asian background stopped and searched, they had very different relative rates. Whereas Cumbria had the highest relative rate at 3.6 for Asian individuals stopped and searched, Merseyside had the lowest relative rate, at 0.5. There were 19 police forces in the year ending March 2024 where individuals from an Asian background were searched at a lower rate than individuals from a white background. In England and Wales individuals from an Asian background were stopped at a relative rate 1.3 times higher than white individuals.

Mixed ethnic group

Figure A.3: Overall stop and search rates and relative rates for individuals from a mixed ethnic background, by Police Force Area, year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Source: Stop and search – ethnic disparity time series dashboard, year ending 31 March 2024, Home Office

Notes:

  1. City of London and British Transport Police are not shown, but they have been included in the England and Wales total.

There were 10.1 stop and searches of individuals from a mixed ethnic background per 1,000 population in England and Wales in the year ending March 2024. Merseyside displayed the highest overall rate of stop and search at 33.9 stop and searches per 1,000 population, followed by Cleveland with an overall rate of 19.0 stop and searches per 1,000 population. Norfolk had the lowest overall rate of stop and search of individuals from a mixed ethnic background, at an overall rate of 2.0 stop and searches per 1,000 population, followed by Warwickshire (2.7 stop and searches per 1,000 population).

In England and Wales individuals from a mixed ethnic background were stopped at a relative rate of 1.7 times higher than white individuals. This relative rate varied between forces. West Midlands had the highest relative rate of 3.4, whilst Lancashire had the lowest relative rate (0.8). Norfolk (0.9) were the only other force where individuals from a mixed ethnic background were searched at a lower rate per 1,000 population than white individuals.

Other ethnic groups

Figure A.4: Overall stop and search rates and relative rates for individuals from other ethnic groups, by Police Force Area, year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Source: Stop and search – ethnic disparity time series dashboard, year ending 31 March 2024, Home Office

Notes:

  1. City of London and British Transport Police are not shown, but they have been included in the England and Wales total.

In England and Wales there were 8.2 stop and searches of individuals from other ethnic groups per 1,000 population in the year ending March 2024. This varied between police forces. Merseyside had the highest overall rate of stop and search at 55.1 stop and searches per 1,000 population, whereas West Midlands had the lowest overall rate of stop and searches at 0.6 per 1,000 population.

In England and Wales individuals from other ethnic groups were stopped at a relative rate of 1.4 times higher than white individuals. North Yorkshire had the highest relative rate, with individuals from other ethnic groups being stopped at a relative rate 2.9 times higher than white individuals. The force with the lowest relative rate was West Midlands, where individuals from other ethnic groups were stopped at a relative rate less than one (0.1).

A.2 Stop and search hotspot areas

This section contains information on stop and search hotspots conducted by the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) in London, as well as Greater Manchester Police, West Midlands Police, Lincolnshire Police, Dorset Police and North Wales Police. These areas have been selected as they provided good quality x and y co-ordinate data and allow comparisons to be made between areas with large urban centres with more rural areas.

The scales used in the map images in this section are different for each Police Force Area (PFA), as they are designed to highlight areas with high levels of stop and search within each PFA, rather than for comparison between PFAs.

Metropolitan Police Service

Analysis of stop and search conducted by the MPS in the year ending March 2023 at Lower Super Output Area (LSOA) level shows that there are certain small areas of London, such as parts of Westminster, Camden and Croydon with high levels of stop and search activity, and large areas (predominantly, but not limited to, the outskirts of the Police Force Area) with comparatively low levels (figure A.5).

Approximately 25% of stop and search within London takes place in just 1.9% of LSOAs within London, and 50% of stop and searches taken place in just 8.8% of LSOAs. Many of the areas highlighted yellow or light green in figure A.5, with very high levels of stop and search, are those where there is a significantly greater visiting population than the resident population of the area. For example, several areas of Westminster have very high levels of stop and search, reflecting the fact that people may gather in that area for tourism, or protests.

Figure A.5: Map of stop and search activity at LSOA level within London, year ending March 2024

Source: Stop and search data collection, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Includes searches carried out within the City of London by Metropolitan Police officers. Does not include searches undertaken outside London.
  2. Approximately 90% of stop and search records submitted to the Home Office by the Metropolitan Police in the year ending March 2024 had a valid LSOA.

Greater Manchester Police

Similarly to MPS, the majority of the outskirts of the Greater Manchester Police Force Area have very low to no stop and search activity taking place, with the hotspots being in distinct parts of the urban centres. Approximately 25% of stop and search within Greater Manchester takes place in just 1.1% of LSOAs within Greater Manchester, and 50% take place within 7.3%. In Greater Manchester, 2 of the main hotspot areas are Manchester 054C and Manchester 055B, which have high levels of transient population moving through them as they contain Arndale shopping centre and Manchester Victoria train station.

Figure A.6: Map of stop and search activity at LSOA level within Greater Manchester Police Force Area, year ending March 2024

Source: Stop and search data collection, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Does not include searches undertaken outside Greater Manchester Police PFA.
  2. Approximately 95% of stop and search records submitted to the Home Office by Greater Manchester Police in the year ending March 2024 had a valid LSOA.

West Midlands Police

West Midlands Police Force Area was no different to the MPS and GMP, with very few or no stop and search activity taking place in the outskirts. In West Midlands, the main hotspot area is in central Birmingham, close to the Bullring shopping centre and Birmingham New Street station. Approximately 25% of stop and search within West Midlands takes place in just 1.0% of LSOAs within West Midlands, and 50% take place within 6.7%.

Figure A.7: Map of stop and search activity at LSOA level within West Midlands Police Force Area, year ending March 2024

Source: Stop and search data collection, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Does not include searches undertaken outside West Midlands PFA.
  2. 100% of stop and search records submitted to the Home Office by West Midlands Police in the year ending March 2024 had a valid LSOA.

Lincolnshire Police

Although Lincolnshire does not contain any urban centres as large as London or Greater Manchester, there are similarities in the way that stop and search activity is distributed throughout Lincolnshire PFA. Approximately 25% of searches take place in just 1.6% of LSOAs across the PFA, and 50% take place in 6.0% of LSOAs.

Figure A.8: Map of stop and search activity at LSOA level within Lincolnshire Police Force Area, year ending March 2024

Source: Stop and search data collection, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Does not include searches undertaken outside Lincolnshire PFA.
  2. Approximately 97% of stop and search records submitted to the Home Office by Lincolnshire Police in the year ending March 2024 had a valid LSOA.

Dorset Police

Although Dorset is, again, a significantly different area to the 4 presented already in this section, the pattern of stop and search distribution is similar. 25% of stop and searches take place in just 1.3% of LSOAs, and 50% of stop and searches take place in just 5.6% of LSOAs. In Dorset PFA, large parts of the west and northern half of the area have no stop and search activity at all.

Figure A.9: Map of stop and search activity at LSOA level within Dorset Police Force Area, year ending March 2024

Source: Stop and search data collection, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Does not include searches undertaken outside Dorset PFA.
  2. Approximately 94% of stop and search records submitted to the Home Office by Dorset Police in the year ending March 2024 had a valid LSOA.

North Wales Police

The pattern of stop and search within North Wales is similar to rural areas of England, with large areas of no stop and search activity. 25% of stop and searches take place in just 2.4% of LSOAs, and 50% of stop and searches take place in just 9.6% of LSOAs. The main hotspot area is Denbighshire 004E, which contains the centre of the town of Rhyl, and accounts for 7.6% of stop and searches within all of North Wales.

Figure A.10: Map of stop and search activity at LSOA level within North Wales Police Force Area, year ending March 2024

Source: Stop and search data collection, Home Office

Notes:

  1. Does not include searches undertaken outside North Wales PFA.
  2. Approximately 93% of stop and search records submitted to the Home Office by North Wales Police in the year ending March 2024 had a valid LSOA.

  1. The associated legislation includes stop and search powers under section 47 of the Firearms Act 1968, section 23 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, section 43 of the Terrorism Act 2000 as well as other legislation. ↩

  2. This is the relative rate of stop and search for an ethnic group compared to the white ethnic group. A fuller explanation can be found in section 2.6.1. ↩

  3. This was in part thought to reflect willingness to make more use of such powers as part of the operational response to a rise in knife crime, and encouragement to the police from the then Home Secretary to use stop and search powers. ↩

  4. Asian or Asian British group now includes people that identify as Chinese. Previously people who identify as Chinese were grouped as ‘Chinese or other’. Details on groupings are available at List of ethnic groups. ↩

  5. Population data from the 2021 Census, based on whole population. ↩

  6. For more information on the Metropolitan Police’s stop and search rates at borough level, see the stop and search dashboard. ↩

  7. Includes searches under section 1 PACE, section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, section 342E of the Sentencing Act, section 11 of the Public Order Act and section 47A of the Terrorism Act 2000 (though this power was not used in the year ending March 2024). ↩

  8. Based on the resident population of the Police Force Area. Calculated using the mid-2023 population estimates for England and Wales, published by ONS. ↩

  9. Police powers of arrest: your rights - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) ↩

  10. A Notifiable Offence is any offence where the police must inform the Home Office by completing a crime report form for statistical purposes. Notifiable offences cover all crimes that must or could be heard at a Crown Court and, except for common assaults, does not include summary only offences that are dealt with exclusively by magistrates’ courts. There are strict rules regarding the recording of crime which is outlined in the Home Office counting rules for recorded crime. ↩

  11. ONS Crime Statistics ↩

  12. Calculated using 2021 Census population for England and Wales. ↩

  13. City of London Police Force Area is not included in this analysis, as the small resident population and large transient population within means that rates can be misleading. ↩

  14. Uses population estimates from mid-2022. ↩

  15. A medically qualified doctor who has been recognised under section 12(2) of the MHA as having specific expertise in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorder. ↩

  16. Source: Table MHA_06. In some years complete data was not received by all forces. Additionally, 9 forces have reported improvements to their data reporting processes over time. Therefore, although there is a general upward trend, the data is not directly comparable across years. ↩

  17. ‘Other’ was removed as an option for method of transport for the year ending March 2024 collection. However, Other made up only 0.7% of cases in the year ending March 2023, so the data is still fairly comparable to previous years. ↩

  18. The conditions in the regulations that need to be met for police custody to be used as a place of safety are: 1. The person is aged 18 and above. 2. The behaviour of the adult poses an imminent risk of serious injury or death to that person or others. 3. Because of the risk posed, no place of safety other than a police station can reasonably be expected to detain the adult. 4. So far as is reasonably practicable, a healthcare professional is present and available to the detainee throughout the period in which they are detained at the police station. Further guidance is available in the ‘Guidance on Police Powers’ ↩

  19. The categories for the reason police custody was used as a place of safety were changed for the year ending March 2024 collection. ↩

  20. Data was not provided by Cheshire, Cleveland, Devon and Cornwall, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Merseyside, North Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, or Sussex. ↩

  21. Excludes the 9 forces from the previous footnote plus Derbyshire who could not provide data in the year ending March 2023. ↩

  22. Regional ethnic diversity - GOV.UK Ethnicity facts and figures (ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk) ↩

Back to top